Climate action: How values – and disasters – influence progress

In recent years, environmentalists in the United States saw legislative efforts geared toward curbing climate change’s worst impacts as a Sisyphean task. They would lobby lawmakers to push for substantive action, legislation would be introduced, debate would follow, and then the partisan divide would send the boulder rolling back down the hill, where the effort would start anew.

That changed on Tuesday, with President Joe Biden’s signing of the Inflation Reduction Act. The sweeping bill represents the nation’s largest climate adaptation investment to date, including provisions for emissions reduction and clean energy investment.

Andrew Hoffman, the Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan, is the author of numerous books, including 2015’s “How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate.” Dr. Hoffman spoke recently with the Monitor about how U.S. political and cultural values have shaped