This is a Big (Climate) Deal: What's in the Inflation Reduction Act?
A Matter of Degrees
Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2022
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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::
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to a special episode of A Matter of Degrees, Stories for the Climate Curious. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm Dr. Catherine Wilkinson. |
| 0:10.0 | And I'm Dr. Leah Stokes. |
| 0:12.0 | We're currently between seasons in production on season three, which will launch in the fall. |
| 0:17.0 | And whew, are we so excited about what we're cooking up for y'all this season? |
| 0:21.8 | This episode was recorded live with the good folks at Evergreen Action in early August. |
| 0:27.5 | We wanted to bring our listeners up to speed today because President Joe Biden has pledged to cut carbon |
| 0:33.0 | pollution in half by 2030 and get to 100% clean power by 2035. |
| 0:38.6 | And now Congress has a chance to vote on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 |
| 0:42.6 | and get us 80% of the way there. |
| 0:46.1 | We were all shocked last week when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Joe |
| 0:51.1 | Manchin announced that they had a deal, that they had agreed to a reconciliation |
| 0:55.5 | package that included historic climate investments. This deal, if, when it passes, will be the |
| 1:03.9 | most substantial U.S. climate legislation ever. By a long shot, it's got nearly $370 billion of climate and clean energy funding. |
| 1:14.3 | And now we've got to get the Senate and House to vote and pass the deal immediately. |
| 1:19.3 | And to break down what's in the Inflation Reduction Act, we are thrilled to share a conversation |
| 1:24.2 | Leah had with a powerhouse group of our friends in the movement. |
| 1:33.3 | We were lucky to host three legendary climate champions, including Senator Ed Markey, Representative Primalia Jiappal, and Reverend Lennox-Yearwood Jr. Look, this bill is not perfect. It has |
| 1:39.3 | some fossil fuel concessions that are not good. And we'll talk about that in this episode, too. |
| 1:44.7 | But we can't let Perfect be the enemy of the good. |
| 1:47.5 | This climate deal is our last, best chance at tackling the climate crisis at the federal level. |
| 1:52.7 | The conversation we're about to share lays out the tremendous scope of this opportunity. |
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