Arguments
One big, beautiful, climate-killing bill
Posted on 4 June 2025 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington.
Dana will do a Livestream with Yale Climate Connections on the subject today, Wednesday 6/4 at 5–6pm ET as well. Tune in here.
House Republicans worked to eliminate clean energy tax credits in a massive tax bill that they passed in a 215-214 vote early in the morning on Thursday, May 22, 2025. The new bill, named the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” would sunset individual and business incentives created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, such as tax credits for electric vehicle purchases.
A large swath of the public supports such incentives. In a December 2024 survey, researchers at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the publisher of this site, found that 91% of liberal Democrats, 70% of moderate or conservative Democrats, 42% of liberal or moderate Republicans, and 28% of conservative Republicans support tax rebates for electric vehicles. A Yale Climate Connections analysis found that red states stood to benefit the most from the law’s incentives.
In August 2024, 18 Republican members of the House asked Speaker Mike Johnson to protect the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits. That group was led by Rep. Andrew Garbarino, a Republican from New York.
Still, President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise to “terminate” the federal government’s efforts to reduce climate-warming pollution, and on Thursday morning, his Republican colleagues in Congress largely went along with his wishes. Roll Call reported that Garbarino did not vote on the budget reconciliation bill. Two Republicans and all Democrats voted against it.
“This policy about-face couldn’t come at a worse time: Energy prices have surged 30% since 2020,” said Ari Matusiak, CEO of the nonprofit Rewiring America, in a statement. “Maintaining these tax credits gives American households an opportunity to offset these price hikes.”
Which Inflation Reduction Act incentives would end under the House bill?
When Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, they intended the clean energy tax credits to last at least 10 years, through 2032. If the House version of the bill becomes law, the following tax credits would instead largely end on December 31, 2025.
- Used clean vehicle credit and clean vehicle credit | Those who purchase a qualifying electric car are eligible for a tax credit (up to $4,000 back for a used car and $7,500 back for a new car)
- Alternative fuel vehicle refueling property credit | Individuals and businesses that install EV charging stations can get up to 30% (up to a maximum of $1,000 for individuals and $100,000 for businesses) off the cost of the project in the form of tax credits.
- Energy efficient home improvement credit | Homeowners who make qualifying purchases like energy efficient windows, home energy audits, heat pumps, and more qualify for a tax credit worth 30% of the cost (up to $1,200 for energy-efficient property costs and certain energy-efficient home improvements, with limits on exterior doors ($250 per door and $500 total), exterior windows and skylights ($600) and home energy audits ($150). In addition, they can receive up to $2,000 per year for qualified heat pumps, water heaters, biomass stoves, or biomass boilers).
- The residential clean energy credit | Individuals who purchase qualifying clean energy systems like solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal heat pumps, and battery storage for homes that they live in are eligible for a tax credit worth 30% of the costs.
Business clean energy incentives facing early termination
A number of incentives for businesses that invest in clean energy practices or industries will disappear if the Senate passes the budget reconciliation bill as-is. Since 2022, these incentives have boosted manufacturing and industries across the U.S.
Read: Clean energy generates major economic benefits, especially in red states
The tax credits businesses stand to lose at the end of 2025 if the Senate passes the bill:
- Commercial clean vehicles credit | This credit gives businesses and tax-exempt organizations (like churches, universities, and other nonprofits) money back for purchasing a qualified vehicle. Businesses can get $7,500 back for a small vehicle or up to $40,000 for a large vehicle like a school bus or semitruck.
- New energy-efficient home credit | Eligible contractors who build or reconstruct energy-efficient homes can get up to a $5,000 tax credit per house.
- Clean hydrogen production credit | Businesses can receive a credit for each kilogram of qualified clean hydrogen produced by a taxpayer at a qualified clean hydrogen production facility.
Other incentives, including for nuclear power production and wind and solar manufacturing, will be phased out early. Projects must begin construction within 60 days of the bill becoming law and be finished by 2028 to qualify for incentives.
The bill has climate implications beyond gutting clean energy incentives. Climate journalist Emily Atkin reported that the bill is “basically a copy-paste of a secret oil industry wish-list.” Items in the bill include ending a tax on methane pollution and speeding up approval for new fossil fuel projects.
The bill also proposes major cuts to Medicaid, thus limiting access to health care for many vulnerable people, even as climate change increases health risks from weather disasters, insect-borne diseases, and extreme heat. And if passed, the bill would eliminate environmental and climate justice block grants.
