The Climate Movement Wanted More Than the IRA. Now What?
Since President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August, the first major climate legislation in U.S. history has been smothered with praise: Journalists and climate experts have suggested that the IRA will “save civilization” and herald “an unstoppable transition.” Rather than punishing companies for their emissions, the law creates numerous financial incentives to encourage the growth of green industries and subsidize eco-friendly consumer purchases such as heat pumps and electric vehicles.
The roughly $370 billion that the IRA allocates to addressing climate change is making the country’s climate future look far rosier than at any other point in recent memory. The law is projected to get the U.S. two-thirds of the way to its emissions goals by the end of the decade, and we may already be seeing its earliest effects: In late August, Honda announced that it would build an EV-battery factory in Ohio, while the solar-panel manufacturer First Solar said it would build a new factory in the southeastern U.S.
But not everyone who cares about climate change is happy with the IRA. Some climate activists on the left don’t think the law goes far enough, especially compared with the Green New Deal that they have championed for several years. Nestled within the IRA are several provisions that critics say will benefit the fossil-fuel industry at the expense of people living near oil and gas plants, who are disproportionately poor and nonwhite. For example,, as well as incentives for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)—technology that prevents emissions from industrial processes from entering the atmosphere, which could of gas- and coal-fired power plants. A coalition of climate groups even to support the legislation.“The IRA keeps in place a practice of these communities being bargaining chips,” Rhiana Gunn-Wright, the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, told me.
