This is a Big (Climate) Deal: What’s in the Inflation Reduction Act?

Welcome back to A Matter of Degrees! While we’ve been hard at work producing season three of the show, the climate movement has been going through a lot of twists and turns. Most recently, after announcing he would not support climate investments in a budget reconciliation deal, Senator Joe Manchin abruptly made a historic climate deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA).

The bill includes $369 billion of climate investments. We can’t overstate the significance of this opportunity — modeling shows the IRA, if passed, would cut emissions 37-41% below 2005 levels by 2030. That gets us 80% of the way to cutting emissions in half this decade and meeting President Biden’s climate goals. In this bonus episode, we acknowledge the harmful flaws in the deal, lay out the modeling of its climate impacts, and call on first the Senate, then the House of Representatives to vote and pass it now.

This episode features a live conversation co-hosted by Evergreen Action, featuring Senator Ed Markey, Representative Pramila Jayapal, and Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr.

Resources:

• Evergreen Action: What Is the Climate Impact of the Inflation Reduction Act?
• Call4Climate.com (a free and easy tool to call your Congressmembers)
• Rhodium Group: A Congressional Climate Breakthrough (initial IRA modeling)
• Energy Innovation: Modeling the Senate Reconciliation Bill Using the Energy Policy Simulator (comprehensive IRA modeling)
• Abbie Dillen, President of Earthjustice (on the real world impact of the harmful fossil fuel concessions in the IRA)
• Hip Hop Caucus (using the power of our cultural expression to empower communities who are first and worst impacted by injustice)

Follow our co-hosts and special guests::

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Evergreen Action
• Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr.
• Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA)
• Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)