David Roberts On The Historic Inflation Reduction Act

Now the bill has been signed into law. What does it mean?

Yesterday, President Biden signed the biggest climate legislation in US history into law. The Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $369 billion in climate and energy spending and investments, will transform how quickly emissions are reduced in the country more responsible for greenhouse gas pollution than any nation in history. President Biden celebrated the signing yesterday after an almost two-year battle to get it over the finish line, with a number of starts and stops that included at least two instances where it seemed Senator Joe Manchin had killed the legislation altogether. But ultimately, a deal was struck in the United States Senate, which has spent decades being one of the world’s greatest obstructionist political bodies to climate action. How in the hell did we get here?

There may be no better person to ask than David Roberts, the longtime climate/energy writer that now runs the newsletter/podcast Volts. He joins us this week on The Climate Pod for a deep dive into the bill. We unpack the headline numbers on the Inflation Reduction Act, discuss what he thinks will be the major benefits of the historic investments, what to make of the awful fossil fuel giveaways included in the bill, and how Democrats actually got the biggest investment in US climate history passed. We also look at recent failures for American climate legislation and how this compares to the Senate-doomed Waxman-Markey bill during the Obama years. Finally, we dig into the how this massive investment will inevitably change climate politics and what happens to the climate movement next.

You can listen to this great conversation with David Roberts on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts.