The “Inflation Reduction Act” Is a Study in Environmentalist Immorality

The government supports the environmentalist anti-human flourishing agenda by stacking the energy deck with ever more subsidies and regulations

Notes to readers: This week I’m taking another break from the serial of the book. Here’s an excerpt from the audiobook if you’re still on the fence of adding it to your audio-, e-, or paperbook library.

Who Should Be In Control?

Back in June, I wrote about the Anti Human Flourishing Complex (AHFC), the maze of non-governmental organization (NGO), financial industry, energy industry, government, higher education, mainstream media, and K-12 education players “emphasizing and even catastrophizing the potential negative effects of fossil based energy and products, while blatantly disregarding their enormous actual positive benefits.” With the recent Orwellian-named, anything but, “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), the AHFC has again scored a “victory.” Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future and the Energy Talking Points substack, analyzes in great detail the anti-human flourishing impacts of the IRA, calling it a recipe for destroying American energy. A few highlights:

1. The IRA makes us more dependent on unreliable electricity sources via wind and solar subsidies, via tax credits for shutting down reliable gas and coal electricity generation, and by maintaining current nuclear over-regulation.

2. It increases demand for electricity via electric vehicle and other electricity subsidies, encouraging transition to electric driving, heating, cooking, and water heating at a time when the electric grid is already under great stress.

3. It imposes new oil and gas production taxes: increased federal royalty payments, a high anti-drilling minimum corporate tax, a fee on methane (a byproduct of oil- and gas extraction), and a “Superfund” tax to pay for impacts today’s producers are not responsible for, all but guaranteeing that future oil and gas production won’t meet demand

4. It gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more power to restrict fossil fuels via more funding; And by classifying greenhouse gases like CO2 as air pollutants, it gives the agency a vehicle to regulate and restrict fossil fuel use under the Clean Air Act

5. It authorizes billions of dollars to be given to anti-fossil-fuel and anti-nuclear activists under the banner of “environmental justice.”

(read the whole thing)

Alex focuses primarily on the disastrous practical consequences of the IRA on the U.S. energy landscape. But what about its moral status? The IRA’s AHFC advocates obviously argue that the forthcoming alleged potential climate catastrophe warrants drastic individual rights violating measures. As collectivists, they believe that the alleged rights of “society” trumps those of the individual. And as statists, they only see one way out: more government involvement, conveniently evading the historical fact that the more statist a country becomes, the more it violates individual rights, and the more it plays favorites using subsidies and regulations, the worse its environment (see Soviet Russia, China and pretty much every other past and present Communist and Socialist country). Furthermore, by disregarding the enormous actual positive contributions of fossil fuel based energy, their Green Leap Forward puts the wellbeing of billions at risk of energy poverty.

But as I wrote in the “Capitalism Is the Real Deal For the Environment” chapter in the book,

“…for a solution to a problem to be morally Right, it must not violate our individual rights. Rights-violating domestic or international governmental action in the name of saving the planet is not an option, regardless of how important the cause. Government-imposed carbon taxes, vehicle emission standards, wind and solar subsidies, oil and gas regulations, bans on nuclear development, and other statist initiatives are off limits.”

The “Inflation Reduction Act,” with its energy subsidies, tax credits, regulations, and all but guaranteed increases in energy poverty, is clearly morally Wrong.

The rights of energy producers to explore, drill, mine, build power plants (coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, etc.), build pipelines, refineries, and LNG terminals, and expand and strengthen the electric grid, are violated by regulations at every level of government (the fact that many of the industry actors are in a crony relationship with the government doesn’t change this).

The rights of consumers to a marketplace where energy options compete on equal terms, untainted by government favoritism for certain energy sources, are also violated.

And all of us are forced to pay for the government spending either via our tax bill, or indirectly via inflation because of the government printing money out of thin air absent sufficient tax receipts. Both represent a violation of our individual rights as I explain here (taxes) and here (inflation).

Some commentators have remarked that the subsidies unjustly benefit middle to high income earners who can afford an EV or have a credit score qualifying them for solar panels, implying that the subsidies would be less questionable were they targeted to less affluent individuals. But from an individual rights point of view this is an invalid argument; subsidies are immoral regardless of who benefits for the reasons given above.

The UK and Germany energy policies are case studies showing that this path is unsustainable. And California, not wanting to be outdone by their European statist brethren, are simultaneously subsidizing the sale of EVs, hiking electricity rates, and telling people not to charge the cars to avoid blackouts from overloading the electric grid.

So please speak up against this madness. Let your congressional delegation know that you’ll only vote for them if they voted “no” on the Inflation Acceleration aka Inflation Reduction Act. And tell them to create a level playing field where individual rights are protected and the market determines which forms of energy give us the most bang for our bucks.

Oh, and while you’re at it, please pause your plans to get solar panels and an EV. And in your own bridge-building words, tell the cheery kid that rings your doorbell with an offer to install government subsidized solar panels, and the Tesla rep selling government subsidized EVs, that they are tools of immoral government individual rights violations. It’ll make for stimulating conversation.