Listen to the podcast here
Learn what the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) can mean for our future, and learn about the upcoming guests we will be featuring on the show to deepen our understanding of where we are heading including:
- Justin Gillis, co-author of THE BIG FIX: 7 Practical Steps to Save Our Planet
. - Maya K. Van Rossum, lawyer and author of The Green Amendment
. - Dr. William Moomaw, creator of the term Proforestation and lead-author of the first 5 IPCC reports
- Christopher Marquis, journalist and author of Better Business, how the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism.
- Urvashi Bhatnagar, co-author of The Sustainability Scorecard: How to Implement and Profit from Unexpected Solutions.
- Marc Cortez, author of Climaturity: A Journey Into The Muddy Climate Middle
RESOURCES
Article Reviewed: 'A long time coming': Al Gore, other climate activists celebrate Senate passage of IRA https://news.yahoo.com/a-long-time-coming-al-gore-other-climate-activists-celebrate-senate-passage-of-ira-180945447.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
Past Episode Discussed: The Inflation Reduction Act: Its Impact On Global Emissions and Green Energy Solutions with Anand Gopal, EnergyInnovation.org
https://caremorebebetter.com/the-inflation-reduction-act-its-impact-on-global-emissions-and-green-energy-solutions-with-anand-gopal-energyinnovation-org/
Free Resource To Help You Understand the IRA's Climate Implications:
Modeling The Inflation Reduction Act Using The Energy Policy Simulator
https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Modeling-the-Inflation-Reduction-Act-with-the-US-Energy-Policy-Simulator_8.1.22.pdf
Additional Resource Discussed: 5 Steps To Unleash Your Inner Activist (available to all newsletter subscribers at caremorebebetter.com -- it is your welcome gift in your email box moments later).
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Hello, fellow do-gooders and friends. I'm your host, Corinna Bellizzi. And today I just wanted to check in and share with you the incredible, great news that this week we did something really amazing. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 has passed with $369 billion of funds allocated specifically for things that will actually support a drawdown of carbon and a reduction in our emissions to 50% less, hopefully by 2030. The commitment is actually to 40% less, which is most of the way to what Biden has committed to as a part of the Paris agreement. So we are making progress. This is all going in the right direction. And each of us has the opportunity now to really engage and get to know what we can do specifically to push for change in a positive direction.
This can be done in simple ways in the day to day. It can be done through your business actions. It can be done in your personal choices, the things that you buy, that you put on your body, the brands that you align with and the causes that you choose to champion. So I want to remind you today of a couple of things.
For one, I have always provided the resources that I think will supply and support your success. If you choose to walk down a more activistic path, your activism path doesn't have to look like marching in the streets. It can be as simple as reaching out to your loved ones and sharing perspective on how they could be a part of the world that you seek to create.
It could be as simple as sending emails to your congresspeople to tell them that you support things like the Inflation Reduction Act and all of the principles within it, that would support a green economy. One that is more circular, sustainable, and regenerative. It could be as simple as doing something like I did and champion something as simple as composting in your community to use those green waste bins for more than just yard waste.
It can be reading great books by incredible leaders that open your mind to new ideas. So one of the things I wanted to do today, is showcase some of the authors I'm going to be highlighting as we head forward. And this is not necessarily in order because book release dates, they shift and change too.
Future Guests - An Update For What's To Come
So one is The Sustainability Scorecard: How to Implement and Profit from Unexpected Solutions. This is by Urvashi Bhatnagar and Paul Anastas. I'm going to be interviewing Urvashi in an upcoming episode.
Another, who I'm thrilled to have had the opportunity to connect with just yesterday is Maya K. Van Rossum’s The Green Amendment
But this is essentially moving things more. Acts that you pass through Congress -- that can often be changed or walked back or altered with new legislation -- to actually building it into an amendment of the constitution. This starts first on a state level and can then go nationwide. I’m very interested in connecting with her. And I encourage you guys to stay tuned for that. You can pre-order this book now, and I will provide links for that with show notes for this podcast episode that will air on August 10th.
