> I’m haunted by the specter of what’s happened over the past decade with homelessness in Los Angeles. … There’s money for everything — but what will actually get built? There are still big questions on the regulatory side.
Exactly! This should be the nexus of chief concern from those of us that care about climate change.
I’d love it if the energy and outrage currently aimed at blocking pipelines and oil leases could be redirected to build green energy infrastructure.
* Every time a wind farm is blocked or delayed due to some zoning obstruction, there should be protests and outrage throughout twitter and progressive media.
* Local politicians should be named and shamed as if they were an Exxon CEO overseeing an oil spill.
* People and organizations lobbying those politicians for obstructions should be branded as shills funded by the fossil fuel industry.
* We should “cancel” them with the same rage we’d apply had we learned they were strident Trump supporters.
Gaston county is the western edge of the Charlotte metro area, so I took a look at Sunrise Charlotte's social media feeds. Not a thing about Piedmont Lithium. Perhaps other climate groups have made comments that I missed, but it's clear major groups don't consider implementation to be a priority. Or, even worse, they share the sentiment from the Stop Piedmont Lithium founder: "Our issue is on every front: It's water. It's air. It's light pollution. It's noise. It's traffic. Give us a wind farm. Give us a solar farm"
"Every time a wind farm is blocked or delayed due to some zoning obstruction, there should be protests and outrage throughout twitter and progressive media."
Reporting from Europe, I would say that progressives are the most willing to block wind farms. They like them in the abstract, but it's just happens that this particular company that proposes a project is evil, because it cares for profits, and that specific area is also of high natural beauty. Mysteriously, this applies to a lot of proposed wind farm projects. (Isn't there a similar story in the US with that Maine referendum?)
The environmental movement went off the raise at the very beginning (I remember being disappointed by the very first Earth Day) by not looking at environmental damage as the outcome of bad incentives and the solution being to change the incentives, in principle through taxes and subsides (although in a few exceptionally clear cases direct regulatory specification of technology is harmless).
Moreover, blocking strategies, even if they should pass a cost benefit test in a particular case, have the political economy all wrong: imposing clear costs on identifiable persons when the benefits are highly dispersed. XL, of course, like most blockages, wasn't even cost effective.
I seriously do not expect to see a tax on net emissions of CO2 before I die, but it's still worth trying to get people to understand the rationale for it.
As St Paul wrote to his younger colleague Timothy, "preach the gospel in season and out of season."
The climate left is smart enough to understand House Republicans will give them very little, but dumb enough to think executive actions will give them quite a bit. The problem is executive branch supply interdiction keeps relatively little oil in the ground and exposes the climate left as purists who are unconcerned with peoples’ everyday lives.
Plus all the, you know, "Imperial Presidency Is Bad, Actually" takes from the Saga of Orange Man. Hypocrisy is a cheap charge, but keeps paying off nicely with voters (or at least social media engagement). Laws and policies have a way of self-reinforcing themselves institutionally, but executive diktat works just as well when there's someone else in the Oval Office...(mumbles something about Congress and feckless ceding of powers and responsibilities to the EB/JB)
"Executive diktat only ever expands to fill the void the filibuster creates."
I think you lay way to much blame at the feet of the filibuster. Something very striking from the post was:
"By the same token, the Nuclear Energy Modernization Act directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to create a feasible regulatory pathway for advanced nuclear reactors passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. The problem is the NRC hasn’t really implemented it."
Congress "overcame" the filibuster and passed a law and an executive agency has basically ignored it! This should be an absolute outrage where people in the agency are getting fired and banned from working in government! But its not, its all "whatever" about an executive agency ignoring the law, because everyone treats the Presidency was the place where real decisions are made.
This is a great point. Honestly when the House GOP are looking to do grandstanding hearings to "Own the Libs," someone should point them at the NRC and tell them leftists bureaucrats are holding up the streamlining of regulations. If that doesn't work tell them the NRC got an email from Hunter Biden's laptop.
I think there would have been executive aggrandizement even if the filibuster hadn't been there. The MOST aggrandizement happened under FDR when the filibuster was a non issue. It has continued apace, not because of the filibuster, but because congress has become oriented around partisanship instead of institutionalism. Congress doesn't compete with the executive for power, they are essentially the chorus for or against the president depending on whether they are members of the same party.
The way the Founders envisioned Separation of powers working, with executive, legislative, and judicial branches as a bucket of crabs, was dead almost before Washington left office as parties coalesced near-immediately. It was a grave mistake to believe that they wouldn’t, the Founders were just completely wrong in this.
What the separation of executive and legislative did do was give rise to the concept of divided government, which has often steadied the ship of state and provided stability while encouraging broad coalition-building and dealmaking.
I happen to think that having all of the filibuster, the geographically apportioned senate, the presidency, and the popularly elected House creates too many such veto points for one system to long survive.
But if I wanted to get rid of one of them, it’d not be the filibuster or any sort of a supermajority requirement, it’d instead be the presidency.
I would propose that to capture the best of our current system’s stability while enhancing popular legitimacy we abolish the presidency and transfer the filibuster to the House at a 55% threshold, then make the House elected by PV state-by-state.
It depends on your strategy. For instance, many people in the gay rights movement didn’t bother to protest Republicans, because if anything, it burnished the Republicans’ reputation as defenders of family values. From their perspective, they got better results pushing on their allies.
As someone in the center-left, I completely get the frustration of getting pressure from people who are supposed to be on your team, but I think this is an interesting perspective.
On climate, I largely agree with Matt, and at least in theory, we should be able to get Republicans to agree to deregulation of the energy industry generally, which will also unlock the possibilities for solar/wind.
To the extent that the gay right's movement pushed Republicans, a lot of it was called "coming out to our families"
(Highest profile example being Dick Cheney)
But also note that Obama didn't get pilloried by the left for not supporting marriage equality(at least not that I was aware, and I personally understood) - because he was clearly better on that issue than McCain.
And the RFMA decided to get a compromise with Republicans so it could pass the filibuster. It's not as far reaching as Obergefell, but it covers _most_ people (my state wouldn't have to perform my marriage but it would have to recognize it - and while not _everyone_ can travel out of state for a license, it's not impossible)
That was less clear. I think _yes_ but it might have required a court battle over whether it was required or not. I think we'd have won that case, but I'd rather have the law explicitly say it than rely on that.
(We were married for 5 years before Obergefell but didn't end up in a situation where we needed to argue with the state about it - we only used federal status)
> Sarah Bloom Raskin wrote an op-ed supported by major climate groups calling on the Fed to deny normal emergency support to the fossil fuel sector in hopes of bankrupting the industry
I do think there are some interesting academic exercises in exploring the interaction of finance and climate. E.g., as we progress through the green transition, could fossil fuel infrastructure become stranded assets that no longer generate sufficient cash flow to pay off their debt financing? And could the resulting wave of defaults within the fossil fuel industry create stress on systemically important banks and other financial institutions?
