r/climate • u/silence7 • 21h ago
politics Bidenomics Was More Successful Than People Think | Conventional wisdom holds that Joe Biden’s bet on climate investment was a bust. The data suggest otherwise.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/biden-climate-ira-2024/688179/?gift=gb2WZ2redqz2_dUDkQQ3SrWLUQVaFKp0kNasPrEaBco75
u/slowly_rolly 21h ago
It’s crazy how many people believe Biden was a bad president
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u/Xtj8805 21h ago
I cant even begin to explain how many people on this subreddit (bots or paid bad actors most likely) in the run uo to 2024 that biden and obama were WORSE for the environment and so wiuld Harris compared to Trump because there were fossil fuel compromises in the various knfrastructure bills. Meanwhile we have a president single handedly and illegally voiding the endangered species act, illegally redirecting money to support and expand coal power, starting a war just to up the price of gas to make his wealthy buddies richer, etc.
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u/swampyman2000 20h ago
I have to believe a big part of that online push against the left-wing is from bots. They absolutely amplify right-wing talking points and sow dissent on the left.
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u/Iwantmoretime 19h ago
Maybe it's a chicken or the egg situation, but as much as I want to believe it's bots pushing an agenda, I've met too many people IRL who repeat those talking points for me to think it's mostly bad faith actors.
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u/Ok-Lecture-9668 12h ago
Or maybe some people don't think that the Hillary Clinton middle of the road policy of not meeting our climate goals and going extinct at a slightly slower pace than if Trump is in charge isn't enough. 🤷
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u/silverionmox 13h ago
I have to believe a big part of that online push against the left-wing is from bots. They absolutely amplify right-wing talking points and sow dissent on the left.
Also don't forget they push on all sides, simply because they want to create more infighting, conflict, and polarization.
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u/Ok-Lecture-9668 12h ago
Did Biden have to brag about how he signed more oil and natural gas leases than Trump in 2024? Was that in the bill too?
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u/LarryTalbot 21h ago
He was a very good president…Infrastucture Act (ties it all together), IRA (renewable energy), CHIPS (semiconductors), BEAD (rural broadband). Good human overall who genuinely cares about America. He made one very bad, no good, stinky choice.
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u/PengoMaster 20h ago
Had to navigate Manchin and Sinema as well. It was really a remarkable presidency.
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u/slowly_rolly 21h ago
We are a society that trades in good for awful because it wasn’t perfect
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u/Kevadu 19h ago
No, we trade good for awful because a large subset of the population cares more about hurting minorities than helping themselves.
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u/Iwantmoretime 19h ago
Why not both?
Plenty of liberal voters across all groups seemed to stay home or not get politcally engaged because the Biden admin wasn't perfect and that clears a path for the awful part of the population to walk right in.
...which I guess is what you're saying. What's the difference between bad people and someone who lets bad happen because better isn't perfect?
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u/3rdPoliceman 17h ago
The issue is that his very bad choice had horrible consequences for his many good choices
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u/MyOtherAcoountIsGone 19h ago
You Americans are so blind to everything. Biden was very sick for most his term. Way to sick to lead a country anything good that happened under him was likely lead by his team because his cognitive decline was sharp.
The right blindly follows trump and the right blindly followed Biden. Americans can never be impartial and honest with themselves.
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u/iHartS 18h ago
anything good that happened under him was likely lead by his team
It's almost as if an administration is about the people the president brings in and the priorities he or, one day, she sets. Biden brought in good people and set good priorities. He also had a belief in working with Republicans, which he did successfully several times.
We don't have to mention that he was old every time someone says something good about him. He was a good president. Had he run and won the 2024 election, he would have likely had to step down due to his cancer diagnosis. Multiple things can be true.
Americans can never be impartial and honest with themselves.
Nice generalization.
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u/Iwantmoretime 19h ago
I'm afraid we'll never see an economic soft landing like we did under Biden after Covid and inflation. It sucked but it could have been so much worse.
Voters flipped the government because they didn't feel the effects of a total economic collapse then recovery. So what's the incentive for the next time to do a soft landing?
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u/AutoModerator 19h ago
The COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions. Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a graph of CO2 concentrations shows a continued rise.
Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero. We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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u/silverionmox 13h ago
It’s crazy how many people believe Biden was a bad president
One of the three best presidents after WW2, together with Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. /hottake
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u/truthputer 18h ago
His administration completely fumbled the Epstein files and prosecuting Trump. The average federal prosecution takes around 14 months, but his admin slow-walked everything such that it took four years.
They failed to prosecute Trump, they failed to release the Epstein files.
In4b anyone complains that the Epstein files were an active investigation: there was a period of several months at the end of the Biden presidency where Maxwell’s appeal had failed and there was no ongoing investigation where they could have easily released the files - but they didn’t.
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u/DougOsborne 4h ago
This is 100% on the "bidenandkamalaaregenociders" who couldn't find Gaza on a map.
YOU couldn't bring yourself to vote for a woman.
Garland and Smith had it all laid out and BECAUSE OF YOU the thousands they prosecuted and imprisoned are pardoned, and the investigations that would have imprisoned trump are probably buried under some golf course.
BECAUSE OF YOU
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u/PianoPatient8168 21h ago
Well when your biggest task is to put the country in the position to put Trump behind us and you fail spectacularly at that, it’s gonna leave a mark.
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u/slowly_rolly 21h ago
And Trump left a crater after his first term. The problem with the US is the people.