Another, I am going to have the pleasure of interviewing is Christopher Marquis. Or Marquis if he pronounces it the French way, I'm not quite certain. We haven't had a chance to meet in person yet, but this book just arrived in my hands. It is Better Business, how the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism. So this is another book I'm very much looking forward to diving into.
Now. I just recently had the pleasure of interviewing Justin Gillis, who is a co-author of a new book THE BIG FIX: 7 Practical Steps to Save Our Planet
So all of these will make incredible reading. I highly recommend them. And then last but not least is this book by Mark Cortez called Climaturity: A Journey Into The Muddy Climate Middle.
And what I like about this is it's a fairly straightforward read, um, and it's less than 150 pages, so you can get through it much more quickly than some of the others.
So with that, I wanted to share with you a couple of articles that have been featured on what is happening now with this. Legislation. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen for those that are watching in YouTube, go through the headline and then just tell you what I believe it means.
So here is the headline 'A long time coming': Al Gore, other climate activists celebrate Senate passage of IRA.That's the inflation reduction act.
This is a piece by Ben Adler, who is a senior editor of Yahoo news, and it was published on Monday. They're really pointing out here that this is a 369 billion with a B in spending over the course of 10 years to subsidize the deployment of clean energy and electric vehicles. It includes measures to combat climate change, such as fee for methane leaked in oil and gas drilling.
Overall, it is expected to help us reach that 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming from the 2005 levels. And the reason that the 2005 levels is important is because in 2005, our emissions in the United States peaked, we've been getting a little bit better since. But we haven't come to where we need to because ultimately in the United States, we are responsible for a lion’s share of the global emissions on a per capita basis.
And so we really need to take more responsibility for the emissions that we are producing and drive towards change. So I will also include a link to this article in our show notes. Ultimately this also does have one of Al Gore's tweets featured when, in which he says:
"It's been a long time coming, but the Senate has finally advanced transformative climate legislation. Thank you to Senators Schumer and Manchin and to every Senator who fought to ensure that climate action was a priority in this bill. Now to the House and to the President's desk!"
-Al Gore's Twitter Feed (pasted below)
It's been a long time coming, but the Senate has finally advanced transformative climate legislation. Thank you to Senators Schumer and Manchin and to every Senator who fought to ensure that climate action was a priority in this bill. Now to the House and to the President's desk!
— Al Gore (@algore) August 7, 2022
Ultimately, I am super excited. I also want to draw your attention. To the podcast episode that I recorded last week as a live stream and provided a day later to all of you. And so you can go access that simply by going to care more, be better.com. You can play it directly from the site in this. Player the inflation reduction act it's impact on global emissions and green energy solutions.
And you can go to the blog page specifically right here. And the reason I'd like to counsel you to do that is because an additional resource is offered to you in this space, which can help deepen your understanding of what this bill means for green energy and for climate change. And so if you are curious, if you really want to understand it better and know more, then I encourage you to do so.
And you'll see right here. In this piece here, it's modeling the inflation reduction act using the energy policy simulator. So I link directly to this. It is a PDF download that comes right to you.
And there's one more bit that I want to mention here. If you sign up for my newsletter on my site, simply by going and introducing your email, your first and your last name, either on any of the blog pages or on the main page or through the popup, you'll be added to my email list and you'll immediately receive a tool, which is Five Steps To Unleash Your Inner Activist. It is a very easy to use kind of template to help organize your thoughts so that you can take that idea that you're passionate about and really work to champion it just a little bit better each day. So if you can please go ahead and do that. I would be honored to have you in my email list.
I only send one email a week, which is far less than most to collect your. So with that, I wanna thank all of you for spending this brief time with me today, 10 and a half minutes to share with you why I am so excited that we have come to this moment and that ultimately. We are going to be able to produce so many more positive changes over the course of the next few years, there is a silver lining to that cloud.
We are going to be creating that better future. And I thank all of you for spending a moment with me this afternoon. Thank you now and always for your support.