Yet in practice I don’t think there is currently anything actionable from such academic work. Therefore I believe that the Raskin op-ed was academic malpractice in suggesting that there was. For that reason, Biden should not have nominated her to the Fed Board of Governors. Thankfully Manchin saved us yet again.
Further, I think there is a more general problem of searching for the “one clever” trick to achieve action on climate change when conventional politics fails. See also ESG investing. But for a problem as massive as climate change, there are no clever tricks. We instead need good policy that works within our current political reality; that includes considerations of constraints and tradeoffs.
Notably, we need to accept that the mass majority of voters care a lot about the price of energy. Even many Democratic voters who care about climate change would reject even a modest increase in the price of gasoline to reduce carbon emissions. There is no clever trick to work around that constraint. So if we are going to address climate change then our policies need to work within that political reality.
I don't actually really disagree with you substantively (hence, carry on), but I have to say that--especially in light of Republican denial and intransigence in naked bad faith -- it's really aggravating and, frankly, kind of madness inducing for action of import to the literal biosphere we and all life inhabit to be subject to "political reality" -- chiefly because actual reality doesn't actually care about who controls the US House of Representative. The closest analogy that comes to mind right now is something like the following fictional dialogue from a hypothetical movie
Scientists: We've run the numbers, sir, and the asteroid about to hit the Earth and extinguish our way of life and everything we love can only be diverted by hitting it with a rocket and detonating a warhead of at least 100 kilotons.
Politicians: Well, we've polled the populace, and the best we can do is 30 kilotons
Scientists: This is literally not enough to avert disaster regardless of what the voters say.
Nice expression of an attitude and a such neither right or wrong.
Mine is different. I am just sure that sooner or later we WILL get together enough countermeasures aided by ongoing fall in costs of non-CO2 emitting processes. The difference between sooner and later is how much MORE costly it will be to come to equilibrium with a global temperature of 2.0+x% than 2,0 degree's above preindustrial C2 levels. I just really do not think we have the capacity to put the Earth into a Venus doom spiral. We just face an upward sloping cost curve.
Look at it this way. Suppose that asteroid was coming but the alternative was to move humanity to an Earth-like world with a climate like the Carboniferous: hot swampy, etc. Would we say that was unlivable, incompatible with a high-tech civilization? Of course not. It would just be expensive to get there.
I tend to think of this as a very anthropocentric view in a way that doesn't match at least my personal utility function -- thanks to modern urban living I've already encountered far more humans than I ever cared to to. I'm not concerned about the end of industrial civilization, I'm concerned about the charismatic fauna in David Attenborough specials. The marginal human provides me far less utility (or negative utility) than the marginal polar bear / puffin / penguin / whathaveyou. Also it's nice to have winters both for subjective enjoyment and to kill all the pests and parasites that thrive in warm climates. Basically I consider "Humans all alive, polar bears all dead" to be a loss state.
Stranded assets would be a business mistake -- fossil fuel companies failed to anticipate the actual measures (least cost or not) of CO2 emissions reduction measures and of course it's always bad for financers to mistakenly finance the mistakes of their clients.
That this is is a problem that the _Fed_ or even risk regulator can productively intervene in is vanishingly small.
I think climate doomerism fuels this. "The world is irrevocably fucked, so we gotta do some crazy shit on the outside chance it works." This is how you get people gluing themselves to painting frames, because they think this is the only way to get leaders to do anything about it.
The truth is that climate change isn't a binary thing, and while we can't avert all of the damage, we can certainly mitigate it a fair bit.
Matt, I wish you all the best in the battle to have rational analysis beat emotional activism for the heart of the Democratic Party. Just as we need a saner version of the GOP (the recent election went a long way toward that goal), we also need a saner version of the DEMs.
We do need both, but not to the same degree. The Dem establishment is not actively working to undermine the foundations of the constitutional regime, after all. Both parties are problematic, but there is at least an order of magnitude difference in terms of *how* deranged they currently are.
I remember when "they" (well, probably a magazine PR flack) called the New Republic "the in-flight magazine of Air Force One." SB would be an excellent in-flight Substack. Okay, probably not a thing, but in spirit.
I am not generally conspiracy-minded, and whether it's actually *true* probably doesn't matter in the cold calculus, but the climate-left like Sunrise in particular behave indistinguishably from false-flag operations designed to kneecap achievable Democratic energy policy agendas. They should be seen and quietly treated as such.
When it comes to domestic oil production, I think it’s under appreciated that oil production in the US is less environmentally dangerous than in a lot of other countries. We have regulations and we enforce them. I think US natural gas burns cleaner than the stuff from Russia. Oil companies in the US are under pressure to do carbon offsets. That’s not happening in places like Russia or Saudi Arabia, which also happen to have terrible human rights records.
In an ideal world we woul stop using fossil fuels asap. That’s not possible so we’re stuck with picking the best of the non-ideal solutions.
I know you have been harshly critical of Sunrise in the past so maybe you don't want to dwell on it here, but you are actually being way too easy on them. Climate could be a productive bipartisan advocacy movement. There is plenty of space for policy change that would benefit the climate that conservatives would actually be enthusiastic about (stuff that you already mention). Then you're not even bargaining, you actually have both sides positively interested in policy change. The only thing the climate people would have to give up is their desire to pursue an ideal policy rollout as opposed to something that is incrementally better for global warming. But instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to make steady progress regardless of the balance of power in DC, these groups are working to insure that climate is a divisive political issue that hurts Dems leading to worse political outcomes for the country and worse climate policy outcomes. It is really infuriating how counter-productive these people are.
Yeah stuff like carbon capture could create good paying jobs. Dropping the anti-corporate posturing and giving financial incentives to corporations to develop carbon capture or carbon neutral energy tech would probably get a lot of Republicans on board especially if it means more jobs.
There was a bipartisan farm bill that passed last year I think that had significant climate change provisions. So it is possible, you just have to appeal to a broader part of the electorate
If this is accurate (& I have no reason to doubt that it is), then surely conservatives should want to steal the issue from progressives and thereby gain a “principled problem solver” image.
Congress? Is Congress working on this in the lame duck? Or are they content to just let this vital thing die and fall precisely into the Proposition HHH trap MY writes about?
I hope not. But if they do, at least they will have wasted some of their precious lame-duck session time on that stupid Respect for Marriage Act which will change absolutely nothing materially for the foreseeable future but will let the bien pensants swoon with pleasure about sticking it to Clarence Thomas. Yay.
I agree with you on permitting but why dunk on the Respect for Marriage Act. I think people have good reason for worrying the court may reverse course on the issue- and it seems smart to prevent that from happening.
I'm fine with it, but we don't need to do it now and if the SC did do this shocking thing, there would be plenty of time to respond then.
