Guardian reporter George Monbiot writes a post called “US left behind in technological race to fight climate change,” noting how free-market economic ideology has become an obstacle to U.S. competitiveness and technological innovation:

“What has happened to the great pioneering nation, the economic superpower which once drove innovation everywhere? How did it end up so far behind much smaller economies in boring old Europe? How come, when the rest of the developed world has moved on, it suddenly looks like a relic of the Soviet Union, with filthy, inefficient industries, vast opencast coal mines and cars and appliances which belong in the 1950s?

It can’t all be blamed on George Bush: this technological backwardness pre-dates him. The real problem is the terror of all modern US governments of being seen to interfere in the free market. It’s ironic that the lack of effective regulation in the US has not ensured – as the free market fundamentalists prophesied – that the US came out in front, but that it has been left far behind. Just ask the car manufacturers. The truth, too uncomfortable to be discussed by US officials, is that government regulations are among the main drivers of technological innovation.”

Government investment is arguably an even more important driver of technological development, as we documented in “Case Studies in American Innovation,” which was recently cited by Fareed Zakaria in his Newsweek cover story.