August, 12 2022, 06:03pm EDT
350.org on U.S. House Passage of Inflation Reduction Act
Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) today. The bill now goes to President Biden to be signed into law. The IRA devotes $369 billion to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, making it by far the biggest climate change legislation in US history. This is a significant win demonstrating the momentum of the climate movement over the last decade. However, the price of its passage was West Virginia senator Joe Manchin's compromises including measures intended to boost fossil fuel production.
WASHINGTON
Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) today. The bill now goes to President Biden to be signed into law. The IRA devotes $369 billion to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, making it by far the biggest climate change legislation in US history. This is a significant win demonstrating the momentum of the climate movement over the last decade. However, the price of its passage was West Virginia senator Joe Manchin's compromises including measures intended to boost fossil fuel production. While the bill opens doors, the work of the climate movement must now turn to stopping the side bill aimed at increasing fossil fuel production.
May Boeve, Executive Director of 350.org, made the following statement:
"It's a historic day. 350.org grew out of a campaign calling for climate legislation in 2007. Now in 2022, US climate legislation has passed. It took fifteen years - and in those years we have built a powerful movement that has pressured our leaders to take the climate crisis seriously. We know the bill is far from perfect, and we've got lots of work ahead of us. But we recognize that this moment is a direct result of people power.
"In particular, we are heartened by the massive investment in renewable energy that will speed up the U.S. economy's fossil free transition and significantly reduce emissions. A US bill signed into law to reduce emissions has the opportunity to influence climate policy globally and locally for countries, states, and cities who want to invest in a transition to renewable energy. National action alone enables momentum at both the global and local levels.
"We also know this is not the end all be all. As we recognize this moment, we gear up towards the fights ahead. We will continue to build on our power to fight dangerous side deals that are at the expense of frontlines and BIPOC communities. In the coming weeks, we will work full force to stop Manchin's permitting deal aimed at making it easier to build fossil fuel projects. We will push President Biden to use the full power of the Presidency to take unilateral action to make up for where this bill lacks - namely by declaring a Climate Emergency and stopping the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
"Momentum is on our side. With COP27 around the corner, we know what's at stake for our planet and those already suffering from the climate crisis. The fossil fuel industry can try as they might to make deals and compromises, but we will resist with the full force of millions who know that our future is dependent on transitioning off of fossil fuels."
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
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"Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward," said one advocate.
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Wildlife protection groups and Indigenous leaders in Alaska said Monday that they would push to discourage bidding in an oil and gas lease sale just announced by the U.S. Interior Department for part of the Arctc National Wildlife Refuge.
Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which opened the refuge for oil and gas drilling, the Biden administration announced the second of two lease sales, set to be held on January 9, 2025.
The first Trump administration held the initial lease sale in 2021, but with banks and insurance companies increasingly reticent to back drilling projects in the area, it generated little interest and led to less than 1% of the projected sale revenue.
Releasing its final record of decision, the Interior Department said Monday that 400,000 acres of wilderness in the refuge's 1.6-million-acre northwest Coastal Plain would be put up for bidding at a minimum price of $30 per acre—despite vocal opposition from the Gwich'in Nation and the Iñupiat Alaska Natives.
The land supports local communities as well as porcupine caribou herds and polar bears.
"Our way of life, our food security, and our spiritual well-being is directly tied to the health of the caribou and the health of this irreplaceable landscape," Kristen Moreland, executive director of Gwich'in Steering Committee, toldBloomberg News. "Every oil company stayed away from the first lease sale, and we expect them to do the same during the second."
The record of decision concludes the Bureau of Land Management's process for developing a supplemental environmental impact statement, which was required after President-elect Donald Trump's first administration completed an analysis with "fundamental flaws and legal errors," as the Sierra Club said Monday.
Selling the drilling rights just before Trump takes office could complicate the GOP's plans to hold a more expansive sale later on, but Dan Ritzman, director of Sierra Club's Conservation Campaign, emphasized that regardless of who is in office when the sale takes place, "oil and gas development in the Arctic Refuge is a direct threat to some of the last untouched landscapes on Alaska's North Slope and to the caribou herds that the Gwich'in people rely on."
"The 2017 tax act, forced through Congress by Donald Trump and his Big Oil CEO allies, opened up the Coastal Plain to oil and gas leasing," said Ritzman. "Letting him oversee a lease sale over these pristine lands would be beyond irresponsible. In the meantime, President [Joe] Biden should listen to the Gwich'in and do all that he can to preserve these lands and waters. His legacy is on the line."