Maybe calendar time permits Congress to pass this and other vital things, but if not, that's truly terrible. There are things far more important (permitting reform, debt ceiling, government funding, even the ECA).
Great read. I just think that Democrats will have a better immune response to accusations from the climate left than from the "woke" left because Democrats are way more afraid of being called racists than being called bad on climate.
Could even be a useful foil for Biden/moderate Dems in '24 to have a group to punch left on a bit and firm up their moderate bonafides.
Agreed. On a personal note, my wife and I have a small close friends’ group (SCFG), all of whom have young kids. We're all Independents in spirit, but of varying party affiliations in practice as we live in Maryland a closed primary state. Three years ago, we'd be considered liberal - I know I was at my previous job, which I despised.
I despised the label and the company. Staff was 50% smart and jovial, but management... To quote George Costanza, "There's no management. I could go hog WILD in there! Funny in a sitcom. Bad in reality. But made for great "in the trenches" inside jokes. I was once told "Yes, I want you to CC me but if you want me to read it, print it out, and put it on my desk." I didn't argue. I did it for comedic effect and the knowledge that after 2-3 weeks the unread 3' stack of paper that would surely migrate to the corner of the office would be sufficient to quit the practice and put a period on another ‘gold office’ anecdote. But I digress... often.
Not to besmirch any voters staunchly aligned with a party, but FFS, both are just institutions of power serving themselves. We were all issues voters. You prioritize, you find your guy/gal, switch parties prior to the primary, and vote accordingly. My wife and I are aligned pretty evenly - and while my SCFG diverges from us in ways - if we had one, you could sum up our mantra as:
Have fun. Think Hard. Make fun. Work smart.
And do more good than your part.
(I don't know what the hell that was. But when I was summing up our belief system and how it manifests to our actions it kinda flowed. I gotta get back to work, so I'm leaving it in.)
Anyway, probably like many people (I hope) we try to think through all our actions, especially large ones that dictate how we spend our time and money and to ensure we're not wasting this fleeting bit of existence and we are being purposeful and at least "in the black" in the Communal Table's ledger.
This was a long-winded way of getting to the point, which is, we all have would pay materially more in taxes for practical environmental, health, and educational policies, prioritizing them in that order. But none of us understand the new POWERFUL energy around very loud and aggressive trans activists’ policies, especially at the early childhood development level and in women's sports, as well as the anti-white rhetoric and hate. And the fact that you're clearly not allowed to bring these things up in good faith without being figuratively or literally shouted down as hate-filled white supremacists who don't know their own mind. (This will be mocked by zealots and the people guilty of the behavior described above, but Full Disclosure: We're Honkeys.) Even postulating that any person, regardless of identity, should objectively see that type of behavior is destructive and not conducive to building a cohesive world is met with "Your white privilege can't know BIPOC pain".
35 years ago, careless stereotypes and tropes or discriminatory harmful language was frequently acceptable in pop culture towards nonwhites while sober responses by nonwhites could've been met with derision and terms like "wet blanket" or "uptight". Now the reverse is true PLUS gaslighting. The weird part is, three years ago we were left-pulled - not Left-Leaning - Independents. Now we're politically homeless. We're unwanted by the powers that be, but clearly needed, based on demographics, if we're counting legitimate votes - although not in royal blue at the federal level in Maryland.
We have existential threats of nuclear weapons, AI, and biologically pathogens, as well as all the bad actors internationally and domestically. I want the best path toward the best outcomes for all. Some people must lead, others must follow, other must be cared for. Who can we trust when our questions and thoughts are deemed evil? Obviously, they aren't. So, what the hell is going on? Are the passionate rational Left too afraid of the embittered unhinged illogical nonsensical hate-mongering Left? Or are they a tool? I don't know. I do know having calm frank conversations with someone away from public settings where they may feel they need to act a part is productive or at least people appear to engage in good faith and be responsive. At that point most people, myself included, become intellectually and emotionally generous, which becomes contagious.
Earnestly trying to understand a differing view/ideology/policy while respectfully defending your own values and dignity is ideal discourse. Anyone who hammers someone in that state likely has a legitimate personality disorder and should be treated by a mental health professional, certainly not be defended. What kind of world are we building? Or is the answer in another question: Are we looking to tear the world apart?
My hope is, progressives, Democrats, and Progressive special interest groups lean on rational flexible thinking, which is the same thinking required to actually accomplish any realistic goal. Then AND ONLY THEN will there be a free exchange of sex and discounts. (Sorry. Got Seinfeld on the brain. But that's not far off from my point.) Then they can emphatically and empathically tame their insane flank and welcome in nomads wandering in the desert.
If the domestic oil producers were bankrupted and production fell to zero, to what extent would demand be destroyed (i.e people would no longer be able to drive to work) and to what extent would imports fill the gap? More realistically, what about things like permitting hold ups and so on? My strong suspicion is that every barrel of US oil that isn’t produced is replaced with almost a full barrel of foreign oil. If I am right, it is totally idiotic to try to end climate change by making US oil unproductive. You are simply destroying jobs and harming your economy without achieving anything in return.
A lot of people are completely bamboozled by what they want the oil industry to do. Oil production is evil, but also it is costing me an arm and a leg to fill up my SUV. We must nationalise the US oil industry to end oil production, while also increasing production at the same time.
The correct answer is to drill baby drill while increasing research into sustainable energy production, to the point where the oil industry dies and nobody cares.
That would seem to be Feature Not Bug: destroying "evil" jobs, amputating "evil" sectors of the economy. A worthwhile cost-benefit analysis, for different values of cost and benefit. The bankruptcy is the point, to punish the wicked and make an example of them, rather than accept any peaceful surrender or redemption arcs. Or that's the vibes given off, anyway...doesn't help either that the actual humans employed in the nebulous Special Interests of the oil industry tend to skew in certain demographic directions.
You touch on it briefly but the the implementation is what concerns me most. The hard and boring work of putting policy into practice is where all of this can still fall apart. My experience around workforce/labor laws indicates nobody cares. Obama admin helped pass WIOA law but years later we were still unable to get any clarification on rules and as such struggled to do the work the law said we were technically supposed to do. Out in limbo with money we could spend money more effectively but trapped in a situation where the law says SHOULD when it really wanted to say MUST.
A given law passes senate/house and the whole world moves on just when the real work begins. People out there fighting over who gets the most social media points when literally nothing has actually occurred.
This really just comes down to Manchinism vs. the climate left, a policy and messaging battle won so resoundingly by moderates in 2022 that I do have some hope that climate activists will see the light that Matt is shining.
Manchin is the undisputed MVP of Joe Biden's first term just on the IRA alone (much less his other anti-inflationary instincts), and he could have provided even more value, if Bernie Sanders and co. could have seen the forest for the trees on permitting reform.