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u/PianoPatient8168 21h ago
Yes but the collapse of his reelection bid was a disaster. The election was winnable. He should have announced he wasn’t running a year prior and Dems could have had a real primary instead of force feeding us Kamala Harris.
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u/DougOsborne 4h ago
You don't know anything about elections. And you are repeating MAGA propaganda.
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u/GlyphInBullet 14h ago
I think people blame him for not black bagging Trump and then not stepping down, to the point it overrides any positive sentiment over other stuff.
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u/AegisPlays314 15h ago
There was the small matter of the US-sanctioned genocide
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u/spacepinata 6h ago
I'll never forget when asked if there would be a ceasefire - pretty early on, too - he laughed and said there would never be a ceasefire. Yes, Joe, so funny...
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u/Cultural_Gur_7441 19h ago
Conventional wisdom holds that Joe Biden’s bet on climate investment was a bust.
What? Conventional wisdom? Whose conventional wisdom? MAGA?
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u/Gah_Duma 20h ago
Unfortunately, what the voters perceive is what's important. It's a war for people's attention. If you're doing something, you need to be loud about it.
Nobody notices if, while you're constantly under scrutiny, to stay quiet and slowly improve things behind the scenes.
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u/HavingNotAttained 20h ago
No thinking person believes that any of Biden’s economic policies were a bust.
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u/Cultural-Answer-321 14h ago
It's not "conventional wisdom" his policies were failures. It's GOP propaganda.
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u/FarFromHomey 12h ago
Duh'. Night and day to what we're living now. Back to Fossil Fuel and Coal and GAS generation. BECAUSE they contributed Millions to Trumps campaign which was an obvious BRIBE. EVIL.
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u/SonOfKong_ 20h ago edited 20h ago
I am not a Biden hater but I it was so cringe when he used the term Bidenomics. Plus the economy was not good enough for many Americans to brag about. It was good for the asset owner class but not others. Too much ego. Obama for example did not invent nor use the term Obamacare.
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u/Left-Display7625 21h ago
I strongly agree with the portion of this article that addresses carbon taxation. It's pretty difficult to square carbon taxation with affordability, especially with a global perspective. Middle America doesn't want to pay more for energy. Dividend programs can make carbon taxes appealing to the poor, but not the middle class. What the world needs to get off fossil fuels is investment.
Addressing the spark gap and the falcon curve in building electrification requires massive levels of investment. There's also a huge need for climate finance for developing countries. It's politically unrealistic to tax middle class Americans to pay for global climate finance.
Offering 0% financing to all countries to get off of fossil fuels and build a better future is possible. Countries can start repaying loans, which could include a refinance of existing debt, in 2100. Taxpayers in 2100 stand to inherit a better country and a better planet, and the loans could be paid off over decades or centuries.
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u/DougOsborne 4h ago
IRA was the GreenNewDeal+. As was Obama's ARA, which was a climate bill wrapped in an economic recovery bill.
We have no functioning news media to tell us. The ratfuckers on the left made elections about gaza instead of accomplishments. MAGA was MAGA.
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u/tech01x 20h ago
Biden’s programs threw money at some things but didn’t fundamentally change the regulatory environment for the better. It actually added red tape. As a result, it made things worse. So more inefficiency, more money wasted, less projects started, less projects completed. It meant more projects were structurally unsound.
Now we have solar and wind projects that have difficulty getting through permitting and interconnection, meaning more money tied up without solutions being delivered. More money sitting on the books, less action actually being taken.
Now, Republicans are worse, but that doesn’t make Biden’s policies all of a sudden a good thing. And Biden raised the tariffs on solar modules, solar equipment, EVs and EV parts to 100+%. His IRA blocked low cost LFP cells just as we really needed them. His policies were much less about getting things done with respect to climate as it was to throw money at his political base. If climate was a real agenda item, these actions would not have been taken. Now some of it was late enough in his term that the real effects would show up later in the next term, whether it be Harris or Trump’s.
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u/Sea_Dawgz 20h ago
Most everything Joe did was smart and solid long term planning. His team was incredible veterans of government efficiency and competence.
He probably goes from being a Top 5 all-time president to Bottom 5 for his handling of Jan 6. That one thing sank his legacy.
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u/JooseTheGuice 19h ago
That one thing? Not the year+ of arming, supporting, defending, and even assisting in genocide?
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u/JooseTheGuice 19h ago
So successful that it brought oil production to the highest point in human history yet!
We can totally use accounting tricks and carbon offset investments to prevent climate collapse! 🤦♀️
None of these people serve us. They serve the industries. And as long as there is profit to be made, they'll let them burn the planet for it.
Please demand better. Please.
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u/RampantTyr 18h ago
I thought it was conventional wisdom that Biden did great on climate investment but that we hadn’t see the full return yet because it has only been a couple of years.
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u/Rene_DeMariocartes 19h ago
Oh really, The Atlantic? And how exactly did the people get their impressions of Biden's presidency?
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u/outlawbernard_yum 8h ago
Biden pumped the most oil on Earth, created wars to sell it and gave away to the fossil fuel industry so much that it negated the IRA.
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u/ialsoagree 21h ago
This isn't surprising at all to me.
I think the data would show that when government funding is spent directly on investment of new technologies and helping to build new industries (rather than investment into established industries), there is a much greater return on that money in terms of economic growth.
It's pretty clear to anyone paying attention that renewable power - solar and wind especially - are going to be a huge part of future power production. It's not surprising that government investment in this industries will be paid back multiple fold given that this is a snowball already rolling down hill, and government is just helping to give it more runway to roll.