Erik Grafe, an attorney at environmental law firm Earthjustice, said the group is "committed to going to court as often as necessary to defend the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling and will work toward a more sustainable future that does not depend on ever-expanding oil extraction."
"Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward," said Grafe. "Oil drilling would destroy this beautiful land, held sacred by Gwich'in people, and would further destabilize the global climate, but it offers zero benefit to taxpayers or consumers."
Defenders of Wildlife called on Congress to repeal the 2017 tax law's mandate for leasing sales in the "iconic American landscape" of the Arctic Refuge.
"Turning the coastal plain into an oilfield will obliterate the pristine wilderness of the Arctic Refuge," said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska senior program director for the group, "directly threatening the future of the Porcupine caribou herd and the physical, cultural, and spiritual existence of the Gwich'in people who depend on them."
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A large and diverse coalition of broad coalition of rights organizations on Monday sent a letter to U.S. President Biden Monday, urging him to commute the sentences of all 40 individuals who are on federal death row.
The letter adds to a chorus of voices—including prosecutors and law enforcement officials—advocating for Biden to use his clemency powers to issue such commutations before he departs office.
The calls for Biden to issue pardons and commutations have only grown since the president issued a pardon for his son, clearing Hunter Biden of wrongdoing in any federal crimes he committed or may have committed in the last 11 years.
The joint letter to Biden was backed by over 130 organizations, including the ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, and The Sentencing Project, commends his administration's "actions to repudiate capital punishment, including imposing a moratorium on executions for those sentenced to death, and for publicly calling for an end to the use of the death penalty during your 2020 campaign. In the face of a second Trump administration, more is necessary."
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The letter cites additional reasons that Biden ought to commute the sentences, including that the death penalty "has been rooted in slavery, lynchings, and white vigilantism."
A separate letter to Biden—sent in November by group of attorneys general, law enforcement officials, and others—argues that "condemning people to death by the state does not advance public safety. The death penalty fails as an effective deterrent and does not reduce crime. As an outdated, error-riddled, and racially-biased practice, its continued use—and the potential for its abuse—erodes public trust in the criminal legal system and undermines the legitimacy of the entire criminal legal system."
Matt Bruenig, president of the People's Policy Project think tank, directly tied Biden's inaction on this issue to the pardon he issued for his son in a blog post last week, writing that "if Biden does not act, there is little doubt that Trump will aggressively schedule executions in his next term. Their blood will primarily be on Trump's hands, but, if Biden does not act to prevent it, his hands will be bloody too."
The call for commutations for death row prisoners aligns with a wider push for the President to use his clemency powers before he leaves office.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who has been particularly vocal on this issue, said Sunday on social media that President Biden "must use his clemency power to change lives for the better. And we have some ideas on who he can target: Folks in custody with unjustified sentencing disparities, the elderly and chronically ill, people on death row, women punished for crimes of their abusers, and more."
Pressley was one of over 60 members of Congress who sent a letter to Biden last month, encouraging Biden to intervene to help these groups.
Several lawmakers have specific pardons or commutations in mind, according to Axios. For example, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has urged Biden to pardon Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has called for a pardon of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, per Axios.
So far, Biden has granted far fewer clemency petitions (161 total) than former President Barrack Obama, according to the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney, and a few dozen less than President-elect Trump did during his entire first presidency. However, in 2022, Biden did grant full and unconditional pardons to all U.S. citizens convicted of simple federal marijuana possession—a move that was cheered by advocates.
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On Monday, just hours before a suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was arrested by police, a new Gallup poll found a 62% majority in the U.S. believe the government should ensure all Americans have healthcare coverage—the highest percentage in more than a decade.
Just 42% of people in 2013 believed it was the government's responsibility to make sure everyone in the country had health coverage—a low since the beginning of this century.
The poll found that a majority of Republicans still believe ensuring health coverage is not the government's job, but the majority has shrunk since 2020.
That year, only 22% of Republican voters believed the government should ensure everyone in the country has healthcare, but that number has now grown to 32%.
The percentage of Independents who think the issue is in the government's purview has also gone up by six points since 2020, and Democratic support remains high, currently at 90%.
Americans have vented their frustrations about the current for-profit health insurance system in recent days as police searched for a suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, before arresting Luigi Mangione in Pennsylvania on Monday. Mangione, according to claims by police, was found with a manifesto that railed against the insurance industry.
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President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans, who are set to control both chambers of Congress starting in January, have indicated that they would go in the opposite direction, working to weaken the popular, government-run Medicare program by promoting Medicare Advantage, which is administered by for-profit companies like United and is already used by half of Medicare beneficiaries.
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