It is becoming harder and harder for American government to get things done. If today’s politics had existed in 1941, could we have won World War II?

There are two reasons for government’s present difficulty making major decisions. One is what columnist Thomas Friedman called “one party democracy“: “a two-party system where only one party is interested in governing and the other is in constant blocking mode.”

Friedman sarcastically said he sometimes wished we could be “China for one day.” A one party autocracy like China can, he said, at least make big, hard and important public policy decisions.

Donald Trump’s claim that if re-elected he would only be dictator for one day might reflect the same frustration with our current stalemate, but I am not sure he was just being sarcastic.

The second reason for our current paralysis is the increase, since World War II, of interest groups’ ability to challenge new laws with prolonged litigation.

The legal changes enabling private interests to litigate policies to death were made with the best of intentions. I am thinking particularly of the Environmental Protection Act of 1970.

The 1970 Act — highly desirable, bipartisan legislation signed into law by Republican president Richard Nixon — addressed air and water pollution, a serious problem. One of its reasonable provisions required “environmental impact” studies before major projects were allowed to go forward.

But today, interest groups use prolonged litigation under the Environmental Protection Act to stall projects by requiring repeated environmental impact studies or challenging the adequacy of studies already completed.

Since the period before major construction can be started, let alone completed, is financially draining, many legitimate projects do not “pencil out” if they are stalled too long

Could this be why China, where things get done when the autocratic government decides to do them, has modern high-speed railroads when the U.S. does not? Could it be why the movement toward electric cars has progressed so much further in China?

Could it be why China is so far ahead of the United States in producing and installing PV panels for generating clean electricity?

Could this be why China can build the high voltage direct current (HVDC) electricity lines needed to take full advantage of solar energy, while the U.S. is dragging its tail on this job? In the U.S. new grid requires permission of federal, state and local governments, and at all levels of this process interested private parties can bring lawsuits to bring progress to a halt.

Electric companies are now figuring out how to increase the capacity of existing lines because building new ones is so difficult.

Paradoxically, environmental protection law is being used to delay conversion of the U.S. to solar energy, a conversion needed to prevent a runaway climate that threatens to boil us all to death.

If we were attacked like we were at Pearl Harbor, perhaps we would all pull together again and stop the foot-draggng, allowing us to still win the war.

But we are already under an attack that is even more threatening to our national survival than the Japanese attack was in 1941. It is not a military attack this time, but nature reacting to our centuries-old abuse of the world’s atmosphere by pouring gigatons of carbon dioxide into it.

The revenge of nature is now evident in the ever-increasing heat waves, flooding, drought and forest fires afflicting the U.S. and other parts of the world.

But we are not pulling together.

The fight to save the world climate is the most important war of our lifetimes, and we are in danger of losing it. Ironically, it may be in no small part because of the abuse of legislation intended to protect the environment.

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