At Long Last, the Senate Has Passed Sweeping Climate Legislation

After years of stagnant climate policy, months of excruciating political negotiations, and a marathon weekend of back-to-back voting, the Senate passed the Democrats’ sweeping climate and health care bill on Sunday. 

The estimated $740 billion package, entitled the Inflation Reduction Act, includes close to $400 billion in climate spending—by far the largest climate investment in the nation’s history. The plan would be largely paid for by new taxes, including a 15 percent minimum tax on the handful of corporations with annual profits about $1 billion.

The bill represents a fraction of the climate investment that Democrats dreamed of when Joe Biden took office, but it includes policies that are expected to help America cut its climate pollution by 40 percent by 2030. (As Vox notes, that’s a bit less dramatic than it sounds: The baseline for the reduction is 2005, when emissions peaked, and the nation was on track to reduce its emissions by 20 percent by 2030 without the legislation.) If enacted, the policy will fund tax credits and rebates for renewable energy, energy efficiency technology, and electric cars. It will also fund climate resilience and pollution monitoring projects in vulnerable communities, and penalize fossil fuel companies for excess methane emissions.