After a flurry of last minute negotiations with moderate democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrstin Sinema the United States senate passed legislation that will provide $376 billion dollars for incentives to help develop green energy technologies. While the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) does also include provisions to extend Obamacare rebates and for the first time it allows Medicare to negotiate the price of some prescription drugs with drug manufacturers it is the money to fight climate change that represents the biggest shift in Federal policy.
As I said the bill’s provisions for green technology consists entirely of incentives, rebate money and tax deductions to help offset the cost of private individuals and corporations converting to solar or wind power generation. Rebates are also included in the bill for the purchase of electric vehicles (EVs). The IRA therefore is all carrot, money to make green technology cheaper, but no sticks, taxes or other penalties for continuing to burn fossil fuel.
Of course the bill produced one of the biggest partisan fights ever in an era of extreme partisanship. Every republican in both the senate and the house of representatives voted against the bill claiming that it would actually increase inflation or that it was nothing but a laundry list of democratic pet projects. To be honest however what the republicans really objected to was the tax increase on large corporations that will generate $700 billion in revenue over the next ten years and offset the cost of the programs in the bill.
Even some climate change activists were upset at certain provisions in the bill that called for oil and gas drilling on Federal lands and mandating construction of certain oil pipelines, concessions to the petroleum industry that were necessary to gain the support of Manchin and Sinema. So the IRA isn’t perfect and even so it barely managed to squeeze through congress and to President Biden’s desk. Nevertheless it represents the biggest, in terms of money, effort by any government in the world to combat global warming.
So, have we actually reached an inflection point, has the evidence for climate change finally grown so overwhelming that there are now enough people concerned about the future of our planet to get something done? Is there now enough political will to make the needed changes to achieve a sustainable society?
The weather so far this year has certainly provided further evidence. Excessive heat waves in the northern hemisphere have been occurring non-stop since late spring and even areas of the world not normally associated with high temperatures have been affected. In early July England, Scotland and Wales all set all time record high temperatures, and records in the British Isles go back all the way to the 1860s. On the 16th of July, London, the UK capital saw the temperature exceed 40ºC a number that once would have seemed impossible in a city that far north, London lays at a latitude of 50º, 30′ north, about the same as Newfoundland in North America. And with the heat has come the most severe drought the UK has suffered in decades with both agriculture and river traffic feeling the pain.
The rest of Europe has suffered as well, with record high temperatures and severe drought conditions existing from Spain, Portugal and Italy in the south to Germany and the Netherlands in the north. While on the other side of the world Japan and eastern China have also been seeing record setting heat waves. In Japan the government went to the extraordinary measure of asking the 37 million people who live in and around the capital Tokyo to conserve electricity in order to prevent possible power shortages during an unprecedented 40ºC heat wave in late June.
All across the world as the heat increases the use of air conditioning rises even faster and the strain on aging power grids is quickly reaching the breaking point. Imagine the disaster that could happen if the Texas power grid collapses during a week of consecutive days at or above 40ºC as happened in July in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin.
But its not just heat and drought that are causing disasters this summer. Here in the US the eastern part of the state of Kentucky saw flooding that killed some 40 people and destroyed whole towns. That event was matched by massive flooding around Yellowstone National Park where flood waters forced the park’s closure for a week even while many visitors were trapped inside.
Paradoxically drought and flooding actually go together as a couple of months of no rain can make the soil as hard as concrete so that when rain does occur rather than sinking into the ground it all runs down into the valleys and creek beds leading to a surge of water. That’s what happened in Death Valley where an unusually strong rainstorm trapped hundreds of tourists for days by rising floodwaters.
This year’s surge of climate change induced, weather related disasters are just the beginning for we are still dumping huge amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere where they will only cause further increases in the world’s temperature. Now the First Street Foundation, a non-profit think tank that studies climate change has issued their estimate for what the hottest days of summer will be like for the US in the year 2053. Currently there are ten counties in this country that can expect to see one day a year where the heat index, the ‘feels like’ temperature that is a combination of actual temperature and humidity, can reach over 50ºC, an unbearable, life threatening amount of heat. The majority of these counties are of course in the desert southwest but there are a few in the middle section of the country far from the cooling effect of the ocean.
The peer reviewed analysis by the First Street Foundation predicts that by 2053 the number of counties reaching a heat index of 50ºC will rise to over a thousand, a two orders of magnitude increase. The part of the country that will see the biggest increase in area will be that middle section where a swath of extreme heat will form starting with Texas and Louisiana in the south and extending as far north as Chicago. Over 100 million people will see deadly heat waves for at least part of the year while the big cities of Texas could see temperatures over 40ºC for months on end.
Meanwhile another heat zone will form along the east coast starting in Georgia and South Carolina and reaching my home here in Philadelphia. Every part of the country can expect increased heat as well, with what are today the 7 hottest days of the year extending to become the 18 hottest days in nearly every locality. The effect that this increase will have on other weather conditions, drought or flooding, tornadoes and other severe storms can only be guessed at right now.
And the First Street Foundation is not the only voice crying out in alarum. A leading Earth Sciences Professor at University College London named Bill McGuire has recently published a new book entitled ‘Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitants Guide’ that outlays his vision for our weather future. According to Professor McGuire severe climate change is inevitable and irreversible. McGuire is quite correct when he states, “And as we head further into 2022, it is already a different world out there. Soon it will be unrecognizable to every one of us.”
So the question becomes, is the Inflation Reduction Act with its $376 billion to fight climate change nothing but, too little too late. Or has humanity finally faced the fact that climate change is an existential threat that we must deal with and the IRA just the first step in an ever growing effort to save the world.
Only time will tell, and I don’t think we’re going to have to wait until 2053.