Senate Passes Inflation Reduction Act of 2022
Image: Pierre Jean C, Adobe Stock
On Sunday, August 7 the United States Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (also referred to as the IRA bill). This bill is widely being called some iteration of “the most significant climate bill ever passed by Congress.”
Most experts agree that there are provisions in the bill which indicate historic progress on climate action. Some of these provisions include:
Clean energy incentives
Tax credits for electric vehicles
Program to decrease methane emissions from oil and gas
Investments in environmental justice
Funding for forest restoration
Funding for climate research
For a full summary of the climate protecting provisions of the IRA bill, we recommend reading this summary from the Environmental Defense Fund (an organization that we acknowledge is not a perfect climate hero).
Though this bill does provide some monumental progress on climate action, the bill also reinstates oil and gas leasing on federal lands and requires the ongoing lease for drilling in order to grant permits for solar and wind energy initiatives.
Because of these provisions and other shortcomings, the bill is not without its critics.
Peter Kalmus, climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, who was recently arrested for his climate activism, tweeted a thread outlining his thoughts on the good and the bad of the IRA bill. We encourage you to read the entire thread, and here is an overview of some of his criticisms:
16. The good stuff in this bill is all good (although, arguably, too little, and too late). But the CENTRAL thing we need to do to stop the irreversible damage is to ramp down the fossil fuel industry. This bill instead comes with 2 major concessions that will serve to expand it
— Peter Kalmus (@ClimateHuman) July 29, 2022
Tara Houska, founder of the Giniw Collective highlights the lack of Indigenous perspective in climate decision making in her tweet about the bill:
Indigenous peoples hold 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. We are the canary in the mine of humanity. Yet just as we aren’t at the world’s decision-making tables on climate crisis, we are an afterthought in the drafting of the #IRA - the first major U.S. “climate” bill.
— tara houska ᔖᐳᐌᑴ (@zhaabowekwe) August 7, 2022
Parsing climate legislation can feel overwhelming and confusing, and it can be helpful to look to qualified experts for guidance on how to process this information and move forward. As Peter Kalmus says in a subsequent tweet: “No matter what climate bills pass, keep pushing hard for faster, deeper climate action.”
