Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Did Manchin’s concern about the Texas Blackouts just save the USA from Build Back Better? Washington based reporter Tim McDonnell wants you to understand why a deluge of government cash would have made everything better.
Joe Manchin has a fundamental misunderstanding of climate economics
Climate reporter
…
In a statement, Manchin said the bill would “risk the reliability of our electric grid,” and that reducing emissions “at a rate that is faster than technology or the markets allow will have catastrophic consequences for the American people like we have seen in both Texas and California in the last two years” (referring to blackouts in those states that were often misleadingly attributed to renewable energy).
…
But his argument is hollow for several reasons.
First, “the markets,” especially in the energy sector, have never existed in a government-free vacuum. The US currently subsidizes oil and gas production to the tune of about $20 billion per year, which gives those fuels an advantage over renewables that then need tax incentives. Although the US, as Manchin mentions in his statement, has a history of innovation in clean energy tech, it has surrendered its competitive advantage to China on emerging industries like the manufacturing of batteries and solar panels largely because of its unwillingness to sufficiently subsidize domestic production facilities.
Second, the bill directs much of its support toward the very technologies—utility-scale energy storage and improved grid transmission lines—that are needed to improve the “reliability of our electric grid” and to mitigate the risk of future blackouts as renewables become more widespread.
Finally, the most important flaw in Manchin’s reasoning is that it propagates a false choice about climate action: Either spend money on climate, or do nothing and save money. In reality, maintaining the status quo—in other words, plowing headlong into climate catastrophe—is by far the costlier option and more damaging to the US economy.
After Manchin’s announcement, Goldman Sachs lowered its GDP forecast for the US in 2022.
Read more: https://qz.com/2104166/why-joe-manchin-wont-vote-for-the-build-back-better-bill/
I think the fundamental problem is many of the people promoting these gigantic government schemes have never tried to run their own business.
There are many more ways for things to go wrong than right. Anyone who runs a business knows every expenditure needs careful consideration. If I upgrade my laptop, will I be able to pay my kid’s school fees? Do I really need the upgrade now? Will the upgrade improve my productivity enough to justify the cost?
People who have never attempted to run a business and deal with these kinds of issues mostly don’t have this consciousness of risk. There are some exceptions, but for most people who have worked for someone else all their lives, money comes in predictable packets at set intervals. The laptop upgrade comes as a matter of course due to company policy. Government money comes from banks or printing presses. There is never any problem paying school fees from predictable wage income streams, unless you (gulp) lose your job.
If income is predictable and safe, what downside can there be, to the government gambling trillions of dollars on technologies which do not exist?
Senator Joe Manchin ran multiple businesses before he committed to full time to politics. He gets it, in a way many of his colleagues very obviously do not.
I have no problem with the government spending a few billion every year on research. Fundamental research into communication network resilience which nobody imagined would have commercial value led to the USA dominating the internet age. All the spinoffs from the space race, too many to count. People who want to commit their lives to understanding the universe, there is plenty of evidence the benefit of giving them a little support outweighs the cost many times over.
But that is where the government expenditure should stop. If the technology which scientists discover is not self sustaining, in the sense that businesses clamouring for access can go off and make a pile of money without further government help, in most cases no amount of government cash or market distorting rules will create an economic benefit for taxpayers.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I wonder what part of “unreliable” energy supply the author Tim McDonnell doesn’t understand?
Here In the real world, the world where risk exists and no pay check at the end of the month is a possible consequence of getting it wrong, here, we know if something is unreliable we don’t want it.
What we also know is, having even more unreliable to compensate for the already existing unreliables, does not make us feel any better, or more confident.
At this moment here in the UK there is no wind. The energy sector built on wind is standing idle. It has been like this for two days and will continue for a couple more days.
Also today is Winter Solstice so no solar either at 54 deg North Latitude.
The unreliables in our energy generation fleet, are producing less energy than one of the last two remaining coal fired stations now supporting UK electricity power demand, on this bleak day here in winter.
The current energy situation here in the UK reminds people, if you do stupid things, then you can expect uncomfortable outcomes.
Happy Solstice day everyone, North and South.
A Government is not a business or firm.
Promotion of the General Welfare, the US explicit intent, is a job that no private firm alone can accomplish.
Witness the TVA – Tennessee Valley Authority, the Manhattan Program, NASA and Apollo.
The internet was DARPA, also government.
This is why the Squad call their green boondoggle a Green New Deal, a steal from FDR’s successful New Deal after the 1929 crash an Great Depression.
Instead of waiting for the crash of the everything bubble, which the BBB tries to bail out, yet again, put this financial system into bankruptcy reorganization, re-instate Glass-Steagall and go for the biggest deal the world has ever seen – join the Belt and Road Initiative.
