Municipal leaders are celebrating the two-year anniversary of the adoption of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a landmark bill that has provided numerous benefits to local governments, school districts, and small businesses. However, Republicans in the 2024 campaigns are vowing to repeal the measure if they win the elections.
The IRA, which was passed by a Democrat-majority Congress, has been hailed as a significant federal intervention to accelerate the transition to clean energy and meet President Joe Biden’s goal of a carbon-free economy by 2050. The bill has allocated $370 billion for various initiatives aimed at upgrading infrastructure, lowering energy costs, generating jobs, and enhancing national security.
During a presentation sponsored by Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPA) in Washington, representatives from local governments and investors commemorated the IRA’s adoption. They highlighted the positive impact of the bill on communities across the country and emphasized the importance of its provisions, such as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
Local leaders, such as Donya Sartor, mayor of Jonesboro, Georgia, and Alex Walker-Griffin, a member of the Hercules, California city council, praised the IRA for leveling the playing field for small communities and creating job opportunities. They emphasized the economic development and climate change mitigation aspects of the bill, pointing out how it has benefited their respective regions.
Overall, supporters of the IRA see it as a transformative piece of legislation that not only addresses environmental concerns but also promotes economic growth, job creation, and social equity. Despite the opposition from some Republicans, advocates are determined to continue advocating for the bill and its positive impact on communities nationwide.
End Reliance on Petro ‘Dictators’
The IRA is also a national security bill, said du Houx, a Navy Reserve officer who served as an enlisted Marine in 2006-2007’s Battle of Fallujah in Iraq and was in a convoy “hit by a roadside bomb.”
The man who planted the bomb was not in al-Qaeda but needed money “because his crops failed” from drought, he said.
“As a young Marine, the pieces started to fit together. Other veterans had similar stories,” du Houx said, noting one in 20 U.S. military convoys “had casualties” and “the things we carried most was water and fuel.”
The experience made him think “how deeply we are, unfortunately, connected to a single source of energy” and “dependent on autocratic dictators” in OPEC and elsewhere, he said.
The “biggest example is Putin,” du Houx said, suggesting the United States “would have had a better response” to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine “if Europe wasn’t dependent on Russia” for oil and natural gas.
Archer, who served two tours in Iraq, agreed. “Reliance on fossil fuels is a vulnerability we can no longer ignore whether on the battlefield or at home,” he said.
Jordan Meade, who sits on the Kent County Council in the United Kingdom, said the IRA will enhance global security by being “community-first in everything.”
Since 2010, Kent, “the garden of England” where more than 70 percent of land is agricultural, has seen “solar farms” established, investments in heat pumps, and retrofitted schools that are “saving hundreds of thousands of pounds to reinvest into education” under British climate change policies.
These investments help Kent “protect agricultural land from the bulldozers of development,” Meade said, calling the IRA a visionary measure that “unlocks the power of market-based solutions.”
He alluded to fall’s elections and the prospect the IRA could be diluted or repealed by Republicans claiming to be conservatives.
But an arch conservative was among the first to warn about climate change, Meade said, recalling British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 United Nations address.
“Thirty-five years later,” he said, “we should revisit Thatcher’s foresight and reconsider how and why the IRA should not be just another policy that is shelved.”
