Senate climate legislation does more harm than good: Community groups
4 Min Read
Community groups in the US warn that the Inflation Reduction Act pauses a major threat by not eliminating fossil fuels.
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The US Capitol (Bloomberg)
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) climate legislation passed by the US Senate will lead to "more harm than good," say frontline community groups, The Guardian reported.
According to the news website, "If signed into law, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) would allocate $369bn to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewable energy sources – a historic amount that scientists estimate will lead to net reductions of 40% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels."
Although the bill would be the first significant climate legislation to be passed in the US - which is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other nation - it mandates drilling and pipeline deals that will damage communities from Alaska to Appalachia and the Gulf coast and "tie the US to planet-heating energy projects for decades to come," warned The Guardian.
Colette Pichon Battle from Taproot Earth Vision considered that "Once again, the only climate proposal on the table requires that the communities of the Gulf south bear the disproportionate cost of national interests bending a knee to dirty energy – furthering the debt this country owes to the South."
Similarly, Steven Feit, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, pointed out that "Solving the climate crisis requires eliminating fossil fuels, and the Inflation Reduction Act simply does not do this."
Commenting on the bill, Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, explained that "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,” Su considered.
Touted as a huge victory for the Biden administration, the IRA includes new tax provisions to pay for the $739bn climate and healthcare spending package, as the Democrats prepare for the midterm elections.
According to The Guardian, "The spending package will expedite expansion of the clean energy industry, and while it includes historic funds to tackle air pollution and help consumers go green through electric vehicle and household appliance subsidies, the vast majority of the funds will benefit corporations."
The newspaper reported that "a cost-benefit analysis by the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), showed that the strengths of the IRA are outweighed by the bill’s weaknesses and threats posed by the expansion of fossil fuels and unproven technologies such as carbon capture and hydrogen generation – which the bill will incentivise with billions of dollars of tax credits that will mostly benefit oil and gas."
"Climate investments should not be handcuffed to corporate subsidies for fossil fuel development and unproven technologies that will poison our communities for decades," expressed Juan Jhong-Chung from the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, a member of the CJA.
In the same context, People vs Fossil Fuels, a national coalition of more than 1,200 organizations from all US states, delivered a petition with more than 500,000 signatures, calling on the US President to declare a climate emergency, "which would unlock new funds for urgently needed climate adaptation in hard-hit communities, and use executive actions to stop the expansion of fossil fuels," according to The Guardian.
Siqiniq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, warned:
"This new bill is genocide, there is no other way to put it."
"This is a life or death situation and the longer we act as though the world isn’t on fire around us, the worse our burns will be. Biden has the power to prevent this, to mitigate the damage," she stressed.