As the bill moves through the Senate, it will likely change. But most public reporting suggests that Republican Senators are more interested in changes related to Medicaid and tax cuts than revising the clean energy tax credit language.
This is how it happens/feels theconversation.com/three-scientists-speak-about-what-its-like-to-have-research-funding-cut-by-the-trump-administration-255459
North America isn't the only country now slipping into the corruption of a right wing populous authoritarian government.
I don't know whether it is a moral failure of many of its people and its leaders or perhaps this phys.org/news/2025-02-easily-falls-misinformation.html . I guess its both and when I think of the existential climate crisis I think of this ( maybe not doing what is right for this planet could be called "profoundly corrupt") ? www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fxvhR98eEY
[BL] When you are providing links to other sites, please make an effort to give a brief description of what people will find at those links and why you think they relate to the topic at hand. This is particularly true of video links, which are not easy to scan quickly to find relevant material.
There were two deficit hawks in the House willing to vote against the bill: Thomas Massie (KY) and Warren Davidison (OH). A couple others voted present. Massie earned the ire of Trump but Davidson curried favor by introducing a much-needed bill to study Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Massie is a very smart MIT EE grad who bought and repurposed a used Tesla battery to power his off-grid house. As with the bill, and unlike most other politicians, Massie walks the walk: www.leoweekly.com/news/a-conservative-environmentalist-us-rep-thomas-massie-finds-freedom-in-sustainability-15774583
There are a few more deficit hawks in the Senate, led (sort of) by Ron Johnson. Possibility 1 is the Senate kills the bill although there will be pressure to pass it. Possibility 2 is that the Senate alters it to reduce the deficit. In that case it goes back to the House where it will die a miserable death despite lots of yelling. That's because there are enough Republicans in the House who want more state and local tax deductions, who want to restore the Medicaid money, etc. They were only barely convinced to vote for the bill and will use any excuse to kill it.
Recent news reports have quoted more than one representative that has admitted that they voted for this bill without reading all of it - and that they are surprised to find sections that they don't like.
With a bill this large, it is obviously difficult to be familiar with everything in it - but isn't that their job?
Regarding prove we are smarts very good link on why people are fooled by misinformation. Its known that is partly because they lack critical thinking skills. I think they lack such skills for the following reason: Our entire society is based on obedience to authority, so of course teachers never taught students how to think critically, because they didn't want students questioning the validity of what they say. This has left entire generations of people vulnerable to misinformation.
The situation is slowly improving with meaningful critical thinking skills creeping into curriculums, at least in the final years of schooling. Websites like this are invaluable because they help inform on such skills.
So what happens when / if theres a democratic president? Does it all swing back to support for Paris accords and climate mitigation? Its like a roller coaster of policy. The UK has tried to get around this problem. It created an independent non partisan committeec alled the climate change committe to advise governments on climate mitigation related decisions. The UK have also made quite good progress on some aspects of mitigation so the committe seems to have been a success even although it doesn't have the power to make decisions itself. Generally governmnets of all colours seem to have agreed to take its recommendations seriously. Refer:
www.theccc.org.uk/
Something related. Regarding the Republicans unfortunate anti science agenda.The Economist Journal has a excellent article on the anti science agenda in its May 24th - 30th editions titled "Americas assault on science". You can read it online in the link below. You need to sign up for an account, but they give you a couple of articles for free each month, or you can subscribe and pay for full access.
www.economist.com/leaders/2025/05/22/magas-assault-on-science-is-an-act-of-grievous-self-harm
I offer this as building on the comments so far (and to intentionally properly use the term woke to try to counteract the destructive misleading marketing efforts of the anti-woke crowd).
I particularly want to build on Bob Loblaw’s point that there are “more than one representative that has admitted that they voted for this bill without reading all of it - and that they are surprised to find sections that they don't like.”
In addition, many voters may also claim they were not fully aware of all the intentions of the individuals and party they voted for - and they do not like many of the things those elected representatives are doing. (as noted in the article “42% of liberal or moderate Republicans, and 28% of conservative Republicans support tax rebates for electric vehicles.”)
In both cases, elected representatives and voters not being more aware, the problem is individuals being selective about their learning in pursuit of personal benefit. They do not care to be governed by the undeniably more important objective of having increased awareness and learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others (being helpfully woke to harmful developments).