My quick litmus test for dimwitted leftism is a quick scan of who continues to lump Sinema and Manchin together. One is a self-aggrandizing courtesan to the elite who should be jettisoned at first opportunity for a normie Democrat that can spell the word populism. The other is literally irreplaceable, cannily squeezing maximal value for the Dems in the face of the party's-and his own--tenuous grip on power.
One of the most interesting conclusions I've come to has been that Democratic Senate candidates losing in North Carolina, Iowa and Maine in 2020 was actually very good for Biden and the Democrats overall. Had Democrats won those races, its almost certain that the much more progressive legislation that Manchin (and Sinema to a lesser extent) blocked would have passed.
The filibuster would be dead, the original Build Back Better Plan would have passed with an additional 2 trillion dollars in spending. Sarah Bloom Raskin would be on the Fed. There likely would have been much more aggressive climate legislation passed, etc. All creating significant political thermostatic reaction.
I read the Slate article linked in this post, and I also listened to Matt and Lauren's podcast episode about Nate Silver and his "Both Sides has been replaced with something worse" take.
I feel like this is a great example proving Nate right. I know Slate isn't exactly an example of top-quality journalism these days, but the one-sided hagiography, loaded language and uncritical acceptance of activist statements is so much worse than early oughts articles about Climate Change that would present facts and figures from both Climate Scientists AND some industry-funded cranks that ultimately lets the reader draw their own conclusions. It's a perfect example of how journalism has degraded in the last decade or so.
That's really depressing. I feel like I can trace a lot of bad journalism to the Gawker media empire in the early oughts, their methods and standards being replicated at other sites like HuffPo and Buzzfeed. Then around ten years ago big mainstream newspapers like the Washington Post and the NYT started hiring these people and treating them like they had legitimate experience, and that's a big part of what got us here. That and, of course, Twitter.
Well…. I just posted a positive comment about your Tuesday article on giving because of the logical approach you advocated for (give, but do it as efficiently as you can). But I have a total opposite feeling about this one.
Leaving aside my opinion that the IRA was a misnamed political check that had nothing to do with inflation (as you basically admit, because it primarily was a funding bill for green energy and healthcare subsidies), IMO, you make a few illogical leaps today:
”meanwhile, the Biden administration took big steps with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down energy costs.”
Do you really believe that or are you just throwing Biden cheerleaders a bone? Can you point me to a credible source that could show the Biden’s political SPR releases lowered the price of gasoline more than, I will be generous, 20 cents? No matter what party is in the WH SPR releases are always smoke and mirror side shows that have little impact and an abuse of the original intent of the SPR.
“forcing the early retirement of existing fossil fuel infrastructure raised consumer prices a little bit but didn’t harm the overall macroeconomic situation.”
So, using government regulation to squeeze an existing proven energy source in the HOPES that it will increase investment in an unproven, poorly thought-out energy source is a good idea? (wind & solar are not always on, require huge land grants, and rely on foreign production and minerals) Advocate for wind and solar all you want, but please don’t cheer for knee capping our existing energy infrastructure without having a solution in place.
IMO, environmental groups should be pushing for nuclear, and possibly, geothermal initiatives and be honest about the fact that most of the emission reduction that has been accomplished in the US over the last 20 years is the result of the NG boom (still a carbon emitting source). Wind & solar will be a small (approx. 25%) part of the solution, stop pretending that the solution for zero-carbon is already on hand, we just have not slayed the oil companies yet.
I know that this might be a little harsh. You are not a green-eyed climate first and foremost guy. You want to improve climate while balancing the economic impact. But pretending the IRA had anything to do with its name, and the two points I mentioned above were a source of irritation this morning (if you couldn’t tell 😁).
I can't quite follow the "credible source" part. Are the Treasury estimates not credible? They estimate $0.13 - $0.42 (high-end includes the additional 60m barrel IEA impact). The retail prices dropped a $1.00 off the peak. Even your $0.20 estimate would account for 20% of the drop. Would seem strange to argue 20% is "little" impact although now we're playing semantics games are those are never fun. I think Matt's bigger point was the second part -- that this action ran counter to climate leftists but helped the midterm performance and that's good politics.
I agree on both points: Whether its 20 or 40 cents, its semantics. That is not in the same ball park of why he was taking heat (news stories about $5/gal with sensational $8-10 CA/HI prices). There is no revolt/celebration over a 40-cent change. Which leads to your second point, it was a pure political move with minimal immediate impact and no long-term impact. Just a cynical “look like I’m doing something” move before an election. Happens all the time regardless of party or president, I just don’t think it should be treated as doing something useful.
If he wanted to signal he cares about consumers, pause the federal fuel tax; or if he cared about the environment, index the federal fuel tax to inflation. I know, he can’t do that with his pen & phone. That requires serious politicians and serious voters, which we seem to have a shortage of lately. 😉
"Just a cynical “look like I’m doing something” move before an election"
Was it cynical? Indeed, it happens all the time, but cynical? No more (actually less) than all the crap Biden had to endure by being tarred as responsible for the increase in gas prices in the first place. Justifiable balancing of the scales, I'd call it.
Gas prices fell because global oil prices fell. WTI crude has fallen >30% since its peak of $120 in early June 2022. Did the SPR cause that? Well, maybe some, because it added a bit of supply to the global market. But my guess is that the slowdown of the China economy is mostly responsible.
But as a political response as a way of claiming credit for something good that happened to occur anyway: chef's kiss.
Yes, but I don't think I'm following entirely here. The Treasury estimates are between 10 - 40% of the gas price decline was caused by the SPR release. Is anyone saying the SPR caused the entire decline? The few WH briefings I just quickly read say it "helped stabilize crude oil markets" - which is true and "gas prices fell at the fastest rate in over a decade" - which is also true. It absolutely *did* something good.
> I’m haunted by the specter of what’s happened over the past decade with homelessness in Los Angeles. … There’s money for everything — but what will actually get built? There are still big questions on the regulatory side.
Exactly! This should be the nexus of chief concern from those of us that care about climate change.
I’d love it if the energy and outrage currently aimed at blocking pipelines and oil leases could be redirected to build green energy infrastructure.
* Every time a wind farm is blocked or delayed due to some zoning obstruction, there should be protests and outrage throughout twitter and progressive media.
* Local politicians should be named and shamed as if they were an Exxon CEO overseeing an oil spill.
* People and organizations lobbying those politicians for obstructions should be branded as shills funded by the fossil fuel industry.
* We should “cancel” them with the same rage we’d apply had we learned they were strident Trump supporters.
Mining for critical minerals too, right? Energy storage is an essential part of a carbon free infrastructure and those minerals don't mine themselves. I've been tracking this story from my state for over a year: https://www.wfae.org/energy-environment/2022-11-07/gaston-mine-would-supply-needed-lithium-but-neighbo-fight-it
Gaston county is the western edge of the Charlotte metro area, so I took a look at Sunrise Charlotte's social media feeds. Not a thing about Piedmont Lithium. Perhaps other climate groups have made comments that I missed, but it's clear major groups don't consider implementation to be a priority. Or, even worse, they share the sentiment from the Stop Piedmont Lithium founder: "Our issue is on every front: It's water. It's air. It's light pollution. It's noise. It's traffic. Give us a wind farm. Give us a solar farm"
"Every time a wind farm is blocked or delayed due to some zoning obstruction, there should be protests and outrage throughout twitter and progressive media."
