A weekly reckoning with life in a warming world—and the fight to save it |
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer holds a copy of the Inflation Reduction Act. Drew Angerer/Getty |
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Like many, I’m breathing a bit easier this week knowing that the Senate has finally passed a piece of legislation with serious climate spending. The Inflation Reduction Act, which contains $369 billion for various energy transition and emissions reduction initiatives, won’t stop climate change on its own—not even close. But after a year in which it seemed Senate Democrats (read: Joe Manchin) were truly struggling even to pour water out of a boot with instructions written on the heel, it’s nice to know they can get it together long enough to support money for heat pumps, solar panels, and electric vehicles, at the very least.
TNR’s Kate Aronoff has written over the past week about some of the less savory elements of this deal. In exchange for his vote, Kate explains:
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West Virginia Senator turned Prime Minister Joe Manchin is demanding a sweeping overhaul of the environmental review processes that govern how and where fossil fuel infrastructure is built, a green light for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and a host of other sweeteners for fossil fuel companies. Among the giveaways is a provision that requires the Department of Interior to, for the next decade, offer up at least 60 million acres for offshore drilling every year that it leases land out for offshore wind. |
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These provisions are pretty bad. And as Alleen Brown pointed out in TNR, readers shouldn’t miss the broader trend here, which is toward treating fossil fuels—no matter how many people they kill and no matter how uneconomical they get—as a type of national security interest. Manchin, actually said as much in his statement supporting the IRA: “As the super power of the world, it is vital we not undermine our super power status by removing dependable and affordable fossil fuel energy before new technologies are ready to reliably carry the load,” it read. And the senator, Alleen added, “has repeatedly used national security as justification for advancing the Mountain Valley Pipeline.” |
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A lot of establishment Democrats and their supporters don’t want to hear from those with reservations about the IRA right now, Kate observed earlier this week. That makes sense, given how desperate everyone involved in both the climate movement and this legislation is at this point for a win. But skeptics have been right before—most notably when they suggested that Obama’s repeal of the crude oil ban, in exchange for tax credits for wind and solar, might do more harm than good. “Multiple things can be true at the same time,” Kate wrote. |
The Inflation Reduction Act—the first piece of climate policy to pass the Senate ever—is a historic achievement and vitally important given that Democrats may not get to govern again for a decade. It also consigns more people to living next to more fossil fuel infrastructure for longer; in many cases, that means consigning more people—predominantly poor people, Black people, and brown people—to disease and death. |
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It’s okay to feel good that Senate Democrats have managed to pass this bill. It’s okay to feel good about money for heat pumps, clean energy, and more. All of those are good things. But keep room in your minds, hearts, and—God help us—Twitter timelines for the naysayers: This story is not over, and we won’t know the true legacy of the Inflation Reduction Act for a long while. |
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Over half of the human diseases we know about could be turbocharged by climate change, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change. |
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If the world doesn’t stick to the targets of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, sea levels could rise 16.4 feet due to the melting of just the East Antarctica Ice sheet alone, according to a new study. |
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Elsewhere in the Ecosystem |
Air conditioners are energy-hogging hydrofluorocarbon emitters that make the earth warmer. On the other hand, as the earth warms, we’ll need ACs more—not just for comfort, but to keep people from dying during heat waves. It’s a vicious cycle. But there’s hope ahead (if governments are willing to fund the transition to better technology): |
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Technology to build cleaner, more efficient air conditioners does exist. Two major AC manufacturers, Daikin and Gree Electric Appliances, shared the top award at last year’s Global Cooling Prize, an international competition focused on designing climate-friendly AC tech. Both companies created ACs with higher internal performance that used less environmentally damaging refrigerants; the new units could reduce their impact on the climate by five times. These models aren’t yet on the market—Gree plans to start selling its prototype in 2025, and Daikin told Recode that it hopes to use the new technology in future products—but the IEA estimates that using more efficient ACs could cut cooling’s environmental impact by half. Another strategy is to double down on heat pumps, which are air conditioners that also work in reverse, using vapor compression to absorb and move heat into a home, instead of releasing it outside. Heat pumps usually cost several thousand dollars, though the Inflation Reduction Act includes a proposal for a significant heat pump rebate, and President Joe Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act to ramp up production. Experts have argued installing heat pumps is critical to another important climate goal: transitioning away from fossil fuel-powered furnaces, which are an even bigger source of emissions than cooling. The holy grail of HVAC would be a heat pump that could provide both heating and cooling but isn’t dependent on vapor compression. |
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What Subscribers Are Reading |
The pundits predicted a red wave in the midterms, but Democrats are building a blue wall. |
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While the bill that just survived the Senate is a whittled-down version of the Build Back Better Act, it still puts the Democratic party on a promising new path. |
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