Subject: Re: Cutting Greenhouse Emissions in Europe
Americans were good with the acts in 2022.

By which I assume you mean the Inflation Reduction Act, and specifically the various subsidies for certain emission reducing activities.

There is modest support for such things. But those programs are nowhere near sufficient to materially reduce emissions. You can make small reductions in emissions for a small amount of cost. Many Americans are willing to support small costs to fight climate change. So small reductions in emissions are possible. But there is virtually no political support for larger costs to fight climate change, and you can't actually achieve material reductions in emissions without incurring larger costs.

Do not confuse the modest measures that can get adopted with the more significant measures that would have to be adopted (but never are) in order to actually meet the specific goals of limiting emissions.

That's why even when political parties that are predisposed to measures to reduce climate change get power (either in the U.S. or abroad), they never adopt stringent enough measures to actually achieve the levels of reduction necessary to materially reduce emissions by enough to achieve their stated goals. That's especially true in the U.S., where there is a particularly low appetite for non-trivial sacrifice.

Meanwhile, a blurb on the radio said EV sales are up.

It would be shocking if they weren't - with the $7,500 tax credit disappearing on 9/30, a lot of EV sales are being pulled forward into this quarter.

I would expect that EV sales will continue to increase for a while (though perhaps not the next few quarters), if only because so many automakers have invested so much capital into developing EV's. With so much new product coming to market, you're likely to see increased uptake. But the hoped-for "s-curve" in EV adoption seems a bit unlikely now.