From WNYC Studios, it's Brian Lair, a daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, August 3rd.

Now our climate story of the week. This week, we'll take a closer look at a confusing duality

in the big new climate bill

that West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has now agreed to vote yes on. The duality is that the bill

is being hailed as potentially transformative for emission reductions in the United States,

and yet it also contains provisions to encourage more production of fossil fuels. What?

Here's Senator Mansion on that on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.

If you're producing more and have more demand, more supply, and that supply drives, basically,

satisfies demand, and then the prices come down because there's more people

shopping for the products. That's all, that's capitalism. That's who we are.

Which is why the bill is called the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, not the Climate Protection

Act of 2022. Let's take a closer look with none other than Bill McKibben, long-time climate activist, co-founder

of the Climate Focused Environmental Group, 350.org, a Middlebury College professor, and a New Yorker

magazine staff writer, his new article on the New Yorker site says the bill reflects the growing

strength of the environmental movement, but also the lingering influence of the

fossil fuel industry. Bill, thanks for coming on for this. Always good to have you. Welcome

back to WNYC. Always a pleasure to be with you, friend. We'll get to some of the contradictions

or fossil fuel protections in the bill, but you're right that taken as a whole, the bill is a triumph. Why do you use the word triumph? Well, in the bill, but you're right that taken as a whole, the bill is a triumph. Why do you use the word

triumph? Well, in the first place, it's mere existence. You know, the U.S. Congress found out

before anybody else about climate change. Jim Hansen from his office at 110th in Broadway in the 1980s figured out what was going on in the planet's climate and in 1988 he went to the US Congress to tell them.

And that day in June of 1988 was the kind of launch of the public phase of the global warming era, the first time that

really all of us found out what was happening. In the intervening, what, 34 years, that U.S. Congress

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