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For Immediate Release
Contact: 202-425-5128, [email protected]
The Inflation Reduction Act
is NOT a Climate Justice Bill

WE CAN’T ALLOW FRONTLINE COMMUNITIES TO BE SACRIFICED BY CATERING TO THE
PROFIT INTERESTS OF THE DYING AND OUTDATED DIRTY ENERGY INDUSTRY

-------------------------

AUGUST 6, 2022 - After careful study of the language of the Inflation
Reduction Act of 2022, Climate Justice Alliance concludes that the harms of
the bill as it is currently written outweighs its benefits. Climate Justice
Alliance is opposing the reconciliation bill in its current form. We are
calling on members of Congress to amend the bill to strengthen its
environmental and climate justice provisions, take a stand against the
expansion of fossil fuel production and the inclusion of geoengineering
projects, and to reject any shady side deals that are being pushed by
Senator Joe Manchin and the fossil fuel industry. Congress can’t miss the
opportunity for bold action to support clean and effective climate
solutions.

WE COMPILED THE THREATS, WEAKNESSES, MISSED OPPORTUNITIES AND THE STRENGTHS
THAT ARE INCLUDED IN THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT:
[link removed] [3]  

Climate Justice Alliance member groups have won significant victories
against polluting and extractive industries, preventing new carbon
emissions from reaching our atmosphere. We are continuing our resistance to
dirty energy infrastructure that is harming people and ecosystems, and we
are building local alternatives that center traditional ecological and
cultural knowledge to create pathways for a regenerative future. Locally,
tribally, and regionally-based racial and economic justice organizations of
Indigenous Peoples, Black, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, and poor white
communities who share legacies of racial and economic oppression and social
justice organizing, are already operationalizing a Just Transition in their
communities, putting clean energy infrastructure on the ground, moving
policy, and centering climate justice. We need the White House and Congress
to follow the lead of these frontline communities. Members of Congress and
the Biden administration can help to ensure economic recovery and jobs
through increased support of local, community-controlled renewables that
truly foster a Just Transition for all communities, especially those most
impacted by the climate crisis today.

CLIMATE JUSTICE ALLIANCE MEMBER QUOTES

“COOPERATION JACKSON supports the Climate Justice Alliance as they stand
and call the insufficiency of the Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA has some
strengths, but does not fully encompass an equitable or just transition
that fully protects frontline communities and those who have been gravely
impacted by climate change. We fear that the inflation reduction act is a
consistent moment of smoke and mirrors and backdoor deals that cut out the
front line communities and deeply impacted people. We feel that concepts
within the IRA like the neighborhood access component may have some value
if oversighted by local communities, but other concepts in the act give way
for the sustaining of false solutions that have no value for impacted
people.”
- Joshua Dedmond, Cooperation Jackson

“At a time when massive heat waves and wildfires are wreaking havoc
around the world, we cannot afford to dump billions into expanding dirty
fossil fuel infrastructure. The Inflation Reduction Act includes some
worthwhile investments in renewable energy and health care, but it also
brings even more harm to people living alongside big polluters and further
destabilizes our climate. We need real climate solutions that transition us
away from fossil fuels and invest in building healthy, life-sustaining
economies in the communities most harmed by the fossil fuel industry.”
- Vivian Yi Huang, Asian Pacific Environmental Network

“In Michigan, whether we live among farm fields, forests or freeways, we
all want our families to grow up healthy and thrive for generations.
Unfortunately, the fossil fuel giveaways in the Inflation Reduction Act
will cost us dearly: from Tribal and rural communities in imminent danger
of a spill from Enbridge Line 5 to Black and Brown communities in Southwest
Detroit living in the shadow of the Marathon Oil refinery. Fossil fuel
corporations, and politicians that do their bidding, have negotiated a
dangerous deal. Where is the money for public transit, for childcare, for
lead pipe replacement? Climate investments should not be handcuffed to
corporate subsidies for fossil fuel development and unproven technologies
that will poison our communities for decades. Instead of false promises,
Michigan deserves clean air, good jobs, and a healthy future for our
children.”
- JUAN JHONG-CHUNG, MICHIGAN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE COALITION (full
Statement here) [4]

“When climate policies allow for false market solutions, communities like
ours lose the most while corporations rake in profits at our expense. The
islands of Micronesia are one of the most vulnerable regions to the climate
crisis. We have so much at stake; whole homelands, countries, cultures,
lifeways and the vitality of our ocean. Pacific wisdom and indigenous
resilience can drive true wins in global goals to combat the crisis. But
our voice, ideas and solutions are absent in this legislation.”
- MICRONESIA CLIMATE CHANGE ALLIANCE (full Statement here)

“The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has many strengths, such as $15B for
deploying rooftop and community solar in low-income communities, $3B for
environmental and climate justice block grants, or the $1.1B to reduce
pollution near major transportation corridors. These areas of funding along
with many others is a good start to not only improve quality of life in
underserved communities, but to take another step on the path of
reparations for BIPOC communities that have been impacted by extractive
policies coming from both the public and private sectors.

Unfortunately, the weaknesses that are baked into the IRA will create a
major imbalance, reversing all the good that this act could be doing for
its constituents. Currently it is riddled with concessions to the big
carbon-based industries that at present prey on our communities at the
expense of their health, both physically and economically. Billions of
dollars would be given to invest in carbon capture and hydrogen production
technologies, which are being passed off as solutions to our pollution
problems, when it would only be encouraging to continue with the status quo
of how we utilize hazardous sources of energy production. This is in the
face of overwhelming scientific evidence and research that finds these
practices are what got us in the same problem that the IRA claims to be
addressing.”
- Rafael Mojica, Soulardarity

TAPROOT EARTH (FORMERLY GULF COAST CENTER FOR LAW & POLICY), a global
climate justice organization with a mission to build collective systems of
self-governance and restoration to advance a just transition to a
sustainable economy, released a statement on the Inflation Reduction Act.

CLIMATE JUSTICE ALLIANCE CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OZAWA BINESHI ALBERT states
"No matter what happens with the bill, we will continue to fight for what
is needed for frontline communities, those who are directly impacted by the
climate crisis (some for decades). We will also continue to fight against
that which causes further harm. We reject any notion that any community
should be sacrificed. The burden of resolving this climate crisis needs to
be the responsibility of us all and not be disproportionately held within
low-income and communities of color. we have to do better. We call on and
challenge Congress to do better. We call on President BIden to declare a
climate emergency. Let's move with the urgency that is needed for frontline
communities.”

                                          
        ###

_Climate Justice Alliance is a member-led organization of 84 urban and
rural frontline communities, organizations and support networks in the
climate justice movement. We work to build real solutions to the climate
crisis through building local, living, regenerative economies while pushing
back against false promises from corporate controlled interests._

Climate Justice Alliance

1960A University Ave
Berkeley, CA, 94704
United States


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