Biden’s Green Agenda Won’t Work for You

In what dystopian stage would a nation, where millions of families are struggling to pay rent and groceries, create a bill that will pour billions into Sisyphean efforts to reduce climate change and then sell it under the name “Inflation Reduction Act”. America is now at this point. The meanings of words are no longer mapped onto their meanings. Instead, the multi-billion dollar federal spending schemes have been called bait-and-switch ads.

The Inflation Reduction Act is just the latest example in a long line of emperor-has-no-clothes misnomers shrouding the self-flagellating impulse among American political elites for supposed climate wrongdoing. Despite the fact that the U.S. is attempting to reduce its emissions, they are still generating more than any other country in the world. This latest bill is a green-energy-subsidy lover’s dream, poised to shower wind and solar developers–and indirectly China–with billions of dollars.

The bill’s provision for electric cars is perhaps the worst example of hypocrisy in the entire legislation. The bill provides $7,500 in tax credits for Americans to purchase some new electric vehicles and a $4,000 tax break for used ones, a measure that Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts claimed would give Americans “no reason” not to buy an electric vehicle.

Meanwhile, claims that consumers will reap the benefits” from tax credits for new E.V.s, as well as the $4,000 tax credit for used E.V.s–but only those sold through dealers and, oddly, not starting until 2024–ignore basic economics.

Forget about the fact that E.V. Tax credits can be described as wealth transfers that are paid by taxpayers. Students learning economics in the beginning will be aware that tax credits and subsidies allow sellers to increase their prices and thus capture a part of the savings.

The sharing of subsidy money between sellers and buyers is determined by price elasticity (how responsive customers are to changes in prices) as well as price elasticity (how responsive suppliers to market price fluctuations). Consumers will receive more benefits from a subsidy if there is less demand. Salt is an example of a product that’s relatively inelastic. Most people will continue to salt french fries regardless of whether salt prices rise or fall. The tax credit that household salt will get won’t make consumers rush to buy more.

Trucks and cars are very different. People can defer a purchase of new or used vehicles if they are unable to afford it. This means that the market for new and used cars is flexible in the short term. This will be increased by a tax credit that can be used or new for E.V.s. E.V. is necessary because of the slow pace at which new factories can be built and expanded production. The new tax credits will cause an increase in prices for sellers and manufacturers of E.V.s. It is a lot.

Perhaps coincidentally, after Senate passage of the Act, Ford announced it was hiking prices for its Lightning pickup truck between $6,000 and $8,500 because of “significant material cost increases and other factors.” It’s true that the prices of materials, such as lithium used in EV batteries, have increased. But Ford’s announcement effectively captures most of the $7,500 subsidy for itself.

In a more extreme example of postmodern bafflegab the current administration ordered our tech overlords not to call these measures what it is. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board has pointed out, Gina McCarthy, President Biden’s climate advisor, is on a mission not only to “silence critics of climate alarmism,” but also “to censor content on the costs of a force-fed green energy transition.”

Republicans in the House Oversight Committee at least try to figure this out. In a letter sent to McCarthy earlier this month, ranking members James Comer of Kentucky and Yvette Herrell of New Mexico requested communications between the White House and those tech companies, whom they claim McCarthy asked to censor views critical of the administration’s climate policies.

In other words, Ms. McCarthy’s “disinformation” is what the legislators call “free speech,” and they claim she is suppressing it. Who’s right?

Consider attitudes regarding climate change. While stewardship of the environment is virtuous, this administration seems to consider climate change the font of all evil: extreme heat and cold, drought, floods, blizzards, volcanic eruptions, and even shark attacks. The list never ends. Some of these claims may be valid, but others might not. For Ms. McCarthy, and others like her, questioning the climate-change mantra would be heresy. The Church of Green Energy must suppress it.

But, there are still basic questions that remain unanswered. For example, economists often seek optimal results. Given the hysteria about our potentially exceeding pre-industrial temperatures by more than 1.5 or 2 degrees, what is the basis for claiming that the average temperature of the earth in the pre-industrial period before 1850 was “optimal”? What accuracy are these measurements of temperatures pre-industrial? What does “optimal temperature” for Earth actually mean?

Presumably, the climate 20,000 years ago, when much of North America and Europe were covered in glaciers, isn’t anyone’s idea of optimal. What about 2,000 years ago, when Rome was at the height of its power and global temperatures were warmer than they are today? What accuracy are climate forecasts of imminent doom based on the many models? According to Ms. McCarthy, asking such questions would be to spread heresy or disinformation.

The attempts to discredit climate heretics might be almost amusing if it weren’t for the billions of dollars that have been spent and wasted in Europe and the U.S. to fight climate change. These were mostly in the form subsidies and mandates to green energy.

Even if we accept the idea that preindustrial temperatures were ideal, the data on carbon emission shows the futility and inefficiency of U.S.-European efforts to decrease them and “combat global warming”. The most recent edition of the BP Statistical Review shows that, between 2005 and 2021, world emissions increased by 5.7 billion metric tons, an average of over 300 million tons per year, despite emissions in the developed world decreasing by about 2.4 billion metric tons. For developing nations, including China and India, that translates into an average increase of almost 500 million tons per year.

U.S. emissions in 2021 were about 20 percent lower than in 2005, a 1.2-billion-ton reduction over 16 years, achieved not with subsidies for wind and solar energy, but by switching from coal to natural gas. The U.S. must reduce those emissions by another 1.8 billion tons in the next eight years to meet the Biden administration’s goal of a 50 percent reduction in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. But according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2021, despite decades of subsidies, wind and solar generation produced only half as much electricity as coal-fired plants and accounted for less than 5 percent of total energy consumption. Wind and solar energy accounted for just 2% of total energy consumption worldwide.

Meanwhile, China, India, and Africa are building new coal-fired power plants to meet their energy needs. China alone is set to build 100 new coal plants, which will emit an additional one billion tons of CO2 each year. All future reductions of emissions from the U.S. or Europe will be slowed down by developing countries’ need for cheap and reliable energy.

As John Kerry, the president’s climate czar, admitted, even if the U.S. reduced its emission to zero, the impact on world climate would be negligible. It is either wishful thinking, or an attempt to convince developing countries that the U.S. will continue to destroy their economies and make energy more expensive and scarcer, which would be a lie.

This raises the greatest heretical question: Why should we pursue expensive green-energy policy here when they will not have any measurable effect on global climate or provide benefits? It is easy to answer: The “green” part of green-energy policy stands for money. Green-energy subsidies included in the Senate’s Inflation Reduction Act are just the latest political green trough feeding, and will benefit the wealthy at the expense for everyone.

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As our politicians take advantage of green-energy programs, all of us will have to decide what is white and black. An act of reduction is defined as anything that contributes to our current inflation crisis.

False information is called “misinformation.”

The emperor has no clothes, but we must pretend the opposite is true, even as fewer than a quarter of Americans polled in a recent Morning Consult/Politico survey expect the Inflation Reduction Act to actually reduce inflation. Although we’re not living in the hot air our leaders believe, it isn’t true.

Here lies the greatest humiliation.