Reporting from Europe, I would say that progressives are the most willing to block wind farms. They like them in the abstract, but it's just happens that this particular company that proposes a project is evil, because it cares for profits, and that specific area is also of high natural beauty. Mysteriously, this applies to a lot of proposed wind farm projects. (Isn't there a similar story in the US with that Maine referendum?)
Funny how “rage” is apparently the standard political tactic. Sucks.
The environmental movement went off the raise at the very beginning (I remember being disappointed by the very first Earth Day) by not looking at environmental damage as the outcome of bad incentives and the solution being to change the incentives, in principle through taxes and subsides (although in a few exceptionally clear cases direct regulatory specification of technology is harmless).
Moreover, blocking strategies, even if they should pass a cost benefit test in a particular case, have the political economy all wrong: imposing clear costs on identifiable persons when the benefits are highly dispersed. XL, of course, like most blockages, wasn't even cost effective.
We must try to persuade them that attitude is bad for the environment. :)
I seriously do not expect to see a tax on net emissions of CO2 before I die, but it's still worth trying to get people to understand the rationale for it.
As St Paul wrote to his younger colleague Timothy, "preach the gospel in season and out of season."
The climate left is smart enough to understand House Republicans will give them very little, but dumb enough to think executive actions will give them quite a bit. The problem is executive branch supply interdiction keeps relatively little oil in the ground and exposes the climate left as purists who are unconcerned with peoples’ everyday lives.
Plus all the, you know, "Imperial Presidency Is Bad, Actually" takes from the Saga of Orange Man. Hypocrisy is a cheap charge, but keeps paying off nicely with voters (or at least social media engagement). Laws and policies have a way of self-reinforcing themselves institutionally, but executive diktat works just as well when there's someone else in the Oval Office...(mumbles something about Congress and feckless ceding of powers and responsibilities to the EB/JB)
"Executive diktat only ever expands to fill the void the filibuster creates."
I think you lay way to much blame at the feet of the filibuster. Something very striking from the post was:
"By the same token, the Nuclear Energy Modernization Act directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to create a feasible regulatory pathway for advanced nuclear reactors passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. The problem is the NRC hasn’t really implemented it."
Congress "overcame" the filibuster and passed a law and an executive agency has basically ignored it! This should be an absolute outrage where people in the agency are getting fired and banned from working in government! But its not, its all "whatever" about an executive agency ignoring the law, because everyone treats the Presidency was the place where real decisions are made.
This is a great point. Honestly when the House GOP are looking to do grandstanding hearings to "Own the Libs," someone should point them at the NRC and tell them leftists bureaucrats are holding up the streamlining of regulations. If that doesn't work tell them the NRC got an email from Hunter Biden's laptop.
I think there would have been executive aggrandizement even if the filibuster hadn't been there. The MOST aggrandizement happened under FDR when the filibuster was a non issue. It has continued apace, not because of the filibuster, but because congress has become oriented around partisanship instead of institutionalism. Congress doesn't compete with the executive for power, they are essentially the chorus for or against the president depending on whether they are members of the same party.
At which point we might as well have a parliamentary system so there is no President to polarize around, lol!
To put a little more meat on that bone:
The way the Founders envisioned Separation of powers working, with executive, legislative, and judicial branches as a bucket of crabs, was dead almost before Washington left office as parties coalesced near-immediately. It was a grave mistake to believe that they wouldn’t, the Founders were just completely wrong in this.
What the separation of executive and legislative did do was give rise to the concept of divided government, which has often steadied the ship of state and provided stability while encouraging broad coalition-building and dealmaking.
I happen to think that having all of the filibuster, the geographically apportioned senate, the presidency, and the popularly elected House creates too many such veto points for one system to long survive.
But if I wanted to get rid of one of them, it’d not be the filibuster or any sort of a supermajority requirement, it’d instead be the presidency.
I would propose that to capture the best of our current system’s stability while enhancing popular legitimacy we abolish the presidency and transfer the filibuster to the House at a 55% threshold, then make the House elected by PV state-by-state.
A tax on net CO2 emissions is not filibusterable. :)
It depends on your strategy. For instance, many people in the gay rights movement didn’t bother to protest Republicans, because if anything, it burnished the Republicans’ reputation as defenders of family values. From their perspective, they got better results pushing on their allies.
As someone in the center-left, I completely get the frustration of getting pressure from people who are supposed to be on your team, but I think this is an interesting perspective.
On climate, I largely agree with Matt, and at least in theory, we should be able to get Republicans to agree to deregulation of the energy industry generally, which will also unlock the possibilities for solar/wind.
To the extent that the gay right's movement pushed Republicans, a lot of it was called "coming out to our families"
(Highest profile example being Dick Cheney)
But also note that Obama didn't get pilloried by the left for not supporting marriage equality(at least not that I was aware, and I personally understood) - because he was clearly better on that issue than McCain.
And the RFMA decided to get a compromise with Republicans so it could pass the filibuster. It's not as far reaching as Obergefell, but it covers _most_ people (my state wouldn't have to perform my marriage but it would have to recognize it - and while not _everyone_ can travel out of state for a license, it's not impossible)
Surely your state would have had to recognize it in any case due to the Full Faith and Credit Clause, no?
That was less clear. I think _yes_ but it might have required a court battle over whether it was required or not. I think we'd have won that case, but I'd rather have the law explicitly say it than rely on that.
(We were married for 5 years before Obergefell but didn't end up in a situation where we needed to argue with the state about it - we only used federal status)
> Sarah Bloom Raskin wrote an op-ed supported by major climate groups calling on the Fed to deny normal emergency support to the fossil fuel sector in hopes of bankrupting the industry
I do think there are some interesting academic exercises in exploring the interaction of finance and climate. E.g., as we progress through the green transition, could fossil fuel infrastructure become stranded assets that no longer generate sufficient cash flow to pay off their debt financing? And could the resulting wave of defaults within the fossil fuel industry create stress on systemically important banks and other financial institutions?
Yet in practice I don’t think there is currently anything actionable from such academic work. Therefore I believe that the Raskin op-ed was academic malpractice in suggesting that there was. For that reason, Biden should not have nominated her to the Fed Board of Governors. Thankfully Manchin saved us yet again.
Further, I think there is a more general problem of searching for the “one clever” trick to achieve action on climate change when conventional politics fails. See also ESG investing. But for a problem as massive as climate change, there are no clever tricks. We instead need good policy that works within our current political reality; that includes considerations of constraints and tradeoffs.
