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November 1, 2022
A Dispatch from the Arctic Circle
Vince Cooper
The ship rose up onto the ice, balanced there for a moment, and then lurched back onto its side. We were stuck. The open water had frozen, shutting us in place against a pressure ridge, a thick wall on the ocean’s surface formed by the convergence of sea ice. Our vessel was called the Sikuliaq, and we were some 375 miles due north of Alaska, on a 30-day, 29-person research...
November 1, 2022
A Dispatch from Pakistan
Zoya Rehman
Even though Pakistan emits less than one percent of the world’s greenhouse gasses, our country is among those hardest-hit by climate change. This summer, monsoon rains and melting glaciers have combined to displace some 35 million people, while over 1,500 are already reported dead. It is estimated that Pakistan will lose around $30 billion as a result of the widespread destruction caused by the floods. Farms have been devastated and...
November 1, 2022
“The Task of the Next Generation of Climate Activists”
Jake Bittle
The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the permitting deal have the potential to jump-start a golden age of energy infrastructure — not just solar farms and wind farms but geothermal facilities, nuclear plants, carbon capture projects, offshore and onshore oil rigs, natural gas pipelines, natural gas export terminals, lithium and rare earth mineral mines, battery manufacturing facilities, biogas processing plants, electric vehicle assembly lines, and more will now...
November 1, 2022
“A War Against the Global South”
Ama Francis
This August, more than 30 million people in Pakistan were affected by unprecedented flooding that left one third of the country underwater. Climate minister Sherry Rehman called Pakistan “ground zero” for the climate crisis, joining the growing list of leaders who liken climate change to a war against the Global South. One of the fundamental inequalities that will shape the coming years is the fact that low-emitting countries like Pakistan...
November 1, 2022
“A Few Hundred Words Written by the Right People”
Arvin Alaigh
After Senator Joe Manchin abruptly killed talks on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better proposal last December, advocacy groups slammed him for having strung along fellow legislative Democrats and the White House for over a year. His announcement followed a year of grassroots (and grasstops) advocacy: thousands of calls to his office, dozens of mobilizations across his home state of West Virginia, numerous constituent meetings with his Senate staff, and...
November 1, 2022
“An Ecology of Oppression”
Jack McCordick
What else could have secured a “yea” vote on the Inflation Reduction Act from Senator Joe Manchin other than a juicy pot-sweetener? In addition to a promise to ease permitting restrictions for new fossil fuel infrastructure, Manchin won a pledge from Democratic leaders and the White House that they would “take all necessary actions” to “complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline,” a 300-mile fracked gas pipeline through poorer regions of West...
November 1, 2022
“Affinities with Craft Unionism”
Johnathan Guy
Green capitalism is ascendant. The IRA will inject hundreds of billions of dollars of clean energy tax credits into the economy over the next ten years to be gobbled up by firms of all stripes and sizes. In line with its market orientation, the IRA does not specify which firms or clean energy technologies will ultimately claim these tax credits, setting off a frenzy among investors and organizers alike. Exactly...
November 1, 2022
“A High-Stakes Dance with Social Movements”
Marcela Mulholland
Four years ago, I sat in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office alongside my friends from Sunrise Movement demanding that the incoming Democratic House majority prioritize climate action. The sea was going to take my home state of Florida, and my representatives did not care. At the time, I wrote in uncompromising terms about the necessity of a Green New Deal — “We. Won’t. Settle.” But when Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin...
November 1, 2022
“Climate Alibis”
Josh Lappen
The word on everyone’s lips is “transformative.” Even before many of its provisions have taken effect, the Inflation Reduction Act ranks as one of the most consequential climate actions in United States history. Its $370 billion in rebates, credits, grants, loans, deductions, and appropriations forge a new political alliance between climate and labor, and end a decade-long legislative fixation on a federal carbon price. It will remake the American automotive...
November 1, 2022
“The Responsibility to Construct the World as It Should Be”
Daniel Sherrell
The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has provided the climate movement with a painfully precise measure of its own power: enough to bring a new industry into being, not yet enough to bring an old one to heel. On the one hand, the bill’s billions in renewable energy investments could drive an explosion of clean energy advancement and deployment across the 2020s. The 2010s — a decade during which...