Catalyzing $1.7 trillion in private investments
Venture capitalist @NickHanauer (of TED talk infamy and Pitchfork Economics) draws attention to the transformational nature of the Biden administration’s infrastructure plans. Readers of a certain age may recall a time before interstate highways and the impact of that national project.
“Buckle up, America. I’m just back from dozens of meetings at the Whitehouse and Capitol Hill. The amount of investment headed for the American economy is beyond anything we have every [sic] experienced,” Hanauer tweeted.
Hanauer adds, “In two years, the Biden administration made up for most of the last 50 years of policy malpractice. Between CHIPS, IRA, and INFRASTRUCTURE, and the anti monopoly EO’s, we are going to get done what we should have been doing all along.”
Hanauer retweets Jay Turner who follows environmental politics and policy at Wellesley College. Turner follows investments in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain.
“The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will inject $374 billion into the clean technology sector over the next decade,” CleanTechinca reports. “Some expect that could catalyze $1.7 trillion in private investments.”
Imagine. Republican governors are not turning down federal IRA support like they do Medicaid expansion. Of those on the chart (TN, SC, OH, NV, GA), Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia (3 of 5) refuse Medicaid expansion. This lends credence to my maxim that Republicans care less about how much We the People spend than about into whose pockets that spending goes.
As conservatives like reminding us, there is no free lunch. Mining for the materials that go into EV batteries, and the manufacturing process itself, and battery recycling/remanufacturing will come with an environmental cost. Still, I’m hoping to nurse along our reliable, 20+ year-old gas-powered vehicles long enough to skip over hybrid technology and go straight to EVs.
Republicans and conservative pundits will in the meantime loudly deride the changeover to “woke” transportation all the way to depositing their returns from $1.7 trillion in private investments all the way to the bank.