And you thought this was all about inflation reduction. That’s so last week
The US is making a big down payment on climate change. Here’s what needs to come next.
With the U.S. House expected to pass the most consequential climate change legislation in the nation’s history on Friday, environmentalists and advocates are chilling the champagne for a surprise victory.
Just a month ago, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 appeared doomed after an apparent breakdown in Senate negotiations. But an unexpected deal emerged, prompting a party-line vote Sunday that promised $369 billion for incentives to move the nation away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources while putting more drivers in electric cars and making more homes energy efficient.
Expert analysis projects the measures will get the U.S. most of the way toward a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030. Market momentum and regulatory tweaks could take care of the rest.
Hmm, that means there’s no need to do anything else, right? The climate nags can stop agitating for more measures, and go buy EVs for themselves, take the train instead of a fossil fueled flight, purchase solar panels for their homes, replace all their AC systems with heat pumps, and pay for new insulation, right?
Yet it may be premature to pop the cork just now. The ice, after all, is still melting.
Yeah, that’s what happens during a typical Holocene warm period
As remarkable as the turnaround has been, the promise of the Inflation Reduction Act was never meant to solve climate change on its own. A bigger test comes in 2050, when climate scientists say essentially all of the world needs to reach net zero emissions, a point of equilibrium where the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stops growing and the climate stabilizes before it reaches a critical warming threshold of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
Piss off. Go mind your own business, leave the rest of us alone.
So is Robbie Orvis, senior director of energy policy design at the San Francisco-based climate think tank Energy Innovation. Orvis envisions a scenario in which the bill does the heavy front-end lifting by researching new technologies, developing industrial solutions and bringing down the costs of renewables and electric cars. Then, market forces and some additional government intervention combine to push the transition across the finish line.
If this was so promising companies would be dumping their own money into it.
If anything goes wrong – Americans don’t adopt new technologies quickly enough, supply chain or workforce limitations fail to meet demand – then the bill’s incentive-laden policies could fail to deliver in time. Saha said that creates a need for the Biden administration to quickly follow up the bill with regulations forcing greenhouse gas reductions in sectors of the economy like energy generation and transportation.
Well, hey, all the Warmists are going to rush out and buy EVs, right?
