this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Love the idea, but: A lot of rich people will get much more rich. There will be a lot of money wasted on things, that will not work and the grifters will know that it was not gonna work. There are numerous examples from the „green coal“ projects that siphoned off a lot of money with unrealistic ideas without repercussions. The more desperate the world get for fast solutions regarding climate change, the more money will be thrown around unvetted.
Mind you, a lot of is getting spent on things we know work, such as wind, solar, storage, and electrification.
don't forget insulation. Its the cheapest, easiest, quickest return on investment green thing there is.
The alternative is doing nothing, and we know how that's gonna turn out
I recently listened to a podcast where the guest made the argument that the untied states is set up to benefit the petty elite. That means the guy who owns a car dealership or six McDonald's franchises. Suddenly these people love free government money when they're getting their hands on it.
According to this article, much of these tax breaks will go towards electric vehicles. This means that business owners and other 1099 workers like realtors will bend over backwards to justify getting these credits. Overall, this will help shift people away from using gas cars. Not the best outcome to still have all these cars on the road, but it's a compromise at least.
It also makes manufacturers build more energy efficient appliances, and solar panels. It will drive the cost of these things down over time as it becomes the default to put in a heat pump HVAC or water heater. We will see more changes in the design of things which makes them more efficient as demand for less efficient units falls off.
The all or nothing approach was never going to work in the system we have now. It is a dumb compromise, but, it is at least a compromise. It gets the petty elite, that guy with a car dealership or six McDonald's, to embrace something that is better than what we have now.