Beauty is in the Pocketbook of the Beholder
Ruminations on the "B.B.B."
Hello, it’s Independence Day. Originally, I intended to post a different rumination, but the recent events in our nation’s capital have occupied my thoughts, and I have been ruminating on what some people are calling the Big Beautiful Bill. So indulge me while I take some time to clear this cud out of my rumen and offer my take on this “beautiful” thing.
It’s July 4th, 2025, and the felon in the White House is signing what he likes to call his “Big Beautiful Bill”. Okay, already some of you may be thinking, “Dean, that’s a very biased way of referring to the president of our nation and a poor way to start what you would like to believe is well-reasoned look at some of the impacts this bill will have.” To which I would say, “Maybe so, a good point”, but all the same, it is a 100% accurate statement.
Should I be proud to be an American on this 249th anniversary of our country’s founding? In some ways I am, but I feel more embarrassed and disappointed than anything else, for many reasons. Foremost among these reasons are the shortsighted, selfish, and vindictive perspectives on display from those supporting the bill. Not from the Felon, that’s to be expected, but from the rest of the GOP, excluding the few token congresspeople who voted against the bill.
They all went spinelessly along, knowing full well the measure would add 3 trillion more dollars to the debt, take Medicaid away from 17 million Americans, decimate our rural health care system, take food stamps away from people who need help buying groceries, sell off our old growth forest for timber, dramatically increase the budget of ICE by over $40 billion so they can target hard-working humans seeking the American dream, and eliminate the funding for school lunches that makes sure poor kids get to eat. And why? To pay for an extension of tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-rich. W.T.F!
But those are not the points I want to focus on. Instead, let’s look at how this bill influences our country’s approach to energy demand and the associated climate impacts of the 21st century. From the perspective of a naturalist fascinated by the interplay of energy and the environment, some of the measures in this bill are truly breathtaking in their naïveté and shortsightedness, perspectives I can only assume stem from scientific illiteracy.
First of all, I have to hand it to Trump, er…the felon, he made good on his promises to the Fossil Fuel industries. There are mandates for oil and gas lease sales in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and the American West. It lowers the royalty rates that coal companies pay to mine on federal lands, it delays for 10 years a substantial fee on oil and gas companies that leak methane, and provides $35 billion of additional tax breaks to oil and gas producers for “intangible drilling and development costs.” This will benefit the industries but cost taxpayers nearly $10 billion in lost revenue.
While I've long acknowledged the importance of oil in our lives it's the vindictiveness towards emerging alternative energy sources that baffles me. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (which Trump insisted that he knew nothing about) proposed to eliminate all government incentives and tax credits for solar, wind, and battery projects while keeping the existing billions in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.
It’s not too hard to see why they want to do this; the elimination of clean energy tax credits will aid the fossil-fuel industry. Fewer electric cars on the road mean higher gasoline consumption. Fewer wind turbines and solar panels mean electric utilities will burn more gas and coal. Beautiful.
That’s just selfish, as much as 60% of U.S. oil and gas reserves are “subsidy dependent,” meaning without subsidies they would stay in the ground. We need all types of energy; sharing is caring kids. But now this bill ”significantly curtails clean energy tax credits for solar and wind. Experts predict a massive wave of clean energy project cancellations. Poor planning at a time when we're already running out of electricity due to a surge in demand from AI data centers. Less electricity supply will boost prices for American families and businesses in every state. Gorgeous.
A study recently published by Aurora Energy Research predicted that removing tax credits for renewable energy would hinder solar, wind, and battery deployment by 212 GW by 2040, which is enough to power 159 million homes—more than all the homes in the country. Granted, this represented the extreme scenario; luckily, saner heads prevailed, and battery deployment was spared from being impacted, but solar and wind are still in the crosshairs.
“We’ll continue to build out renewables, but we’ll build out a lot slower,” said David Carroll, chief renewables officer for ENGIE North America, a major power plant developer. The changes, he added, “are ultimately going to hurt consumers, because it’s going to raise prices.” Beautiful.
Here's another head-scratcher: the bill terminates tax credits that were aimed at helping homeowners perform energy audits, upgrade their insulation, buy electric heat pumps, more efficient water heaters, or install rooftop solar panels. Basically, things that help homeowners make their homes more energy efficient. So great, we're gonna see rising electricity costs with fewer tools to do anything about it. Beautiful.
The bill is also a blow to the electric car market. Tax credits worth up to $7,500 to buy new or used electric cars will end by Sept. 30, 2025, under the new bill (Those credits were previously available until 2032), and incentives for businesses to buy electric trucks will disappear. Stunning.
But I’m sure the Chinese see this bill as beautiful because of the benefits it bestows upon their clean energy industries. In Asia and Europe electric vehicles (EVs) are spreading rapidly and this bill puts lead weights on our feet in the race to compete in this market. China’s auto industry is one of the most innovative in the world. They have automated their factories and installed more robots in the last few years than the rest of the world combined.
“We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just E.V.s,” Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford, said recently at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”
I don’t mean to imply China is the environmental poster child. They burn more coal than the rest of the world and emit more greenhouse gases than the US and Europe combined. But they are pivoting at record speed to dominate the alternative energy market because they can read the writing on the wall.
The pollution in China is becoming intolerable for its citizens, and their leaders are paying attention to the science and overwhelming evidence of human-caused climate change, which is driving global demand for clean energy.
More wind turbines and solar panels were installed in China last year than in the rest of the world combined and they are spreading this energy boom across the globe. Currently, they are building electric vehicle and battery factories in Brazil, Thailand, Morocco, Hungary, and many other countries. China is beginning to dominate the nuclear power industry as well. They have 31 reactors under construction and have announced advances in next-generation, nuclear technology and fusion as well. Their dominance in many of these clean energy sectors is allowing them to spread their influence worldwide, while simultaneously, we’re reducing our “soft power” and foreign aid.
And what does the Felon want to do? “Drill baby drill!”, even though the United States is already the largest producer of oil and the largest exporter of natural gas in the world. It’s not surprising to hear our current energy secretary, Chris Wright, a former natural gas executive, describe climate change as merely “a side effect of building the modern world”.
Measures in this “Beautiful” bill will significantly set our country back in our efforts to address climate change. According to modeling from Princeton University, by 2035, the United States will emit one billion tons of additional carbon pollution compared to its current trajectory prior to the bill's passing. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of Japan, the fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter. Lovely.
It looks like we will be the country that champions a fossil fuel economy, while China will become the leader of the low-carbon economy. The problem is that oil is a finite resource; it will run out as we cook in our emissions. The rest of the world is beginning to realize that and look to the future. But not us. Because the current crop of Republicans have just intentionally sabotaged our country’s ability to create jobs, tax revenue, and cheap power from clean energy industries that will soon dominate the future. Why? Because of one reason, The Felon asked them to. Where is their integrity, their honor, their spine?
This bill has intentionally hampered our ability to fight climate change and compete in the race to fuel the future. But “When the federal government of the United States decides to go out of the race, it doesn’t stop the race,” said Rafael Dubeux, a senior official in Brazil’s Finance Ministry. “Other countries keep moving.”
And there we are tying weights to our shoes.
“Beautiful”.