This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
In today's piece, TomDispatch regular Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, explores the Biden administration's recent surprising successes in passing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and cancelling significant student loans. She also focuses on the deeper failure that underlies our American world, leaving it filled with "sacrifice zones" of the poor and underpaid.
Thought of a certain way, all of us now live in sacrifice zones. In a sense, thanks to climate change, this whole country " in fact, our whole world from Europe to Africa, China to Pakistan " is now a sacrifice zone. After all, while I was writing this introduction, the Northeast was experiencing devastating flash floods and the West, already embroiled in years of a historic megadrought, was suffering through soaring temperatures, breaking hundreds of heat records, that don't faintly fit this end-of-summer season. Some temperatures in California were expected to rise 20-30 degrees above the early September norm. And despite the way the IRA genuinely took us forward on the issue of climate change, as Theoharis suggests, the Biden administration also made painful " in the sense that, in the years to come, we'll all feel the pain " concessions to fossil-fuel companies and Joe Manchin as well as Kyrsten Sinema, the two Democratic senators who have received such copious financial support from that industry.
Somehow, all of this brought to mind the equivalent of a footnote in a New York Times news story of almost a year ago. It described how oil giant ConocoPhillips was, in the future, planning to drill in Alaska's National Petroleum Preserve " our northernmost state is, by the way, already heating up faster than all but one of the others (as the Arctic is similarly heating up faster than the rest of the planet) " and planning to produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day there until 2050. Only recently, the Biden administration signaled its support for that Trump-era project. But here's the old passage that stuck in my mind: "In a paradox worthy of Kafka," wrote Times reporter Lisa Friedman, "ConocoPhillips plans to install 'chillers' into the permafrost " which is thawing fast because of climate change " to keep it solid enough to drill for oil, the burning of which will continue to worsen ice melt."
Need I say more about the state of our world or the way the fossil-fuel industry is ready to turn Alaska, the country, and the planet into a vast sacrifice zone? Instead, consider Liz Theoharis's latest thoughts on the subject. Tom
No More Sacrifices
Mercy Makes Good Policy
In the American ethos, sacrifice is often hailed as the chief ingredient for overcoming hardship and seizing opportunity. To be successful, we're assured, college students must make personal sacrifices by going deep into debt for a future degree and the earnings that may come with it. Small business owners must sacrifice their paychecks so that their companies will continue to grow, while politicians must similarly sacrifice key policy promises to get something (almost anything!) done.
We have become all too used to the notion that success only comes with sacrifice, even if this is anything but the truth for the wealthiest and most powerful Americans. After all, whether you focus on the gains of Wall Street or of this country's best-known billionaires, the ever-rising Pentagon budget, or the endless subsidies to fossil-fuel companies, sacrifice is not exactly a theme for those atop this society. As it happens, sacrifice in the name of progress is too often relegated to the lives of the poor and those with little or no power. But what if, instead of believing that most of us must eternally "rob Peter to pay Paul," we imagine a world in which everyone was in and no one out?
In that context, consider recent policy debates on Capitol Hill as the crucial midterm elections approach. To start with, the passage of the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) promises real, historic advances when it comes to climate change, health care, and fair tax policy. It's comprehensive in nature and far-reaching not just for climate resilience but for environmental justice, too. Still, the legislation is distinctly less than what climate experts tell us we need to keep this planet truly livable.
In addition, President Biden's cancellation of up to $20,000 per person in student loans could wipe out the debt of nearly half of all borrowers. This unprecedented debt relief demonstrates that a policy agenda lifting from the bottom is both compassionate and will stimulate the broader economy. Still, it, too, doesn't go far enough when it comes to those suffocating under a burden of debt that has long served as a dead weight on the aspirations of millions.
In fact, a dual response to those developments and others over the past months seems in order. As a start, a striking departure from the neoliberal dead zone in which our politics have been trapped for decades should certainly be celebrated. Rather than sit back with a sense of satisfaction, however, those advances should only be built upon.
Let's begin by looking under the hood of the IRA. After all, that bill is being heralded as the most significant climate legislation in our history and its champions claim that, by 2030, it will have helped reduce this country's carbon emissions by roughly 40% from their 2005 levels. Since a reduction of any kind seemed out of reach not so long ago, it represents a significant step forward.
Among other things, it ensures investments of more than $60 billion in clean energy manufacturing; an estimated $30 billion in production tax credits geared toward increasing the manufacture of solar panels, wind turbines, and more; about $30 billion for grant and loan programs to speed up the transition to clean electricity; and $27 billion for a greenhouse gas reduction fund that will allow states to provide financial assistance to low-income communities so that they, too, can benefit from rooftop solar installations and other clean energy developments.
The IRA also seeks to lower energy costs and reduce utility bills for individual Americans through tax credits that will encourage purchases of energy-efficient homes, vehicles, and appliances. Among other non-climate-change advances, it caps out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, reduces health insurance premiums for 13 million Americans, and provides free vaccinations for seniors.
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