If the United States is honest in its desire to save the planet, it should give the entire $400 billion in its climate bill to India to cut India’s emissions.
There is no American air or Indian air.
Reducing emissions anywhere on the planet is as good as reducing emissions anywhere else on the planet. A tree planted in the United States would sequester the same amount of CO2 as a tree planted in India.
If you could plant ten trees in India at the cost of planting one tree in the United States, which place is better for planting trees to help save the planet?
A solar panel installed in the United States would reduce the same amount of CO2 emissions as a solar panel installed in India. If you could install two solar panels in India at the cost of installing one in the United States, where would you install the solar panels to help save the planet?
As the math will show, you could reduce 60 billion tons of emissions in India at the cost of reducing 1.6 billion tons in the United States. Where would you rather spend your money to help save the planet?
It is comical that the name of the bill for emission reduction is not called the Emission Reduction Act. Instead, the bill is called the Inflation Reduction Act.
If the bill is really intended to save the planet, the White House should be talking about how it will save the glaciers, the Greenland ice sheets, the coral reefs, the forests, and so on.
The White House website page about the bill reads: “How the Inflation Reduction Act Helps Latino Communities.” Is the bill to get Latino votes or to save the planet?
In fact, the same exact bill most likely would not have passed congress if it were named the Emission Reduction Act.
The emission of the United States is no longer a major problem facing the planet.
U.S. emissions have been in constant decline for the past fourteen years. After peaking at six billion tons in the year 2007, they declined to 4.8 billion tons by 2021. Even without the climate bill, this trend will continue. India’s emissions, by contrasts, have doubled in the past twelve years and are likely to continue to double every twelve years because of continued GDP growth.
The United States may have delivered the first blow, but the final fatal shots to the planet will be delivered by China and India.
China is the largest annual polluter with emissions of 11.5 billion tons and rising. India will soon be the second-largest polluter and may even be the largest because its population has been growing at the rate of the entire U.S. population every twenty-five years.
The United States should offer a conditional gift of $400 billion to India on the condition that India spend a minimum of $600 billion of its own money on tackling climate change.
The minimum India must promise is to convert 100 percent of its electricity generation to emission-free solar, wind, and nuclear power.
The United States can dictate more terms if needed. For example, it could make India agree to achieve net-zero emissions much earlier than India’s promised date of 2070.
This means that the U.S. investment of $400 billion could turn into a trillion-dollar investment in cutting emissions on the planet. There is no other way anyone could make India spend such a huge sum on saving the planet.
If India becomes net-zero with a U.S. gift of $400 billion, a highly competitive China will likely feel the need to improve its pollution as well.
It makes no sense to cut emissions in the United States primarily because of high wages. Politicians are naively boasting that the climate bill will create nine million high-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced.
These high-paying jobs are the very reason cutting emissions itself should be outsourced to India.
It will cost much less to build a solar or a nuclear power plant in India than in the United States because of India’s expertise and very low wages compared to the United States.
India’s current emissions from electricity is one billion tons per year. In twenty-four years, emissions would increase four-fold to four billion tons per year because India’s emissions have been doubling every twelve years.
We can expect a total cut in emissions of about 60 billion tons over the thirty-year life of a solar panel with a U.S. investment of $400 billion.
Now let us calculate the mitigation cost based on the $7,500 subsidy to electric car buyers that the U.S. government intends to give.
The total emissions from one billion gas-run passenger cars is three billion tons per year. Since the electricity for charging comes from fossil fuels, the actual reduction would be 1.5 billion tons if we replaced all gas-run cars with electric ones.
Assuming that the life of a car is about twenty years, the total reduction of emissions would be thirty billion tons.
The reduction would be thirty billion tons at a cost of $7.5 trillion, or 1.6 billion tons for $400 billion (400 X 30/7500).
To cut 1.6 billion tons of emissions in India, it would cost about $11 billion (1.6 X 400/60).
Weathering of homes might have a similar mitigation cost because it involves using high-wage U.S. workers. Other sources of cutting emissions in the Inflation Reduction Act are likely to be just as inefficient because they are also highly dependent on manual labor.
This means that out of $400 billion, only $11 billion is for saving the planet, and the rest is for saving the U.S. economy.
It makes no sense for any country with high wages—including the United States—to cut emissions in their own countries. Only when there are no more low-hanging fruits left in the entire world should high-wage countries go after cutting emissions in their own countries. The U.S. government is fooling itself and the world if it thinks this bill means it is finally serious about saving the planet.
The U.S. public has a choice to make.
Are you content with the mere perception of tackling climate change to keep your tax dollars within the United States?
If you really want to save the planet, you have to liberate yourself from the bubble of nationalism.
You have to think of yourself as a member of a single family of humans trying to save your family home.
You have to be willing to allow your tax dollars to go where the mitigation cost is the lowest. That place is not the United States but India.