The Washington Post has a lengthy editorial, 2-3 times longer than their typical editorial, on what’s next in the climate change aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act. They provide a very sanguine prediction:
The Princeton University ZERO Lab, which models the effects of climate policies, reckons the law will reduce yearly emissions by roughly 1 billion metric tons by 2030. Before the law, the country’s emissions were set to decline by 27 percent from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. Now, Princeton’s experts predict a 42 percent cut — nearly reaching the Biden administration’s goal of halving emissions by 2030.
My prediction is somewhat different. I think that the effect of the Inflation Reduction on carbon emissions will approximate zero by 2030. The editors themselves present my reasoning:
The law foresees a vast buildout of industrial-scale solar, wind and other facilities, along with miles of new heavy-duty transmission lines to zip electricity across the country and thousands of new electric-vehicle charging stations. Because the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine in all places at all times, and because wind and solar facilities occupy more land than fossil-fuel-fired power plants, Americans will see a lot of new energy infrastructure — and, in a country in which NIMBYism is practically the national pastime, renewables operators will have to fight bitter state and local opposition to build it. Another complication: Most of the nation’s deposits of lithium and other critical minerals lie near Native American reservations, raising questions about whether and how quickly they can be tapped.
I think that most of the 7+ years between now and 2030 will be taken up by litigation opposing the constructions they approach. Some of the litigation will be on the part of environmentalists. Furthermore, the model proposed by the Princeton ZERO Lab assumes 24/7 carbon-free electricity production which does not actually exist at present and for which the prospects are actually dimming. They also do not take the increase in carbon emissions required by all of the construction required for solar and wind facilities into account.
What I think will actually happen is similar to what happened with the COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program. There will be a sort of gold rush to secure the funds made available under the IRA. There will be inadequate oversight of the disbursement of funds resulting in billions of fraudulent or useless grants. There will be little monitoring of effectiveness.
This is an example of what the Inflation Reduction Act will do – something Dave was predicting in the last paragraph of his post.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/02/irs-sent-over-1-billion-in-stimulus-checks-to-incarcerated-criminals/
“The American Rescue Plan was reckless in the amount of massive spending with no off-sets,†said Congressman Don Bacon (R-Neb.) in response to the revelation. “Giving stimulus checks to death row inmates is a glaring example. This bill triggered the worst inflation in 41 years, costing the average family $500 a month. The poor suffer the most.â€
Bacon, as well as Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), had previously warned that Biden’s stimulus bill, which cost nearly $2 trillion in total, did not have oversight measures in place to avoid such discrepancies, unlike the first two bills passed by President Donald Trump. After Biden’s bill was signed into law, a $1,400 stimulus check was sent to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon Bomber, who is still in prison and is facing the death penalty.
In addition to payments to criminals, the bill also led to at least $80 billion being awarded to false businesses, with former U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider calling it “the biggest fraud in a generation.â€
Just from idle curiosity who was the president when the Paycheck Protection Program was put in place and when most or all of the funds appropriated under it were disbursed?
While I agree that Congress should have had more foresight in the construction of the PPP, I also think that President Trump should have directed that the plan have more oversight, whether the Congress put it in place or not. It’s due diligence. As I see it both he and Congress simply assumed the best case scenario. If you can assume the best case scenario, we wouldn’t need government at all.
The excerpt posted was to give an example of another big stimulus plan that fell way short of what it promised. As for republicans praising Trump for his part in the passage and administration of PPP, there were lots of oversight issues in that bill as well, with small businesses not being in the funding loop as much as big businesses were. Managing big money distributions is difficult for any administration to do well without a fair amount of it being subjected to fraud and abuse. The same, IMO, will be seen in how the inflation Reduction Act will be managed and eventually implemented.
There is a pattern of government latching on to crisis as an opportunity to fund whatever project or pursuit they desire.
Crisis by crisis the cure is drifting further from the situation at hand until now we’re borrowing to fund “Green Dreams’ to “whip inflation”.
This requires balls of solid brass and a heart of stone for the President to
rob the treasury under a pretext he knows is false but serves his political ends.
What are Americans to do? The smart move is to position themselves at the receiving end of the largesse and the hell with the future of the country. No one seems to like it anymore anyway.