In a perfect world, America’s major political parties would argue not about whether to fight the climate change fueling devastating heat waves across the country, but how to fight it. In our imperfect world, one party has vowed to do more on climate. The other party has vowed to do ... the opposite of that.
A year ago, President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats in Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest U.S. climate bill in history. But it was far from perfect. It left the U.S. with no realistic path toward meeting its stated goal of zeroing carbon emissions by 2050. At the rate we’re still pumping planet-heating carbon into the atmosphere, today’s heat waves could come to seem downright pleasant.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed recently to enact more climate legislation should Democrats gain filibuster-proof control of lawmaking in the 2024 election. Republicans, meanwhile, have detailed plans to dismantle the IRA and Biden’s other climate actions if they retake the White House and Senate.