
Surprise: Inflation Reduction Act Makes Oil and Gas Development on Federal Land Less Attractive
The bill’s requirement to offer land for oil and gas development may have a more limited impact than feared.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris enter office with a long list of substantial challenges to tackle. Working together with Congress, they will need to pull the country out of the worst pandemic in a century. They will need to get the economy back up and running, take bold moves to limit climate change and environmental destruction, and work hard to begin correcting hundreds of years of racial injustice and inequality.
Scholars within the Columbia Climate School will be holding the administration accountable to these promises. The articles and opinion pieces below range in scope from suggesting top priorities and strategies for the administration, to evaluating plans and progress, and pointing out areas where there’s room for improvement. This work is crucial, as the successes and failures of the Biden presidency will impact the health of the American people and the planet for years and decades to come.
The bill’s requirement to offer land for oil and gas development may have a more limited impact than feared.
It’s the U.S.’s first bill that focuses on climate change, but it’s not perfect.
Environmental justice delayed has long been justice denied, but it is never too late to do better.
Internships can be valuable and important apprenticeship opportunities for students engaged in them. They should be encouraged, and they should be paid.
My hope is that even if a conservative American national government abdicated climate leadership once again, the market forces we saw in 2021 will be too deeply established to deter.
Sustainability management is rapidly becoming the norm, and President Biden’s Green Executive Order will accelerate the growth of the green economy.
The scale of change needed to build a renewable resource-based economy is huge. We need both elected leaders and business leaders to get this job done.
If we, once again, kick the “climate can” down the road, we should be prepared for the road to be flooded, washed away, covered in debris, and possibly surrounded by burning forests.
We are an ingenious species, and when properly motivated, we can build an economy that doesn’t poison people and the planet.
There is more than one way to accelerate decarbonization, and we need to use every tool our toolbox can hold.