Notably, we need to accept that the mass majority of voters care a lot about the price of energy. Even many Democratic voters who care about climate change would reject even a modest increase in the price of gasoline to reduce carbon emissions. There is no clever trick to work around that constraint. So if we are going to address climate change then our policies need to work within that political reality.
I don't actually really disagree with you substantively (hence, carry on), but I have to say that--especially in light of Republican denial and intransigence in naked bad faith -- it's really aggravating and, frankly, kind of madness inducing for action of import to the literal biosphere we and all life inhabit to be subject to "political reality" -- chiefly because actual reality doesn't actually care about who controls the US House of Representative. The closest analogy that comes to mind right now is something like the following fictional dialogue from a hypothetical movie
Scientists: We've run the numbers, sir, and the asteroid about to hit the Earth and extinguish our way of life and everything we love can only be diverted by hitting it with a rocket and detonating a warhead of at least 100 kilotons.
Politicians: Well, we've polled the populace, and the best we can do is 30 kilotons
Scientists: This is literally not enough to avert disaster regardless of what the voters say.
Politicians: 40, and that's my final offer.
Nice expression of an attitude and a such neither right or wrong.
Mine is different. I am just sure that sooner or later we WILL get together enough countermeasures aided by ongoing fall in costs of non-CO2 emitting processes. The difference between sooner and later is how much MORE costly it will be to come to equilibrium with a global temperature of 2.0+x% than 2,0 degree's above preindustrial C2 levels. I just really do not think we have the capacity to put the Earth into a Venus doom spiral. We just face an upward sloping cost curve.
Look at it this way. Suppose that asteroid was coming but the alternative was to move humanity to an Earth-like world with a climate like the Carboniferous: hot swampy, etc. Would we say that was unlivable, incompatible with a high-tech civilization? Of course not. It would just be expensive to get there.
I tend to think of this as a very anthropocentric view in a way that doesn't match at least my personal utility function -- thanks to modern urban living I've already encountered far more humans than I ever cared to to. I'm not concerned about the end of industrial civilization, I'm concerned about the charismatic fauna in David Attenborough specials. The marginal human provides me far less utility (or negative utility) than the marginal polar bear / puffin / penguin / whathaveyou. Also it's nice to have winters both for subjective enjoyment and to kill all the pests and parasites that thrive in warm climates. Basically I consider "Humans all alive, polar bears all dead" to be a loss state.
Yes Very anthropocentric.
But if you are into nature, it has little to do with climate change.
Stranded assets would be a business mistake -- fossil fuel companies failed to anticipate the actual measures (least cost or not) of CO2 emissions reduction measures and of course it's always bad for financers to mistakenly finance the mistakes of their clients.
That this is is a problem that the _Fed_ or even risk regulator can productively intervene in is vanishingly small.
Abolish the filibuster? That sounds like one pretty clever trick ;)
I think climate doomerism fuels this. "The world is irrevocably fucked, so we gotta do some crazy shit on the outside chance it works." This is how you get people gluing themselves to painting frames, because they think this is the only way to get leaders to do anything about it.
The truth is that climate change isn't a binary thing, and while we can't avert all of the damage, we can certainly mitigate it a fair bit.
"Let's all lay on the floor in a state capital and pretend to be dead to signify something something so we get our photo on Buzzfeed"
Or maybe the pandemic mercifully put those to an end? IDK
Matt, I wish you all the best in the battle to have rational analysis beat emotional activism for the heart of the Democratic Party. Just as we need a saner version of the GOP (the recent election went a long way toward that goal), we also need a saner version of the DEMs.
Yet all the progressive Dems lauded IRA to the skies. I think the Dems have proved themselves a lot closer to the sane middle than the Republicans.
That's a fair point, always better to have your own idiots trying to steal credit than attacking good plans.
We do need both, but not to the same degree. The Dem establishment is not actively working to undermine the foundations of the constitutional regime, after all. Both parties are problematic, but there is at least an order of magnitude difference in terms of *how* deranged they currently are.
They say people at the White House read Yglesias. I sure as hell hope they read him this time.
I remember when "they" (well, probably a magazine PR flack) called the New Republic "the in-flight magazine of Air Force One." SB would be an excellent in-flight Substack. Okay, probably not a thing, but in spirit.
I am not generally conspiracy-minded, and whether it's actually *true* probably doesn't matter in the cold calculus, but the climate-left like Sunrise in particular behave indistinguishably from false-flag operations designed to kneecap achievable Democratic energy policy agendas. They should be seen and quietly treated as such.
Reminiscent of the clues that Russia funds European Green parties to sow dissension and create gridlock
Never believe in conspiracy if stupidity and incompetence suffice as an explanation.
When it comes to domestic oil production, I think it’s under appreciated that oil production in the US is less environmentally dangerous than in a lot of other countries. We have regulations and we enforce them. I think US natural gas burns cleaner than the stuff from Russia. Oil companies in the US are under pressure to do carbon offsets. That’s not happening in places like Russia or Saudi Arabia, which also happen to have terrible human rights records.
In an ideal world we woul stop using fossil fuels asap. That’s not possible so we’re stuck with picking the best of the non-ideal solutions.
I know you have been harshly critical of Sunrise in the past so maybe you don't want to dwell on it here, but you are actually being way too easy on them. Climate could be a productive bipartisan advocacy movement. There is plenty of space for policy change that would benefit the climate that conservatives would actually be enthusiastic about (stuff that you already mention). Then you're not even bargaining, you actually have both sides positively interested in policy change. The only thing the climate people would have to give up is their desire to pursue an ideal policy rollout as opposed to something that is incrementally better for global warming. But instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to make steady progress regardless of the balance of power in DC, these groups are working to insure that climate is a divisive political issue that hurts Dems leading to worse political outcomes for the country and worse climate policy outcomes. It is really infuriating how counter-productive these people are.
Yeah stuff like carbon capture could create good paying jobs. Dropping the anti-corporate posturing and giving financial incentives to corporations to develop carbon capture or carbon neutral energy tech would probably get a lot of Republicans on board especially if it means more jobs.
There was a bipartisan farm bill that passed last year I think that had significant climate change provisions. So it is possible, you just have to appeal to a broader part of the electorate
If this is accurate (& I have no reason to doubt that it is), then surely conservatives should want to steal the issue from progressives and thereby gain a “principled problem solver” image.
Anyone aware of good groups out there working on permitting reform? I’m particularly interested in enhanced geothermal
Congress? Is Congress working on this in the lame duck? Or are they content to just let this vital thing die and fall precisely into the Proposition HHH trap MY writes about?
I hope not. But if they do, at least they will have wasted some of their precious lame-duck session time on that stupid Respect for Marriage Act which will change absolutely nothing materially for the foreseeable future but will let the bien pensants swoon with pleasure about sticking it to Clarence Thomas. Yay.
