Abundance

by Ezra Klein

The climate crisis demands something different. It demands a liberalism that builds. The Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act add up to about $450 billion in clean energy investments, subsidies, and loan guarantees. This is how the scale of such bills is normally described in Washington: by a price tag. The more money, the bigger the bill. That is an incomplete measure, at best. If we could build faster, the numbers could rise. If we could build cheaper, the money would go further. That $450 billion is only an estimate. Many of the subsidies in these bills are open-ended. They will go to as many projects as can use them. These bills could spend trillions of dollars if we can build that infrastructure fast enough. They could spend far less than $450 billion if projects become too hard to permit. They could waste tens or hundreds of billions on projects that are never completed. What matters is not what gets spent. What matters is what gets built.