Celebrating a turning point

By Marcy Franck

One day after school last spring, I reminded my son that he needed to do chores before he went out to play.

“That’s just great!” he yelled. “Now I have to fold my clothes and we only have 30 years before Earth can’t support life anymore. This is the worst day ever!” He slammed his books on the counter and stormed off.

Later I discovered this wasn’t just an exquisite display of tween angst—it was an emotional hangover from a lesson on climate change in his 6th grade science class. I wrote to his teacher to inquire politely why my son now thinks his days are numbered.

He responded that his climate modules explore how the greenhouse effect mimics previous mass extinctions and outlined how life will be near-apocalyptic by the time his students turn 50. “But on the last day I tried to bring them back from their despair by showing them how the global effort to combat climate change is curbing the rise of CO2 levels,” he wrote.

When despair is baked into the curriculum, it seems those last few minutes of hope are easy to forget. This morning I asked my son what he thought about climate change and he said, “Death. Destruction. Rich people being stupid.” That last point is probably mine, but the irony of writing a newsletter about climate optimism and having a kid who thinks he may as well become the fifth horseman of the apocalypse isn’t lost on me.

He avoids this newsletter because I am “so cringe,” but on our midwestern road trip this summer, we tuned in to hear the House pass the Inflation Reduction Act while we were driving through endless fields of giant wind turbines. The timing was spectacular! And so was my parenting! Because I say so!

“But Mom, the law only impacts the United States. The rest of the world is still hosed and so are we,” he said this morning. To him the IRA is too little too late, something I’ve heard from others so burned out on bad news it’s hard to believe something this good could come along.

So I’m grabbing the mic Ferris-Bueller style, and dedicating this issue to everyone who doesn't think they’ve seen anything good today. The IRA, together with stealthy yet potent climate laws passed this year, will make epic progress toward a healthy, green future.

We still have work to do but, for now, we celebrate.

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WE'RE ON A SHINY NEW PATH, OPTIMISTS

We already had solutions, now we have funds to implement them at scale.

Here's what the IRA will do:

Accelerate production of parts that create clean energy, parts that store clean energy, and parts that transmit clean energy. So many parts. Parts is parts!
Give us credibility to push other countries to go big on climate action
Cut emissions 40% below 2005 levels by 2030
Reduce climate damages by $1.9 Trillion by 2050
But: A compromise that allows fossil fuel infrastructure to be built will damage environmental justice communities; clearly we still have work to do.

We can expect these major benefits:

Saving nearly 3900 lives per year by 2030
Averting up to 100k asthma attacks per year
Avoiding 417k work days lost to illness per year
Reducing energy bills by an average of $1800 per year
Creating 1.5 million jobs by 2030
Cardigan-wearing grandpas happy dancing in front of 70's-motif rainbows almost immediately

And here’s a tally of tax credits we’ll get for greening our lives:

Electric Vehicles: up to $7500 for new, $4000 for used
Home efficiency: up to $1600 for insulation, $600 for windows, $500 for doors, $150 for a home energy audit.
Appliances: up to $840 for electric stoves; $600 for efficient central air, water heaters, boilers, and furnaces; $8000 for heat pumps; $1750 for heat pump water heaters
Solar: 30% of cost for rooftop solar, available for the next 10 years

Small print: I’m not an economist, I just play one in this newsletter. Some restrictions may apply. Check the consumer’s guide to the new climate law for details and calculate your personalized savings here.

A CLIMATE BILL BY ANY OTHER NAME CAN STILL SAVE THE PLANET

And, my wig and whiskers, we got three of ‘em in one year!

If this is news to you, we should talk about what RMI calls Congress’ Climate Triple Whammy, three new laws that set us on a strategic path to a healthy, green future:

The CHIPs and Science Act is the brain, funding climate tech R&D that will spur clean energy innovation and smooth over supply chain issues. Will we finally get a retro encabulator, or perhaps a flux capacitor? We’ll see!

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is the backbone, providing “much of the infrastructure these technologies need to scale at speed,” like transmission lines and permitting.

The Inflation Reduction Act is the engine that will create long-term certainty for industry to keep innovating and driving down costs.

Now it’s on us to ensure the laws are implemented swiftly and well, that they focus first on frontline communities, and to keep pushing for even more policies.

FUTURE LEADERS PREPARE

TO TAKE THE BATON

Gotta hand it to the kids.

We were thrilled to host 122 high school students from around the world at our second annual Youth Summit on Climate, Health, and Equity with Putney Pre-College earlier this month. After a week of skills training and experiential learning, they returned home with concrete climate action plans to implement in their own communities.

Learn more about this year’s summit , and consider sharing with the rising climate leaders in your life. We’d love to see them next year!

Teachers: You can inspire climate hope and action by focusing on local solutions and updating lessons in real time. NOAA’s Planet Stewards shares teaching resources for kindergarten to college.

WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO

So glad you asked!

Our hot-everyone summer: We encouraged community healthcare providers & patients to develop heat action plans using the toolkit we developed with Americares with support from Biogen, and we gave heat safety tips to just about anyone who will listen. Find us on The Weather Channel or in 100+ news stories that garnered 7.4 million views across platforms. Talking about heat is so hot that we created a case study about it!

Back to School: Get some tips for shopping sustainably from our Director Dr. Aaron Bernstein on Good Morning America.

Preventing Pandemics: To understand how making the world cooler will help make diseases like monkeypox less common, check out this ABC News Q&A with our director Dr. Aaron Bernstein.

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