Is the Historic Climate Bill Enough to Save the Planet?

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Barack, News, Politics, Wnyc, Obama, Lizza, Washington, Wickenden

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

Last week, after more than a year of drama and deal-cutting, the Senate passed a complicated piece of legislation called the Inflation Reduction Act. Its name notwithstanding, it’s being celebrated as the most important piece of climate legislation in the history of this country. And that is “a pretty low bar,” the staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells David Remnick, “because they’ve never really passed a piece of legislation on climate change.” While far smaller than the proposed Build Back Better legislation, Kolbert says, the bill includes significant tax credits that will incentivize the adoption of lower-carbon technologies. But the name of the bill, which seems to recognize that the mass of voters care more about the price of oil than a habitable planet, suggests that the political headwinds have not slackened. “George Bush famously said back in the early nineties [that] our way of life is not up for negotiation,” Kolbert notes. “Well… our way of life may not be compatible with dealing with climate change.” She mentions the recent devastating floods in Kentucky, a red state; “Is Kentucky now going to go vote for people who are firmly committed to climate action? I sadly don’t expect that to happen.”

Kolbert is the author of books including “The Sixth Extinction” and “Under a White Sky.”

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0:48.7	This is the Politics and More podcast. I'm David Remnick.
0:56.2	The Inflation Reduction Act, the official name of the climate bill, has been a very long time coming.
1:03.3	Much too long. In 1988, this magazine covered the congressional testimony of James Hansen,
1:09.9	a NASA scientist who declared that global
1:12.1	warming was bound to imperil the planet itself. Hansen said that it was time to stop
1:18.1	waffling so much. 34 years later, the evidence of our collective waffling is all around us. Wildfires,
1:26.6	floods, temperature records broken year after year.
1:31.1	So while the Inflation Reduction Act is a huge political victory for the Democrats,
1:35.9	there's a much bigger question surrounding this bill. What difference will it make? And when?
1:42.0	I called up Elizabeth Colbert one of the very best thinkers on climate. Colbert is a
1:46.9	staff writer for the New Yorker, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the author of books including
1:51.4	The Sixth Extinction and Under a White Sky. Betsy, we're talking in a week in which the former
1:59.2	president of the United States has had his house searched.
	...

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