I agree with you on permitting but why dunk on the Respect for Marriage Act. I think people have good reason for worrying the court may reverse course on the issue- and it seems smart to prevent that from happening.
I'm fine with it, but we don't need to do it now and if the SC did do this shocking thing, there would be plenty of time to respond then.
Maybe calendar time permits Congress to pass this and other vital things, but if not, that's truly terrible. There are things far more important (permitting reform, debt ceiling, government funding, even the ECA).
Curious about this too, especially for transmission lines to move ample wind power eastward from the plains and westward from the desert west.
Great read. I just think that Democrats will have a better immune response to accusations from the climate left than from the "woke" left because Democrats are way more afraid of being called racists than being called bad on climate.
Could even be a useful foil for Biden/moderate Dems in '24 to have a group to punch left on a bit and firm up their moderate bonafides.
Agreed. On a personal note, my wife and I have a small close friends’ group (SCFG), all of whom have young kids. We're all Independents in spirit, but of varying party affiliations in practice as we live in Maryland a closed primary state. Three years ago, we'd be considered liberal - I know I was at my previous job, which I despised.
I despised the label and the company. Staff was 50% smart and jovial, but management... To quote George Costanza, "There's no management. I could go hog WILD in there! Funny in a sitcom. Bad in reality. But made for great "in the trenches" inside jokes. I was once told "Yes, I want you to CC me but if you want me to read it, print it out, and put it on my desk." I didn't argue. I did it for comedic effect and the knowledge that after 2-3 weeks the unread 3' stack of paper that would surely migrate to the corner of the office would be sufficient to quit the practice and put a period on another ‘gold office’ anecdote. But I digress... often.
Not to besmirch any voters staunchly aligned with a party, but FFS, both are just institutions of power serving themselves. We were all issues voters. You prioritize, you find your guy/gal, switch parties prior to the primary, and vote accordingly. My wife and I are aligned pretty evenly - and while my SCFG diverges from us in ways - if we had one, you could sum up our mantra as:
Have fun. Think Hard. Make fun. Work smart.
And do more good than your part.
(I don't know what the hell that was. But when I was summing up our belief system and how it manifests to our actions it kinda flowed. I gotta get back to work, so I'm leaving it in.)
Anyway, probably like many people (I hope) we try to think through all our actions, especially large ones that dictate how we spend our time and money and to ensure we're not wasting this fleeting bit of existence and we are being purposeful and at least "in the black" in the Communal Table's ledger.
This was a long-winded way of getting to the point, which is, we all have would pay materially more in taxes for practical environmental, health, and educational policies, prioritizing them in that order. But none of us understand the new POWERFUL energy around very loud and aggressive trans activists’ policies, especially at the early childhood development level and in women's sports, as well as the anti-white rhetoric and hate. And the fact that you're clearly not allowed to bring these things up in good faith without being figuratively or literally shouted down as hate-filled white supremacists who don't know their own mind. (This will be mocked by zealots and the people guilty of the behavior described above, but Full Disclosure: We're Honkeys.) Even postulating that any person, regardless of identity, should objectively see that type of behavior is destructive and not conducive to building a cohesive world is met with "Your white privilege can't know BIPOC pain".
35 years ago, careless stereotypes and tropes or discriminatory harmful language was frequently acceptable in pop culture towards nonwhites while sober responses by nonwhites could've been met with derision and terms like "wet blanket" or "uptight". Now the reverse is true PLUS gaslighting. The weird part is, three years ago we were left-pulled - not Left-Leaning - Independents. Now we're politically homeless. We're unwanted by the powers that be, but clearly needed, based on demographics, if we're counting legitimate votes - although not in royal blue at the federal level in Maryland.
We have existential threats of nuclear weapons, AI, and biologically pathogens, as well as all the bad actors internationally and domestically. I want the best path toward the best outcomes for all. Some people must lead, others must follow, other must be cared for. Who can we trust when our questions and thoughts are deemed evil? Obviously, they aren't. So, what the hell is going on? Are the passionate rational Left too afraid of the embittered unhinged illogical nonsensical hate-mongering Left? Or are they a tool? I don't know. I do know having calm frank conversations with someone away from public settings where they may feel they need to act a part is productive or at least people appear to engage in good faith and be responsive. At that point most people, myself included, become intellectually and emotionally generous, which becomes contagious.
Earnestly trying to understand a differing view/ideology/policy while respectfully defending your own values and dignity is ideal discourse. Anyone who hammers someone in that state likely has a legitimate personality disorder and should be treated by a mental health professional, certainly not be defended. What kind of world are we building? Or is the answer in another question: Are we looking to tear the world apart?
My hope is, progressives, Democrats, and Progressive special interest groups lean on rational flexible thinking, which is the same thinking required to actually accomplish any realistic goal. Then AND ONLY THEN will there be a free exchange of sex and discounts. (Sorry. Got Seinfeld on the brain. But that's not far off from my point.) Then they can emphatically and empathically tame their insane flank and welcome in nomads wandering in the desert.
… and I’m spent. That was cathartic.
Well said.
If the domestic oil producers were bankrupted and production fell to zero, to what extent would demand be destroyed (i.e people would no longer be able to drive to work) and to what extent would imports fill the gap? More realistically, what about things like permitting hold ups and so on? My strong suspicion is that every barrel of US oil that isn’t produced is replaced with almost a full barrel of foreign oil. If I am right, it is totally idiotic to try to end climate change by making US oil unproductive. You are simply destroying jobs and harming your economy without achieving anything in return.
A lot of people are completely bamboozled by what they want the oil industry to do. Oil production is evil, but also it is costing me an arm and a leg to fill up my SUV. We must nationalise the US oil industry to end oil production, while also increasing production at the same time.
The correct answer is to drill baby drill while increasing research into sustainable energy production, to the point where the oil industry dies and nobody cares.
"My strong suspicion is that every barrel of US oil that isn’t produced is replaced with almost a full barrel of foreign oil."
More than a "strong suspicion" it should be the starting point for analyzing supply side restrictions.
The "oil" companies all transition into geothermal energy companies. :)
That would seem to be Feature Not Bug: destroying "evil" jobs, amputating "evil" sectors of the economy. A worthwhile cost-benefit analysis, for different values of cost and benefit. The bankruptcy is the point, to punish the wicked and make an example of them, rather than accept any peaceful surrender or redemption arcs. Or that's the vibes given off, anyway...doesn't help either that the actual humans employed in the nebulous Special Interests of the oil industry tend to skew in certain demographic directions.
You touch on it briefly but the the implementation is what concerns me most. The hard and boring work of putting policy into practice is where all of this can still fall apart. My experience around workforce/labor laws indicates nobody cares. Obama admin helped pass WIOA law but years later we were still unable to get any clarification on rules and as such struggled to do the work the law said we were technically supposed to do. Out in limbo with money we could spend money more effectively but trapped in a situation where the law says SHOULD when it really wanted to say MUST.
