Tag: carbon pollution
Biden’s Climate Law Is Ending 40 Years of Hands-off Government
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. It is no exaggeration to say that his signature immediately severed the history of climate change in America into two eras. Before the IRA, climate campaigners spent decades trying and failing to get a climate bill through the Senate. After it, the federal government will spend $374 billion on clean energy and climate resilience over the next 10 years. The bill is estimated to reduce the country’s greenhouse-gas
A Hotter, Poorer, and Less Free America
For the past 18 months, Senate Democrats have been trying to find a climate deal acceptable to all 50 of their members. The main obstacles, so far, have been Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the owner of a coal-trading company, who wants any deal to reduce the federal budget deficit, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who refuses to increase tax rates, the easiest way to satisfy Manchin’s deficit-reduction goal. Senators are now back at the negotiating table, trying
Obituary: Carbon Tax, Beloved Climate Policy, Dies at 47
The American carbon tax, an alluringly simple policy once hailed by environmentalists, scholars, and politicians as a cure-all for climate change that, for all its elegance in economic models, could not overcome its enduring unpopularity with the American public, died last month at its home in Washington, D.C. It was 47.
The death was confirmed by President Joe Biden’s utter lack of interest in passing it.
The carbon tax aimed to reduce carbon-dioxide pollution—which heats the air, acidifies the ocean,