This is so far beyond the provincial swamp of D.C. I wonder what Manchin’s view on this is.
Senator Joe Manchin has often praised Glass-Steagall, and clearly said it’s repeal caused the 2008 crash. And Trump actually campaigned in 2016 on Glass-Steagall, and getting along with Russia and China. Sanders and Warren also made a lot of noise about Glass-Steagall, so it is bi-partisan.
All 3 of these get the same press demonization. Curious, isn’t it?
The article by McDonnell is one long string of misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies. They operate under the principle that if you repeat a lie (or string of them) often enough, it becomes the truth. Senator Manchin is a hero for stepping up the way he has, knowing the flak he’d be taking from those supposedly on his side. Manchin for president? Yes. I don’t care what letter comes after his name.
Slow down. Let’s see what Manchin does with regard to the climate change issue. Some claim he is still onboard with climate change legislation, although I imagine Manchin will protect West Virginia coal interests, even if he is, and still onboard with spending an additional $1.8 Trillion, which will certainly add to inflation costs.
So Manchin could still cast votes that would harm the United States.
So, this Tim McDonnel asshole lives without the benefits of gas, oil, coal or nuclear power? Really? All I see is another hypocritical f*ckbag spewing lies. Manchin sees and accepts REALITY. He knows that 98% of Americans do not want any of this leftarded stupidity.
EXCERPT from
“BUILD BACK BETTER” WOULD COST $4.488 TRILLION OVER THE NEXT DECADE, IF PROVISIONS WERE MADE TO LAST 10 YEARS
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/build-back-better-would-cost-3-95-trillion-overt-the-next-decade
Distrust in Government
I am not surprised at the lack of public trust in Washington, DC, and elsewhere. The games of smoke and mirrors played in Washington are off-the-charts outrageous.
Never, ever, has there been such a level of deceit, as Democrats have inflicted on the US People, since January 2021, after using a fraudulent election in 2020 (see Appendix), to achieve a coup d’etat, to relentlessly push for a major increase of:
1) The size and intrusiveness of government, and
2) Democrat command/control over the federal government and the American people.
Eric nailed it in one sentence:
I think the fundamental problem is many of the people promoting these gigantic government schemes have never tried to run their own business. (my emphasis)
I certainly would not like to see any of my many bosses ever anywhere near running a government.
I wonder if Elon Musk will run for President someday – probably not possible as he is South African with multiple passports.
Imagine Zuckerberg as President, not just of Meta Universe, but the USA?
“Although the US … has surrendered its competitive advantage to China on emerging industries like the manufacturing of batteries and solar panels largely because of its unwillingness to sufficiently subsidize domestic production facilities.”
Since the Chinese subsidy consists of building an enormous number of coal fired generating plants and the enslavement of millions of workers, the US might not want to go there.
I’m fascinated by his equating subsidies with “competitive advantage”.
” There is never any problem paying school fees from predictable wage income streams, unless you (gulp) lose your job”
that’s no worry, as long as you have the correct political party’s opinions
check with your local political officer, they’ll be happy to help
and of course if you hear any wrong opinions, don’t hesitate to report and shame!
not everyone deserves a job
There’s a whole lotta bullshit in this post. Firstly it asserts that the US provides a $20B subsidy to fossil providers, but only documents that with a link to a post by a private warmunist think tank that only asserts, again, with zero documentation, that “conservative estimates of subsidies to fossil fuels is $20 B annually.”
You cannot cite a non-sourced assertion as a source, sorry, the author just failed Journalism 101.
In point of fact, there are no subsidies, tax or otherwise, provided by the US government for fossil fuels. The only tax benefits provided to fossil fuel producers in the US are the same tax benefits provided to all other businesses in the US per the Federal tax code, i.e., depreciation, depletion allowance (allowed to all extractive industries), and deductions for capital investments. These same tax benefits are also used by all renewable fuels producers and manufacturers of electric vehicles. The total dollar value is less because the total volume of these industries is but a tiny percent of the overall energy production and consumption expenditures, and in fact proportionally they get far MORE than their “fair share” of such tax benefits due to specialty tax credits and deductions for EVs, solar, and wind.
If you follow the links inside the links of the circular reasoning article that you’ve pointed out, you will also find that some of the Federal subsidies included in that $20B total are research and development subsidies and assistance to poor people to heat their homes in winter.
So do progressives really want to eliminate those subsidy programs? They never answer those questions when they are actually confronted about their subsidy whining.
“Finally, the most important flaw in Manchin’s reasoning is that it propagates a false choice about climate action: Either spend money on climate, or do nothing and save money.”
This is not a false choice. Climate action is 30 years of weather action by definition. If these people think they can change the weather for 30 years by spending money, they need to outline just exactly what they intend to do to accomplish that.
