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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

> President Joe Biden set a goal of reaching 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 and signed into law the nation’s largest investment in clean energy and climate to date with the Inflation Reduction Act.

Perhaps a nuanced detail out of scope for the article, but I continue to be frustrated that the Government is legislating solutions, not outcomes. Because we're primarily focused on CO2 balance I should be allowed to emit + sink as much as I please so long as the net is <= 0 .

Additionally reading between the lines this article could be titled "World free to use renewables, knowing US gas is a backup plan" . Again the US is being a world good guy by ensuring that Russian gas has less geo-politcal power than it did in the past. (how quickly we forget the German crisis in 2022)

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Legislating outcomes would mean having to compel you. If you want to guarantee that you, personally, will be net-zero CO2, then the government will need some way to enforce that guarantee.

I'm not sure that's really what you want. There wouldn't be any room to say, "I wanted to be net-zero, but I couldn't force the local power company to stop using coal". You'd either have to cut your energy use, a lot, or suffer whatever punishment was in the government's purview.

This is a coordination problem. That's precisely the kind of situation that governments are good for.

> but I couldn't force the local power company to stop using coal

Perhaps the legislation either excludes inputs (meaning it's the power company's responsibility to be net zero), or it allows you to simply purchase the carbon credits required. (This effectively is a carbon credit system, i guess?)

The government took two swings at legislating outcomes during the Obama administration, first when Congress considered some climate bills like Waxman-Markey, and then the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. The bills failed and the CPP was stayed by the courts then gutted during the Trump administration.

The law is what can get through the process. Unfortunately that may not always result in the best approach.

two brothers and their truck fleet in the West Texas pirmian basin claim that their fracking operation has a little filter on it so "its all good" ..same as the last 15 years

regarding blowing up pipelines of other nations -- no comment

There was no "Crisis". Market cost structure changed. So did the incentives. The market balanced itself.

It balanced itself to firewood (at least in part sufficient to be news)

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/germans-turning-to-wood-to-h...

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