[The Bill makes concessions to the fossil fuel industry as
frontline community groups call on Biden to declare climate emergency]
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LANDMARK US CLIMATE BILL WILL DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD, GROUPS SAY  
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Nina Lakhani
August 9, 2022
The Guardian
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_ The Bill makes concessions to the fossil fuel industry as frontline
community groups call on Biden to declare climate emergency _

If signed into law, it would be the first major climate legislation
to be passed in the US, which is historically responsible for more
greenhouse gas emissions than any other country., Stefani
Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

 

The landmark climate legislation passed by the Senate after months of
wrangling and weakening by fossil-fuel friendly Democrats will lead to
more harm than good, according to frontline community groups who are
calling on Joe Biden [[link removed]] to
declare a climate emergency.

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
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will lead to net reductions of 40% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.

It would be the first significant climate legislation to be passed in
the US, which is historically responsible for more greenhouse gas
emissions than any other country.

But the bill makes a slew of concessions to the fossil fuel industry,
including mandating drilling and pipeline deals that will harm
communities from Alaska to Appalachia and the Gulf coast and tie the
US to planet-heating energy projects for decades to come.

“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,” said Colette Pichon Battle
from Taproot Earth Vision (formerly Gulf Coast Center for Law &
Policy).

“Solving the climate crisis requires eliminating fossil fuels, and
the Inflation Reduction Act simply does not do this,” said Steven
Feit, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental
Law (Ciel).

Overall, many environmental and community groups agree that while the
deal will bring some long-term global benefits by cutting greenhouse
gas emissions, it’s not enough and consigns communities already
threatened by sea level rise, floods and extreme heat to further
misery.

The bill is a watered-down version of Biden’s ambitious Build Back
Better bill which was blocked by every single Republican and also
conservative Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who
have both received significant campaign support from fossil fuel
industries. West Virginia’s Manchin, in particular, is known for his
close personal ties to the coal sector.

“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.

The IRA, which includes new tax provisions to pay for the historic
$739bn climate and healthcare spending package, has been touted as a
huge victory for the Biden administration as the Democrats
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ride in the midterm elections, when they face losing control of both
houses of Congress.

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.

A cost-benefit analysis by the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA)
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which represents a wide range of urban and rural groups nationwide,
concludes 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,” said Juan Jhong-Chung from the
Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, a member of the CJA.

The IRA is a huge step towards creating a green capitalist industry
that wrongly assumes the economic benefits will trickle down to
low-income communities and households, added Su.

Many advocacy groups agree that the IRA should be the first step –
not the final climate policy – for Biden, who promised to be the
country’s first climate president.

People vs Fossil Fuels
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a national coalition of more than 1,200 organisations from all 50
states, recently delivered a petition with more than 500,000
signatures to the White House calling on Biden 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.

Siqiniq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living
Arctic, said: “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.”

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* Inflation Reduction Act of 2022; Climate Crisis; Fossil Fuel
Subsidies;
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