Certainly glad the Senator is hugely concerned about spending “the governments money”. In view of the fact that government has no money which they haven’t first taken from real working people.
“The US currently subsidizes oil and gas production to the tune of about $20 billion per year, which gives those fuels an advantage over renewables that then need tax incentives”
His definition of subsidy for oil and gas production is “The government isn’t charging them as much money as I want”. And renewables don’t just get tax incentives (which aren’t subsidies) they get massive real subsidies – funded by government checks paid from taxpayer dollars.
If renewables actually were economically viable, they would need no government incentives or subsidies, the private sector would be fighting for market share.
Of course Manchin fundamentally misunderstands “climate economics”. It’s difficult to understand utter nonsense.
[Tim McDonnell quote] “Finally, the most important flaw in Manchin’s reasoning is that it propagates a false choice about climate action: Either spend money on climate, or do nothing and save money. In reality, maintaining the status quo—in other words, plowing headlong into climate catastrophe—is by far the costlier option and more damaging to the US economy.”
How does Tim McDonnell (or anyone else) know that doing nothing will lead to “climate catastrophe”? Since people started worrying about “global warming” in the 1980’s, we’ve had 40 years of predictions that never happened: an ice-free Arctic (never happened), flooding of Florida (never happened), Tuvalu sinking into the sea (never happened), extinction of polar bears (there are more now than 40 years ago), Antarctica melting (the ice there is getting thicker). We’ve seen predictions of temperature rise from computer models that are 2 or 3 times what really happened, and predictions of accelerating sea level rise, while the actual sea level rise rate has lumbered along at 2 mm per year for the last century. People who have failed to predict the past can’t be trusted to predict the future.
Basically, we’ve had 40 years of people crying wolf to shut down the energy industry, and the Big Bad Wolf of climate change has turned out to be a puppy, and never ate any lambs. Senator Manchin (and many others) are tired of being told to make huge sacrifices to avoid a “catastrophe” that never happens. Manchin may be singled out because he’s a Democrat, but there are 51 Senators (a majority) against the Green New Deal.
Besides, when “president” Biden shuts down the Keystone XL pipeline but approves a pipeline from Russia to Germany, how does that really reduce global CO2 emissions? All that does is transfer the emissions (and lots of money) from America to Europe, and Hunter gets rich and passes his tithe to the Big Guy.
As for China leading the USA in the manufacture of batteries and solar panels, the Chinese are happy to sell them to us because they control most of the rare-earth metals required to manufacture them. But they don’t use many of the batteries and solar panels they make, and prefer to burn coal to generate power, and emit twice as much CO2 as the USA. According to Xi, solar panels for thee, coal for me. Hypocritical, but smart.
What the Climate Change addicts are ignoring, to their disgrace, is that the Sun is in the midst of a Grand Minimum, possibly the beginning of another little Ice Age.
The current solar minimum is following the history right on schedule. The Sun has lost 1-2% of it emissions. The Grand part was forecast by solar observers before the current minimum started. Their long range forecast is that the Solar minimum will return shortly after the current fades and continue the low insolation for at least another 11-12 years (2030-2040). It is quite likely that the minimum will continue on until ~2050.
So far the Sun’s activity has just prolonged an expected cooler period. If the long minimum occurs we will be faced with many more problems just than ‘climate change’.
Fussing about rather trivial things, such as CO2, will be a waste of time.
The human activity contribution to the atmospheric CO2 level averaged less than one-tenth of one part per million per year from 1960 through 2020. This level of CO2 contribution is too close to net zero to warrant any spending at all let alone a monstrously expensive “Green New Deal.”
Don’t need to wait for “Build Blackouts Better” here in the NW. Local politicians are already going all out electrifying everything, shutting down fossil fueled power generation and notionally planning on shift to intermittents. Power systems planning by politicians-What could go wrong?
Throughout my career of managing a large number of petrochemical operation engineers, it was always amazing to see the comprehension of economics routinely neglected . pounds were more important than costs. Folks did not understand that profit was what was left over after expenses. and failure to make a profit {loss} meant that expenses were to be cut { headcount, training, mtg etc.}. Economics 101/102 has been de-emphized to make room for social improvement curriculem.. STEM is pushed as a diversity opportunity rather than a critical societal support
Sen. Manchin did right thing. Tim McDonnell basically just spouted the Climate Change mantra- “we gotta do something”, and spend trillions to do it. All that would do would just waste a lot of money, like the dog barking up the tree at a squirrel, he can’t frighten it to come down when it knows it’s safe. The CC company just doesn’t understand that we do not have the knowledge or power to control the climate or the sun, much less both.
Sen. Manchin may not entirely understand that the Bill is pure politics, but he made the right decision not to back it.