China is Gonna Eat Our Lunch

From left to right, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), Senator Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID), and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), celebrate the passage of Donald Trump's big beautiful bill, which will largely destroy green energy in the United States, and surrender the whole thing to the Chinese.

Notice how the tallest guy does the talking?  That happens a lot.  

 

By now, it's no secret that as world powers go, the United States is circling the drain. 

This has been going on for quite a while, in a gradual way, possibly since the end of the Eisenhower presidency.  The violent coup that ended the Kennedy presidency was a step in the wrong direction, certainly.

The Vietnam War.

The various drug addiction epidemics.

The Clinton administration ramming through the North American Free Trade Agreement, which put a stake in the heart of US-based manufacturing, and eliminated millions of middle-class jobs.

George Dubya Bush.

Two trillion dollars spent in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban with... the Taliban.

You get the picture.  We got a brief, 10-year reprieve when the Soviets went down the tubes, but the overall trend in the United States is also down.

Now we have Trump and the big, beautiful budget bill.

A lot has been made of how the bill will cut healthcare to millions of poor people (yes, those four assholes again), in order to give tax cuts to the rich.  

That's bad, but Republicans always do that.

Another aspect of the bill will help China replace the United States as the world's pre-eminent power.

The world's largest solar farm in Xinjiang, China.  Roughly the same size as New York City, it could power all of Los Angeles, or the country of Luxembourg.  The small pic doesn't do it justice.  Click to enlarge.

Renewables Were For Fags

Remember when renewable energy was kind of faggy?  No, I know, scratch that - it was very faggy.

In 1979, Jimmy Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the roof of the White House.  Thee Optimist was alive in those days.  

Everybody thought that was about the most un-masculine thing a US president could possibly do.  Carter did it in response to the repeated oil embargos by OPEC, and the steep recessions they caused in the United States.

A real man would have simply invaded the entire Middle East and seized all of the oil.  And a real movie cowboy, Ronald Reagan, had the panels removed in 1986.  

Of course, in those days, you could barely make a cup of coffee and blow-dry your hair with 32 solar panels.  

Times have changed.

But Republicans tend to live in the past.

The Gansu Jiuquan Wind Power Base on the edge of the Gobi Desert in China - the largest wind power facility in the world.

Who Owns Renewable Energy, Owns the Future

So, you're aware that fossil fuel energy like oil and coal are a dead end, yeah?

They cause global warming.  They're highly polluting.

If there is a future for modern human civilization, that future runs on renewable, cleaner energies.

Solar power, for example, is not only becoming vastly more efficient, it's about 60 times cheaper than when Jimmy Carter hung those unsightly panels on the White House.

You know these things.  So do the Chinese.  The Europeans know.  The Biden administration knew.

The Trump administration appears not to know.

The big beautiful bill will end tax credits and business tax breaks to solar and wind projects, killing all of these off by the end of 2027 (some were in place since the 1970s).

It also gives leasing incentives and tax breaks to coal producers.

In essence, the new bill seeks to revive the coal industry, and severely hamper the renewables industry, if not destroy it entirely.

That's fun.  What else is fun?

China installed 277 gigawatts of solar energy in the past year.  The United States has installed 121 gigawatts total, in all of recorded human history. 

China has built 41 gigawatts of offshore wind energy.  The US has built 174 megawatts (less than 1/200th as much, for you math majors).

Electric vehicles are now more than 50% of new cars sold in China.  In the US, the number is about 10%.

The painful truth is China is going to become the Saudi Arabia of solar and wind energy.

America is going to be the England of prosperity.

 

A big yellow Tonka truck mining imaginary coal on the living room floor, as witnessed by a five-year-old boy. 

Words of Wisdom

"If you love China so much, why don't you just move there?"