The Battle of the Big Ugly Bill
Bain, Berries and the White Walkers
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I got sucker punched right in the heart.”
“Yeah, me too. This is gonna be so bad.”
“And so colossally dumb.”
“Why are we rolling back renewable energy when the planet’s on fire?”
“Simple. Trump’s bought off by oil, gas, and coal. So the Big Ugly Bill kills tax incentives for solar and wind — energy that’s abundant, local, in sync with nature — and hands out welfare tax breaks to fossil fuels instead.”
“That 45Q thing?”
“Yep. The carbon capture credit. Sounds green, but it basically pays oil companies to drill more. They pump CO₂ into old wells to squeeze out extra barrels — and we foot the bill.”
“So basically… corruption.”
“Yeah. Good old-fashioned corruption.”
“And electricity bills for everyone will go up - $110 by 2026.”
“I’m so tired of the bad guys winning.”
“Me too.”
“And for the life of me, I can’t understand why people don’t see it’s all connected — like these Texas floods that just killed over 120 people. It’s because the Gulf of Mexico is the hottest it’s ever been.”
I’m talking to an old friend I haven’t spoken to in over 20 years — Tripp Baird. We met fresh out of college at Bain & Company as associate consultants. Life took us in different directions — until two weeks ago. Now we’re in the same foxhole.
The bad guys don’t get the last word if we all show up — together.
TL;DR
The Big Ugly Bill just rolled back decades of bipartisan progress on wind and solar — while handing out new welfare tax breaks to oil, gas, and coal.
Climate chaos is the White Walkers. We know it’s real, we know how to stop it, and still too many people are fighting each other instead.
My old Bain friend Tripp Baird — the son of a private equity founder — could have stayed on the sidelines. Instead, he wrote an Open Letter, got a hundred clean energy investors behind it, and threw down. That’s what it looks like when people own their responsibility and choose to show up.
We don’t win every fight. But we never win if we never show up. You should show up — volunteer, fund, organize. Join our next strategy call here.
Bain, Berries, and the Power of Privilege
The best word to describe Bain SF in the early 2000s? A frat.
A lot of rich white dudes ran the office — mostly good guys, some arrogant, most had that special blend of both.
Seventeen of us showed up that year on the 36th floor of Embarcadero One out of thousands of applicants. But our AC class looked a little different: two-thirds white, one-third Asian. No Black colleagues. No Latinos. Two-thirds men, one-third women.
And it matters. Because if you look at the Bain & Company SF leadership today, it looks a little more like the community it sits in. That didn’t happen by accident — it happened because some group of people decided recruiting rich, white kids from Ivies can’t be the only way to get talented ACs.
Tripp and I sat on opposite ends of that spectrum. He was a year older — took a gap year before they were a thing, graduated Harvard University magna cum laude, son of the founder of North Castle Partners, a PE firm Bain did business with. Lots of whispers around the office about that.
Me? Public school kid. Graduated Phi Beta Kappa from University of California, Berkeley. Daughter of Vietnamese refugees. Grew up on the California safety net. I didn’t have a passport until junior year. I still remember blowing my breakfast per diem on a $20 bowl of fresh berries with whipped cream that first month — and thinking, this is what making it feels like. I was young and naive.
But that’s the American Dream in a nutshell, right?
A place where two people from opposite ends of the privilege spectrum can land in the same spot through talent, hard work and a lot of luck.
“You don’t speak English good.”
But let’s not kid ourselves — even starting out, Tripp had advantages, like so many white Bainies did. It’s soft power.
When you grow up around privilege, you know how it moves. You know what it sounds like, how to speak it, how to weaponize it when you have to.
And some did. My first week at Bain, some Newport Beach prick was losing an argument, so he told me I didn’t speak English “good.” Out loud. In a conference room. On the 36th floor with about 30 other people in it.
Twenty years later, I still remember the shock — and the shame of not saying anything back. It felt like someone just spit on me.
Privilege always protects itself. When people feel it slipping away, they remind you of your place. The ICE raids? Those aren’t about “illegals” or safer streets — they’re about showing all of us who really holds power and who doesn’t.
That’s why I respected Tripp. He wasn’t one of those kids — he spent those years trying to do the opposite. He was a lone wolf in a place that required fraternity from the job. It cost him something.
We bonded over the absurdity of staying up making PowerPoint slides until 8 p.m. — both of us stuck on the same shitty cost-cutting case for Charles Schwab. He ran procurement analyses; I pulled together business process outsourcing RFPs. That’s what consultants were for back in a recession: air cover for cutting costs and heads.
Twenty years later, we’re back on the same page — but finally on a case that matters. The work we were meant to do — together.
