The Manchin bill is, à la mode, a cowardly piece of legislation, in that it is all carrot, no stick. Its environmental program is mainly one of subsidies for politically connected business interests engaged in the so-called green-energy trade and handouts to upper-middle-class urban progressives who enjoy getting a $7,500 tax benefit when they buy a new Mercedes.

What these subsidies amount to is a reverse carbon tax. The idea of a carbon tax is to make the costs of petroleum and coal high relative to renewables, in order to encourage the flourishing of those alternative sources; a subsidy does the same thing on the other end of the equation: The government is, in theory, spending money rather than collecting it, but the point is still to make wind, solar, and — with any luck — nuclear competitive with hydrocarbons by taking money out of someone’s pocket.

Everybody loves the carrot. But the proposition that we are going to get the outcomes the Green New Dealers want simply by shoveling great heaping gobs of money to Democrats’ political allies without any painful new regulation or taxes is one that deserves a great deal of skepticism.