By Jack Merriam, FLVCS Environmental Working Group
An abridged version of this article appeared in the Herald Tribune on September 17, 2022
Finally! We’ve waited a long time for action on sustainable, renewable, non-emitting energy and climate change mitigation and adaptation. This year we’ve already seen unprecedented droughts, floods, fires, heat waves, and hurricanes. These impacts of a warming climate have caused injury, death, health-care impacts, costs, famine, ecosystem destruction, and rapidly escalating energy, water, and food prices. Fortunately, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 is a great first step at addressing these impacts and problems.
When implemented, it will reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. That’s hopefully within the lifetime of most people reading this article. While that reduction won’t completely eliminate these impacts, it helps hold the line and minimize how much worse they will get.
- And when implemented, it can immediately help insulate Florida Veterans for Common Sense (FLVCS) members and the rest of the United States and, in fact, the globe from increasing impacts and costs.
- And the more we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, the less we’ll contribute financially to despots around the world like Vladimir Putin of Russia or Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
- And we shouldn’t forget that the implementation of the IRA can help us in FLVCS address the national security threats of climate change and its impacts—like energy, food, and water shortages, and the resulting conflicts, and mass migration.
- And we know that burning fossil fuels contributes to health and environmental impacts.
Inflation Reduction Act Will Save Lives
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in a study published in February 2021 in the journal ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, found that in the US 350,000 premature deaths are attributed to fossil fuel pollution in 2018 and that transitioning to renewable energy will have immediate health benefits by preventing these deaths. So, two major aspects of the IRA, namely action on Health Care and Renewable Non-emitting Energy, are interrelated. The money for renewable energy and electric vehicles will help bring down our health-care costs attributable to fossil fuel air pollution.
Carbon and methane feed hurricanes, and nitrogen feeds red tide and other harmful algal blooms. Right now, this threatens our homes, businesses, food supplies, and entire economy if we do nothing or continue to go slow as we have done since the 1980s when warnings began. Personally, we put solar panels on our house with a battery and an electric vehicle (EV) charger in our garage for our new EV, a Tesla. We received a tax credit for the solar system but not the Tesla. The IRA will provide people a tax credit for both rooftop solar systems and most electric vehicles made in America, like the Tesla or Ford’s Lightning F150. Gas prices are high due to huge profits by oil companies and Russia’s war, and now we can avoid contributing to those while enjoying the convenience of charging our car in our garage.
Inflation Reduction Act Will Help Secure the Food Supply
Food supplies are threatened by floods and droughts caused by climate change. Thank goodness for the IRA. It includes $4 billion to address the Western Mega Drought and $20 billion for climate-smart agricultural practices, which hopefully will help blunt the food supply impacts and the negative shocks to the agricultural sector of our economy. Absent this legislation, food supply shortages and the resulting increase in food costs will cause severe economic problems and hit the most vulnerable of our citizens the hardest.
In future articles I hope to go into more detail on the major pieces of this comprehensive piece of legislation.
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