I'll leave it to economist Noah Smith to explain why this is a big deal for all of us.
Stunningly rapid advances in green energy technology — especially solar photovoltaic power and lithium-ion batteries, but also various other things — have changed the facts on the ground. At this point, a rapid transition to green energy won’t leave us impoverished — it’ll give us cheaper electricity, faster cars, and a world of greater material abundance in general. Even more crucially, much of the cost decline in renewables has been driven by learning curves — the more renewables we install, the cheaper they get.
These new technological facts — which were the result of decades of dedication and sacrifice by environmentally aware elites — don’t solve the climate crisis all by themselves. But they provide a powerful accelerant to progressive policy, allowing us to push rapid decarbonization through a virtuous cycle. We install more renewables, we get cheaper, demand increases, we install more, they get cheaper. And this cheapness draws in a whole lot of other players — corporations who are fine going green as long as they can save some money, politicians who are happy to push renewables as long as it also lowers their voters’ electricity bills, entrepreneurs who suddenly have a bigger market for their high-tech energy products, and so on. Robinson Meyer calls this the Green Vortex.The Green Vortex could happen even without a big government push, but it would take longer to get started. Until about a week ago when the Inflation Reduction Act was unveiled, it looked as if this was what we were going to have to do. And we would have done it. But now, it looks as if the government is going to give the Green Vortex a rapid start.
My emphasis. This is what we elected Democrats and Joe Biden to do!
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