The Democrats’ Climate Package is a Big Political Win, But Please, No Victory Laps

The Democrats and President Biden have had an impressive run over the last few weeks, with the most important victory being the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act which contains a historic $369 billion to reduce greenhouse gasses along with provisions to lower the costs of prescription drugs and corporate tax reform. 

Without diminishing the health care and revenue aspects of the bill, what is clearly most important are the climate provisions which amount to the biggest-ever effort by the federal government to address the climate crisis.

All of this prompted New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to answer the question “Did the Democrats Really Save Civilization” with a resounding yes. As he observes:

• This is a very big deal. The act isn’t, by itself, enough to avert climate disaster. But it is a huge step in the right direction and sets the stage for more action in the years ahead. It will catalyze progress in green technology; its economic benefits will make passing additional legislation easier; it gives the United States the credibility it needs to lead a global effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Dismissing criticism of the bill’s concessions to Joe Manchin in the form of brazen giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, Krugman argues the overall impact of the bill is a clear net win:

• [E]nergy analysts believe that any adverse climate effect from these concessions will be swamped by the gains from tax credits for clean energy. The REPEAT Project, compiled by Princeton’s ZERO Lab, has produced a side-by-side comparison of emissions cuts under the Inflation Reduction Act and the earlier House version of Build Back Better. By 2035 the I.R.A., they estimate, will have delivered more than 90 percent of the emissions reductions that B.B.B. would have achieved. After all that legislative drama, Biden’s climate policy has emerged essentially intact.

Of course, my space is too limited here to enumerate all the other essential economic and social policy pieces that were cut out of the bill and the shamelessness with which every single Republican stonewalled climate action while Manchin and Sinema extracted favors for the rich and corporate interests in exchange for their votes. So one can understand why some environmentalists reacted with dismay. As the Guardian reported the anger was palpable:

• “This was a backdoor take-it-or-leave-it deal between a coal baron and Democratic leaders in which any opposition from lawmakers or frontline communities was quashed. It was an inherently unjust process, a deal which sacrifices so many communities and doesn’t get us anywhere near where we need to go, yet is being presented as a saviour legislation,” said Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Nonetheless, it seems hard not to concede that a bill that will reduce greenhouse emissions by as much as 40% by 2030 is, as Bernie Sanders put it after cataloging similar deficiencies “nothing to sneeze at.” Perhaps that’s why rightwing dark money groups actually funded commercials aimed at liberals criticizing the bill from the left in an effort to turn them away from supporting it.

But despite these efforts, the bill passed and that is a good thing and a satisfying victory coming after it appeared all was lost on the climate front for the foreseeable future. It’s a big political win for Biden and the Democrats, and we should stop and recognize that it would never have happened had progressive activists not pushed for a Green New Deal and forced the issue of climate change into the forefront of the Democrats’ agenda. Kudos to everyone who has been advocating for climate action even as it seemed nothing significant would ever happen.

That said, it is only a modest win for the climate and moving from “political reality” to actual reality, the evidence of accelerating climate collapse is all around us as we live through yet another summer of extreme weather, drought, record breaking heat, disastrous storms, floods, and fires. 

The last few weeks have been strewn with news reports on studies outlining the threat of worsening disease due to climate change, the fastest-growing U.S. cities on the verge of becoming unlivable, and California forests rapidly shrinking from wildfire and drought.

 Internationally, the Congo has decided that “our job is not to save the planet” and is auctioning off crucial peatlands and rainforests to oil companies, researchers have discovered that the Arctic is warming far more rapidly than they had previously thought  and the UN Secretary General is warning that humanity is on the verge of “collective suicide” unless we choose to change course dramatically.

So spare me any victory laps or fulsome praise about the art of the possible.

Where we are now in terms of climate is best framed by the work of scientists like Bill McGuire, who in his most recent book, Hothouse Earth, dispenses with any bullshit about our current situation. As the Guardian notes of his work:

• The crucial point, he argues, is that there is now no chance of us avoiding a perilous, all-pervasive climate breakdown. We have passed the point of no return and can expect a future in which lethal heatwaves and temperatures in excess of 50C (120F) are common in the tropics; where summers at temperate latitudes will invariably be baking hot, and where our oceans are destined to become warm and acidic. “A child born in 2020 will face a far more hostile world than its grandparents did,” McGuire insists.

Thus, the struggle ahead is not to stop climate breakdown but to adapt in order to survive:

• Anything above 1.5C will see a world plagued by intense summer heat, extreme drought, devastating floods, reduced crop yields, rapidly melting ice sheets and surging sea levels. A rise of 2C and above will seriously threaten the stability of global society, McGuire argues. It should also be noted that according to the most hopeful estimates of emission cut pledges made at Cop26, the world is on course to heat up by between 2.4C and 3C.

• From this perspective it is clear we can do little to avoid the coming climate breakdown. Instead we need to adapt to the hothouse world that lies ahead and to start taking action to try to stop a bleak situation deteriorating even further,McGuire says . . .

• The future is forbidding from this perspective, though McGuire stresses that if carbon emissions can be cut substantially in the near future, and if we start to adapt to a much hotter world today, a truly calamitous and unsustainable future can be avoided. The days ahead will be grimmer, but not disastrous. We may not be able to give climate breakdown the slip but we can head off further installments that would appear as a climate cataclysm bad enough to threaten the very survival of human civilisation.

Only if we can treat the IRA as a first small step and keep moving the needle faster with more federal action combined with state, local, and international efforts will we actually save civilization as Krugman hopes we can. We surely need to check the nihilist right but also only support Democrats and others who fully recognize that we are in an era of climate emergency. 

Sitting on our laurels is the last thing we should do.

In short, enjoy the beauty we will inevitably be losing now (while you still can) and fight for a livable, though diminished future. This is the stark reality that decades of shameful inaction have left us to confront.

Lead image via Pixabay