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Indigenous Environmental Network Statement on the Proposed Inflation Reduction Act
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August 2022
Last week, Senator Joe Manchin (D -WV) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced they reached a legislative deal to confront climate change and have since included that deal within the 8newly announced Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022.
What follows below is both a statement by the Indigenous Environmental Network as well as a briefing on what this climate deal means and its impacts on our communities.
IEN Statement:
This legislative bill continues where the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act 2021 left off by propping up the same harmful industries Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and frontline communities are fighting now. The so-called “climate deal” is a wholesale investment into destructive climate false solutions designed to line the pockets of the fossil fuel and energy industries and cultivate the growth of the extractive industries.
What does this mean?
The most insidious framework in the bill is the attempt by Senators Manchin and Schumer to buy off BIPOC and marginalized communities by allocating comparatively meager amounts of grants and loans as “environmental justice investments”—dangling a carrot in the face of Tribal communities to open up their lands to harmful practices like carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, nuclear, forest and agriculture offsets, and biofuel development. Similar tactics to gain the support of the labor movement by haphazardly attaching boilerplate “prevailing wage requirements” are seen throughout the bill, without providing any meaningful pathways to a Just Transition for workers and frontline communities. Not only does the IRA ignore frontline communities’ calls to address the climate crisis at its source, the bill exacerbates the climate crisis by stymying the ability for a Just Transition to community-based renewable energy through an unprecedented quid pro quo with oil and gas leasing.
The Democrats are mistaken if they believe that Indigenous communities will be duped into being a pawn for the fossil fuel industry. At a press conference last week, President Biden described the bill as “the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis...” It would be more accurate to state the IRA is one of the greatest disappointments coming from this administration. The IRA does not absolve the President from the responsibility to declare a climate emergency and address the crisis at the source. We will continue to pressure President Biden to declare a climate emergency and use his executive powers to stop the extractive industries from causing more violence, death and destruction. President Biden must declare a climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act and keep fossil fuels in the ground.
CLICK HERE to read a non-exhaustive list of some of the reasons IEN does not support the Inflation Reduction Act 2022
Tom BK Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network said, “The Inflation Reduction Act exacerbates a pathway of climate and environmental injustice to Indigenous, Black and People of Color communities. This Act is more of the same climate false solutions we have seen previously from this Administration. But it goes further with a quid pro quo guaranteeing offshore oil leases in exchange for renewable energy. From agriculture, soils and forests pushed into the voluntary carbon markets to aviation biofuels as offsets, to the expansion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies and CO2 pipelines, this administration locks in the violence of the climate crisis and consequences to Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous nations and frontline communities for decades to come. The Act does not provide climate nor energy security and will not cut emissions at source at the level that is needed to address this climate emergency.”
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