The Backwards Math of the Big Ugly Bill
Here’s what I want you to see clearly:
These tax credits for solar and wind — they aren’t some radical leftist experiment. And they aren’t “welfare economics.” They’re the right carrots for the right impact.
The wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) has been around since 1992 — the first Bush administration.
The Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) was signed into law in 2005 under George W. Bush. They’ve been renewed by Democrats and Republicans alike. They worked: the U.S. led the world in wind growth for a while. Solar costs fell by 80% in a decade.
The Inflation Reduction Act doubled down in 2022 — extending and expanding these credits to supercharge the clean energy buildout and create millions of good jobs.
The Big Ugly Bill kills that momentum. It rips out incentives for builders and communities to go green — while locking in $85-per-ton “carbon capture” credits for oil companies that use captured CO₂ to pump more oil.
There’s a concept in economics called negative externality. That’s what pollution is. Markets can’t capture the negative consequences of companies polluting our planet. But we’re all paying the price for it.
And we’re seeing it in Texas. The Gulf is hotter than ever.
The same fossil fuel pollution that drives droughts and wildfires on the West Coast supercharges storms over Texas. Warm air holds more water vapor. That’s why over 120 people drowned in floods that should be “once in a century” — but keep showing up every few years now.
But this time, FEMA has been gutted.
🌍 Global Warming = White Walkers
There are a lot of things I’d like to fix in the world, but the climate crisis is always right at the top of my list. It’s the existential threat — the thing that looms at 2am when you can’t sleep because you’re thinking about whether or not you should buy real estate in Greenland for your kids.
And it’s like the White Walkers. We are all sitting around complaining about workplace discrimination, the cost of eggs and who is hanging out on the Iron Throne when we should all be united against the most dangerous enemy - global warming.
The young kids get it. More than 70% of Gen Z says that the climate crisis makes them feel anxious, depressed, or powerless about the future. And who can blame them? They see the floods in Texas, the fires in California, the hurricanes flattening communities year after year.
And they see their parents doing very little about it.
Last year, I organized a climate brunch fundraiser and Drew Baglino who was very early at Tesla and built out its Power Wall line of business said something striking:
“We have all the technologies we need to reverse climate change. All we need is the political will.”
“Let’s write an Open Letter to Congress.”
I see Tripp posting to LinkedIn. That’s unusual. I haven’t seen his name pop in my feed in over 20 years.
But my name didn’t pop up in your feed, reader, until 2021. But special moments inspire us to pick a side.
He’s frustrated. He’s the founder of Builders Fund. A quick click to the website reveals he’s investing in clean energy to cool down the planet.
But Builder’s Fund is more than that. It’s Tripp’s opus to the world.
We can build this world but not extract from it. It’s built on the premise of Regenerative Economics. That we can design businesses, investments, and systems that restore the environment, strengthen communities, and keep resources cycling in a healthy way — like a forest that regenerates soil instead of depleting it.
“Hey Tripp, let’s grab coffee. But if you want to have a real impact right now, start typing an Open Letter into ChatGPT. And let’s publish it in the WSJ.”
He didn’t hesitate. Three hours later I see the first draft of an Open Letter back in my inbox.
And he’s already off to the races. He’s contacted two clean energy industry groups and they’re reshaping it and getting it ready for launch.
We didn’t win this battle, but the Bill that made it out of the Senate did soften some of the language. No excise taxes. A slightly longer runway for the damage to kick in. Still disastrous.
But what gives me hope is he’s now in the game and so are 100+ clean energy investors worth billions of capital.
Where we go from here
The fight doesn’t end because Congress sold us out. It starts there.
If you care about national parks, the Texas families wading through chest-high floodwater, or the kids lying awake worrying about their future — this is your fight too. I promise you…you’re going to care 20 years from now if you did something today.
Here’s what you do:
✅ Get informed. Register for our next strategy call on 8/12 at 10:30am PT where we'll discuss how we win in 2026. Link here.
✅ Call your Representative and Senator. Tell them passing this bill was colossally stupid. Yes, calling does work. They log it. They monitor the outrage.
✅ Sponsor a Billboard. For every one who voted against the interests of our country, we’re coming for you. We’re launching voter drives in your districts. Lannisters always pay their debts. Donate here.
✅ Lead. We’re kicking off our Executive Director search for Asian Americans Rise. You want to spend your life building the movement? Here’s your chance. DM me.
The White Walkers are real. No dragon’s coming. Just us. Pick your favorite character and giddy up. Mine is Arya.
The bad guys don’t get the last word if we all show up — together.
✍️ Catch up
Wow. That last post got quite the reaction. So many texts and emails from my readers. I also found out that Tony Xu's kid goes to preschool with Sofia, so school pick ups / drop offs are about to get awkward.
Here are my post viral hits:
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