PARTITION Part 3
How to help our neighborhood get more climate-action rebates?
Buddy always helped me file our taxes. Too bad he isn’t here for the big rebates this year.
Americans are only beginning to realize there are sacks of federal money earmarked to help us slow climate change and limit its damages. From filling the grid with sustainable energy, to electrifying buildings and transportation in our area, to building a little flood barrier at the end of our street—all these projects are having $391 billion (billion!) thrown at them, thanks to last August’s Inflation Reduction Act. (Bad name: the law’s mostly about fighting climate change.)
But talk about Partition! In Congress that big climate bill didn’t get a single Republican vote!
Now that it has passed, much of the Act’s funding can be spent in Red States, about twenty-five of which are in the control of Republican lawmakers + governor. How can they possibly refuse?! Does it seem crazy for Conservative politicians to ignore huge sums of money designated in Washington for their state? We might think so, but take a look at the twelve Republican-controlled states that continue to stall the expansion of Medicaid, refusing federal funds!
THE GOOD NEWS
There’s lots of it!
A lot of IRA funds for climate actions will go directly to households, businesses and other taxpayers from the IRS in the form of tax credits. The States are not involved; they cannot block these payments.
Many state governments are willing to promote solar and wind farms because of the local economic benefits. Landowners get paid, the state can tax those payments, and locals get jobs. The biggest sources of sustainable energy are in Red states.
Some states, while not interested in reducing emissions, are happy to use federal dollars to build climate protections. As I noted a year ago, Washington State passed a carbon tax raising $4 billion over ten years. Democrats wanted to use the funds to reduce emissions, for instance electrifying a lot of transportation. Republicans steered the money toward creating climate protections for local towns—enhancing drought resilience, reducing flood risks, protecting drinking water sources, that sort of thing. One way or another, both parties want to save our neighborhoods.
Within a state, a Conservative-Liberal split may not be very strong. In any case it hugely oversimplifies what people think. The local decision-making entities—county, city, town departments, and community organizations—are often bipartisan and non-ideological. Many climate issues, such as erosion, sea level rise, heat islands, air and water pollution, are local challenges. And solutions are usually local too, with communities building flood berms, planting trees, building a microgrid, or rezoning to lower flood risk.
THE BAD NEWS
Certain organizations within any state, a local Utilities Commission for instance, may be just as adamant against fighting emissions as the State legislature and agencies.
Many of the climate actions we can take may not need permission from a state agency. But to make the big impact that the IRA is designed to fund, those initiatives need publicity, education, and promotion. State government may not be in a position to block, waste, or divert IRA funding; but just by ignoring it they can produce the same effect.
The power structure that must approve many climate actions, even local ones, can be complex, giving supporters like ourselves lots of work.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
How do we help use the IRA’s cornucopia of climate action funding to quickly reduce emissions and build protections?
Choose
Among the dozens of projects and purchases subsidized by the IRA, we can find one which seems appropriate for where we live, see its urgency, learn how it can be promoted, and jump in to help. A few instances:
Home electrification and home energy efficiency. Those rebates will need to flow through state energy offices.
Green Banks can help us finance stuff like heat-pumps, community solar, and EV charging.
Tree-planting can reduce urban heat domes.
New building energy codes work against both energy waste and likely flooding and other climate damage.
Water supply improvements can reduce drought.
Microgrids in low-income communities that can serve as resilience hubs during extended power outages.
Flood and erosion control are needed in lots of places.
Electrify transportation systems, from state transit systems down to small fleets of school buses, garbage trucks and business vehicles have some hidden benefits.
It’s not as hard as it may seem to get involved with initiatives near us. I just type “Topic (e.g. ‘flood control’) + ‘Investment Reduction Act’ + my county and state” into my search engine. This usually brings up organizations, government departments, and other links through which I can find where I can help. Some of the programs are not really underway yet, so I set a search engine alert to bring me more information as it’s published.
Shout
The big challenge in distributing federal climate funds is ignorance. The IRA is a huge law, complicated, and largely out of sight. But if we can help individuals, companies and local governments learn what’s available to them—not only to save the planet but to save serious money—they are much more likely to make those purchases and investments.
How do we shout? After choosing one or more initiatives to support, we write letters to the editor, make phone calls to utilities, appliance dealers, school boards, speak up at public meetings. Be specific about a particular IRA benefit. Many of the same persuasion methods we use to influence our Senator or Congressman will work to influence a local organization as well.
In speaking out, we need to watch our language. The phrase ‘climate change’ is verboten in some government meetings and documents, and may be unwelcome in some local forums, even in private conversations. We should be sure to emphasize non-climate advantages: clean air, clean water, jobs, lower costs, and maybe talk about ‘preserving the past’ instead of ‘protecting the future.’
One of our most powerful actions can be helping kids understand what climate measures their elders may be ignoring. Young people can be very persuasive and very motivated on climate topics.
Join
Now that the IRA means climate activists can switch gears and really press on the accelerator, being a climate activist becomes harder for most of us, and less fun if we’re acting alone. Next week ClimateDog will introduce a variety of organizations out there working on specific types of projects that the IRA supports. They’re educating and publicizing and pushing, and they would love to have us join others in their focused efforts.
Things have suddenly changed. If my children and grandchildren ask me what I did last decade to save their future from climate change, I could show them the poster I made and carried in the 300,000-person People’s Climate March in 2014. Hey, protesting was about all we could do back then.
Now, suddenly there’s a big opportunity for us to take real actions incentivized by the IRA. When they ask what I did to reduce emissions and build protections during this decade, I’ll have a lot to tell them, all the more if I get started now.
Help me out here. Please add your ideas about how we can best implement the IRA.
LEARN, THINK, ACT
Many thanks, David, all very clear and interesting. Much food for thought. All the best, John.