Biden budget short on new climate ideas as election battle shifts focus

Plus, EV tipping point on costs vs. gas-powered cars set at 2027

In today’s edition:

— President Biden’s ambitious budget wish list short on new climate ideas

— Electric vehicles are projected to be cheaper than gas-powered cars by 2027, but don’t tell the auto worker unions

— As crop prices fall, farmers find a new way to grow the green

— After a record hot winter, forecasters are getting nervous about summer heatwaves

— How the next big financial crisis could come from the home insurance sector

Bright young things: This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared camera of star-forming region NGC 604 shows how stellar winds from bright, hot, young stars carve out cavities in surrounding gas and dust. The new Biden budget allocates $4.5 billion for climate research across NASA and NOAA.

Election-year budgets are meant to be campaign vehicles, and President Joe Biden’s 2025 budget this week hit an ambitious mark. Though it has no chance of passing Congress, it serves as a template for what economic issues Biden will use to revive a voting base frustratingly unimpressed with his first-term economic achievements.

Missing from the $7.3 trillion list of corporate tax increases and social giveaways though, as they were from his State of the Union Speech last week, are any major new ideas on fighting climate change. The climate portion of the budget contained mostly small amounts of new money to continue growing existing programs, such as the successful Inflation Reduction Act.

Despite the youth vote’s desire for a more progressive climate policy, Biden must walk a tightrope of maintaining climate promises while not raising energy costs for the moderate vote, which is more concerned about inflation and jobs. The budget does include money to invest in a clean energy workforce, about $425 million of it in former coal communities, but not much more than the original plans called for in 2022.

With Donald Trump threatening to tear up the Biden climate plan if he is elected, and sharply to increase emissions to what a new estimate said would be 4 billion more tons of carbon by 2030, one might think the Democrats would draw a line in the sand on climate and make it a bigger issue. Alas, there is just not enough agreement on climate among Democrats to place it among priority issues such as abortion and taxes (and immigration).

Of course, a major climate disaster this summer could always upend calculations. But that’s not something to build a campaign around. The battle over the most important election in history for the climate issue is going to have to be waged by investors, not campaigners.

Don’t forget to contact me directly if you have suggestions or ideas at dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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The race is on: When will EVs be cheaper to build than ICE vehicles?