A given law passes senate/house and the whole world moves on just when the real work begins. People out there fighting over who gets the most social media points when literally nothing has actually occurred.
This really just comes down to Manchinism vs. the climate left, a policy and messaging battle won so resoundingly by moderates in 2022 that I do have some hope that climate activists will see the light that Matt is shining.
Manchin is the undisputed MVP of Joe Biden's first term just on the IRA alone (much less his other anti-inflationary instincts), and he could have provided even more value, if Bernie Sanders and co. could have seen the forest for the trees on permitting reform.
My quick litmus test for dimwitted leftism is a quick scan of who continues to lump Sinema and Manchin together. One is a self-aggrandizing courtesan to the elite who should be jettisoned at first opportunity for a normie Democrat that can spell the word populism. The other is literally irreplaceable, cannily squeezing maximal value for the Dems in the face of the party's-and his own--tenuous grip on power.
One of the most interesting conclusions I've come to has been that Democratic Senate candidates losing in North Carolina, Iowa and Maine in 2020 was actually very good for Biden and the Democrats overall. Had Democrats won those races, its almost certain that the much more progressive legislation that Manchin (and Sinema to a lesser extent) blocked would have passed.
The filibuster would be dead, the original Build Back Better Plan would have passed with an additional 2 trillion dollars in spending. Sarah Bloom Raskin would be on the Fed. There likely would have been much more aggressive climate legislation passed, etc. All creating significant political thermostatic reaction.
I’d deal with thermostatic issues in exchange for single payer health care
Single payer wouldn't have passed even with 53 senators. Not when the country was told their income tax rate would be increased to 40%.
Was that actually in any proposed legislation?
I read the Slate article linked in this post, and I also listened to Matt and Lauren's podcast episode about Nate Silver and his "Both Sides has been replaced with something worse" take.
I feel like this is a great example proving Nate right. I know Slate isn't exactly an example of top-quality journalism these days, but the one-sided hagiography, loaded language and uncritical acceptance of activist statements is so much worse than early oughts articles about Climate Change that would present facts and figures from both Climate Scientists AND some industry-funded cranks that ultimately lets the reader draw their own conclusions. It's a perfect example of how journalism has degraded in the last decade or so.
it's really sad to me that Slate became another indistinguishable replacement-level progressive outlet. It used to be pretty interesting!
What's sadder is that Vox feels like it is decaying at the same rate as Slate, it's just starting from a higher quality point.
Jesse Singal had an interesting post today about another media outlet that is now completely captured: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/the-decline-of-on-the-media-is-very
That's really depressing. I feel like I can trace a lot of bad journalism to the Gawker media empire in the early oughts, their methods and standards being replicated at other sites like HuffPo and Buzzfeed. Then around ten years ago big mainstream newspapers like the Washington Post and the NYT started hiring these people and treating them like they had legitimate experience, and that's a big part of what got us here. That and, of course, Twitter.
Well…. I just posted a positive comment about your Tuesday article on giving because of the logical approach you advocated for (give, but do it as efficiently as you can). But I have a total opposite feeling about this one.
Leaving aside my opinion that the IRA was a misnamed political check that had nothing to do with inflation (as you basically admit, because it primarily was a funding bill for green energy and healthcare subsidies), IMO, you make a few illogical leaps today:
”meanwhile, the Biden administration took big steps with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down energy costs.”
Do you really believe that or are you just throwing Biden cheerleaders a bone? Can you point me to a credible source that could show the Biden’s political SPR releases lowered the price of gasoline more than, I will be generous, 20 cents? No matter what party is in the WH SPR releases are always smoke and mirror side shows that have little impact and an abuse of the original intent of the SPR.
“forcing the early retirement of existing fossil fuel infrastructure raised consumer prices a little bit but didn’t harm the overall macroeconomic situation.”
So, using government regulation to squeeze an existing proven energy source in the HOPES that it will increase investment in an unproven, poorly thought-out energy source is a good idea? (wind & solar are not always on, require huge land grants, and rely on foreign production and minerals) Advocate for wind and solar all you want, but please don’t cheer for knee capping our existing energy infrastructure without having a solution in place.
IMO, environmental groups should be pushing for nuclear, and possibly, geothermal initiatives and be honest about the fact that most of the emission reduction that has been accomplished in the US over the last 20 years is the result of the NG boom (still a carbon emitting source). Wind & solar will be a small (approx. 25%) part of the solution, stop pretending that the solution for zero-carbon is already on hand, we just have not slayed the oil companies yet.
I know that this might be a little harsh. You are not a green-eyed climate first and foremost guy. You want to improve climate while balancing the economic impact. But pretending the IRA had anything to do with its name, and the two points I mentioned above were a source of irritation this morning (if you couldn’t tell 😁).
I can't quite follow the "credible source" part. Are the Treasury estimates not credible? They estimate $0.13 - $0.42 (high-end includes the additional 60m barrel IEA impact). The retail prices dropped a $1.00 off the peak. Even your $0.20 estimate would account for 20% of the drop. Would seem strange to argue 20% is "little" impact although now we're playing semantics games are those are never fun. I think Matt's bigger point was the second part -- that this action ran counter to climate leftists but helped the midterm performance and that's good politics.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0887
I agree on both points: Whether its 20 or 40 cents, its semantics. That is not in the same ball park of why he was taking heat (news stories about $5/gal with sensational $8-10 CA/HI prices). There is no revolt/celebration over a 40-cent change. Which leads to your second point, it was a pure political move with minimal immediate impact and no long-term impact. Just a cynical “look like I’m doing something” move before an election. Happens all the time regardless of party or president, I just don’t think it should be treated as doing something useful.
If he wanted to signal he cares about consumers, pause the federal fuel tax; or if he cared about the environment, index the federal fuel tax to inflation. I know, he can’t do that with his pen & phone. That requires serious politicians and serious voters, which we seem to have a shortage of lately. 😉
"Just a cynical “look like I’m doing something” move before an election"
Was it cynical? Indeed, it happens all the time, but cynical? No more (actually less) than all the crap Biden had to endure by being tarred as responsible for the increase in gas prices in the first place. Justifiable balancing of the scales, I'd call it.
Gas prices fell because global oil prices fell. WTI crude has fallen >30% since its peak of $120 in early June 2022. Did the SPR cause that? Well, maybe some, because it added a bit of supply to the global market. But my guess is that the slowdown of the China economy is mostly responsible.
But as a political response as a way of claiming credit for something good that happened to occur anyway: chef's kiss.
Yes, but I don't think I'm following entirely here. The Treasury estimates are between 10 - 40% of the gas price decline was caused by the SPR release. Is anyone saying the SPR caused the entire decline? The few WH briefings I just quickly read say it "helped stabilize crude oil markets" - which is true and "gas prices fell at the fastest rate in over a decade" - which is also true. It absolutely *did* something good.