On August 16, 2022, the largest federal investment to fight climate change, the Inflation Reduction Act, was signed into law by President Joe Biden. This 375 billion dollar promise focuses largely on clean energy, but also helps Americans with paying for healthcare and prescription drugs. This landmark bill is notable for its potentially massive step for climate protection: encouraging the bolstering of tech for clean energy, emission education for fossil fuels, energy efficiency, and air pollution control for farms, ports, and low-income communities.

This bill will help promote clean energy mainly by tax incentives. Tax incentives will be given to auto companies, requiring them to ease their reliance on countries like China for some essential materials in batteries, and instead placing focus on recycling those minerals. This will divert billions of dollars towards domestic production, therefore creating many American jobs.

Wind and solar tax credit was extended for a decade, and long-term credits will be introduced to promote clean energy. Americans will be encouraged to install and use heat pumps and electric cars; people with incomes under a certain threshold will be given a $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electric vehicle and about $4,000 for a used one.

Many oil and gas companies releasing methane levels above a certain threshold will have to pay a rising fee unless they cut down their emissions to certain levels or follow the regulations to be set by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Regulation in the Clean Air Act has been strengthened by making carbon capture technology more affordable, and therefore likelier for the EPA to require it.

The bill is also proposed to help an estimated 13 billion people pay for healthcare with extended subsidies from the COVID-19 pandemic. It also caps prescription drugs at $2,000 outside of insurance every year for recipients of Medicare.

Much of this measure is funded by taxing large companies and the IRS improving on taxing the extremely wealthy.

Biden emphasized the split in votes between Democrats and Republicans in congress:

“In this historic moment, Democrats sided with the American people, and every single Republican in the Congress sided with the special interests in this vote. Every single one.”

President Joe Biden

“In this historic moment, Democrats sided with the American people, and every single Republican in the Congress sided with the special interests in this vote. Every single one.”

The House of Representatives had a vote of 220 to 207, and the Senate was struck with a fifty-fifty split that was broken by vice president Kamala Harris.

This bill not only lays a base that makes it hard for future politicians to excuse the inability to meet requirements, but also gives the United States credibility with combating climate in an international setting.

Although it certainly did not solve all of the problems the earth’s climate is currently facing, this bill addresses many issues and lays a vital framework for future progress, marking a crucial step in the fight against climate change.

I know I’ve been focusing on food and its impact lately, but I thought it would be important to take a break and explore the monumental achievement that was just made.

I haven’t heard a lot of people talk about the Inflation Reduction Act, but Hank Green’s video on the incredible implications of this bill gave me a good introduction to it and helped familiarize me on what it aimed to achieve.

This was my first time using two articles and combining their data. I did it because the first one I found left information to be desired, but still provided some interesting facts on political divide and the parts of the bill not focused on climate change. I think that using two sources is a really great idea, but I’m not sure how often I will execute it, as many topics have so many details that it’s hard to compress the details from one source alone. Maybe when I have time whilst working on future pieces, I’ll consider including more articles in each Synopsis.

I think it’s important to document the innovations and progress made as I create these overviews. It’s not often that such crucial advances are so current, so I wanted to take advantage of the recency of this achievement.

I’m very relieved to see that we are taking sizable steps in the right direction. I only worry about how reluctant our government was to do so, and how things might change with our next president. I guess only time will tell, but in the mean time, stay tuned to learn with me!

Freeman, Jody. “The Climate Bill Isn’t Perfect, but It’s Still a Major Victory.” New York Times, 08/14 2022. ProQuest; SIRS Issues Researcher, https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2704101820?accountid=163174.

Miller, Zeke, and Seung M. Kim. “Biden Signs Climate Law.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 08/17 2022. ProQuest; SIRS Issues Researcher, https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2704101826?accountid=163174.