Of course, there is also the problem of liking/desiring a particular action so much that as long as that action is achieved any other actions that are ‘claimed to be disliked’ are considered to be acceptable political ‘collateral damage’. They like their ‘favourite actions’ so much that they would consider any harmful consequences understandably related to them getting what they want to be justified and excusable.
Too many people, voters and elected representatives, will believe that any harm done by their desire to benefit from increasing the total global climate change harm done, or any other understandably harmful desire, is justified and excusable.
nigelj @5,
The Republican anti-science attitude is nothing new.
Al Gore made a detailed presentation of the Republican penchant for misunderstanding things in his 2007 book "The Assault on Reason".
Building further on my comment @6,
The collection of harmful actions in the Big Beautiful Bill, and the fact that many supporters of the Bill and the Party that made-it-up claim to have been unaware of some of the harmful elements, indicates that a new way to evaluate and position political groups would be helpful.
The existing evaluations like, Right-Left, Liberal-Conservative, Capitalist-Socialist, Democratic-Authoritarian are useful ways to differentiate political groups. But I think a new scale would be Most Helpful. It would be a scale between the extremes of:
The Big Beautiful Bill contains more actions on the Right of that scale than the ‘anti-future of humanity actions’ that will undeniably increase the magnitude of global warming and climate change harm done (and other related pollution and environmental damage harms).
The Big Beautiful Bill is far from ‘Centrist (the middle of the scale)’. It is very close to the extreme of ‘anti-woke, anti-science, harmful to the future of humanity’.
Tragically, many people, especially young men (see Harmful masculinities among younger men in three countries: Psychometric study of the Man Box Scale - linked here), can be misled to hope to benefit from those unkind kinds of leadership action.
The following quote of the opening paragragh of the above linked article indicates how young men could still support leadership that causes increased climate change harm for other reasons even if they have a good understanding of the harm they will suffer due to human caused global warming and climate chnage.
There is strong evidence that young men who subscribe to inequitable gender norms (e.g., believe women are solely responsible for household chores and child-rearing) (Pulerwitz and Barker, 2008) and endorse dominant and hostile forms of masculinities (e.g., believe women are sexual conquests) (Pulerwitz and Barker, 2008) have higher rates of perpetrating psychological, physical, and sexual violence against women (Pulerwitz and Barker, 2008; Jewkes et al., 2011; Malamuth et al., 1995; Parrott and Zeichner, 2003; Good et al., 1995; Schwartz et al., 2005; Copenhaver et al., 2000; Eisler et al., 2000; Jakupcak et al., 2002; Barker et al., 2011). Violence against women is a global health epidemic in which one in three women are impacted during their lifetime, leading to adverse health outcomes, such as depression, sexually transmitted infections, and exacerbation of chronic health conditions (World Health Organization, 2013). Research also shows emerging evidence of an association between “harmful masculinities” and perpetrating verbal and physical abuse, cyber bullying, and aggression towards gay, lesbian, and transgender people or those who do not conform to hetero-normative gender norms (Leemis et al., 2018; Steinfeldt et al., 2012; Leone and Parrott, 2015; Parrot, 2009; Vincent et al., 2011; Kelley and Gruenewald, 2015; Reidy et al., 2009; Espelage et al., 2018). Furthermore, studies have explored the impact of “harmful masculinities” on the health of the individual who endorses them, including poor care-seeking behaviors, and mental and sexual health outcomes (Pulerwitz and Barker, 2008; Barker et al., 2011; Barker, 2000; Rivers and Aggleton, 1999; Addis, 2008; Barker and Ricardo, 2005; American Psychological Association, Boys and Men Guidelines Group, 2018; Jakupcak et al., 2017; Courtenay, 2000; Oliffe, 2009; Cho and Kogan, 2017). A recent study estimated that eliminating these hegemonic masculine norms could save the United States (U.S.) economy $15.7 billion (Heilman et al., 2019).
nigelj, OPOF:
Chris Mooney's 2005 book The Republican War on Science documents a long history of attacks on science. The Wikipedia link includes some criticism of the book, but I think the positive reviews are pretty strong. (Yes, I have read the book.) Climate, evolution, tobacco, medicine - many topics that go against either religious beliefs or industrial/economic special interests.
The current US administration seems determined to destroy the institutions that have fought to protect the environment, the consumer, the law-abiding citizens, etc. All to suit the ultra-wealthy oligarchs. Changing control of the legislative and executive branches away from the current power-hungry zealots will take a long time to rebuild an effective government system. That system has been decaying for a long time.