Real answer? Because those tariffs will have barely any meaningful effect one way or the other. They’re pure politics and no one deep in the field really cares that much. The solar tariffs are fairly annoying, but solar is by far the cheapest form of energy production even if material costs blast up a full 50% – especially since those cost increases have no effect on the far more important cost center of trade labor. If Biden has a legacy other than supporting genocide in Gaza, it will be as the climate president.
The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest suite of climate subsidies the world has ever seen. It’s an industrial policy so huge that it would make Stalin sweat. Except… it’s working. Clean energy industry in the US was doing OK before and is just exploding now. Legitimately hard to overstate how huge it is, and even countries you think of as having intense green energy programs are looking at the US with some envy. And the design of the bill is such that it spins up virtuous cycles. As industries and slow money move in to take advantage of the bill, they become part of the constituency to keep it alive and continue to build up more and more of the same investment. If it can just survive a few more years, it’ll be almost as impossible to repeal as medicare.
And none of that seems to matter. Because no matter what they do it’ll never be good enough for the loud voices on the left. If you aren’t achieving global socialist revolution that means any progress you do achieve is a waste of time and no different than the actual allies of global apocalypse. There’s always some stupid little “just one problem!” nitpick that people on places like the fediverse think reduces an entire policy to ashes even though it just isn’t even particularly important.
Real answer? Because those tariffs will have barely any meaningful effect one way or the other. They’re pure politics and no one deep in the field really cares that much. The solar tariffs are fairly annoying, but solar is by far the cheapest form of energy production even if material costs blast up a full 50% – especially since those cost increases have no effect on the far more important cost center of trade labor. If Biden has a legacy other than supporting genocide in Gaza, it will be as the climate president.
The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest suite of climate subsidies the world has ever seen. It’s an industrial policy so huge that it would make Stalin sweat. Except… it’s working. Clean energy industry in the US was doing OK before and is just exploding now. Legitimately hard to overstate how huge it is, and even countries you think of as having intense green energy programs are looking at the US with some envy. And the design of the bill is such that it spins up virtuous cycles. As industries and slow money move in to take advantage of the bill, they become part of the constituency to keep it alive and continue to build up more and more of the same investment. If it can just survive a few more years, it’ll be almost as impossible to repeal as medicare.
And none of that seems to matter. Because no matter what they do it’ll never be good enough for the loud voices on the left. If you aren’t achieving global socialist revolution that means any progress you do achieve is a waste of time and no different than the actual allies of global apocalypse. There’s always some stupid little “just one problem!” nitpick that people on places like the fediverse think reduces an entire policy to ashes even though it just isn’t even particularly important.