After decades of inaction in the face of escalating natural disasters and sustained global warming, a divided Congress gave final approval Friday to Democrats’ flagship climate and health care bill, a transformative piece of legislation that would provide the most spending to fight climate change by any one nation ever in a single push.
The House used a party-line 220-207 vote to pass the legislation, prompting hugs among Democrats on the House floor and cheers by White House staff watching on television. “Today, the American people won. Special interests lost,” tweeted the vacationing Biden, who was shown beaming in a White House photo as he watched the vote on TV from Kiawah Island, South Carolina. He said he would sign the legislation next week.
Friday’s action comes 34 years after a top scientist grabbed headlines warning Congress about the dangers of global warming. In the decades since, there have been 308 weather disasters that have each cost the nation at least $1 billion, the record for the hottest year has been broken 10 times and wildfires have burned an area larger than Texas.
The crux of the long-delayed Inflation Reduction Act is to use incentives to spur investors to accelerate the expansion of clean energy such as wind and solar power, speeding the transition away from the oil, coal and gas that largely cause climate change.
The United States has put the most heat-trapping gasses into the air, burning more inexpensive dirty fuels than any other country. But the nearly $375 billion in climate incentives in the bill are designed to make the already plummeting costs of renewable energy substantially lower at home, on the highways and in the factory. Together these could help shrink U.S. carbon emissions by about 40% by 2030 and should chop emissions from electricity by as much as 80%.