The IRA is a fantastic overall piece of legislation that gives us a fighting chance. Most policy experts agree that it has a lot of very achievable goals -- thanks to its structure that offers uncapped subsidies for certain beneficial productions that are estimated to represent well over a trillion dollars in real investment, on top of the fact that renewable energy already out-competes fossil on NEARLY all financial metrics.
And if Biden loses, huge amounts of this progress can be undone by executive action, inaction, and feebleness by a Trump administration. Which he, I remind everyone has pledged to do.
If the bill lasts more than a couple of years, it will build its own constituency a la medicare and become VERY sticky and hard to remove. But it's very vulnerable right now.
So yeah, as someone who thinks climate is the top issue everyone should be caring about since it represents an existential threat to our entire human race, I think it's fine for Biden to focus for the next year on winning that election. If he wins that election, most of the very significant progress will get 4 more years to cure -- it will be pretty well locked in and indeed many growing industries will be craving more. Rural states seeing major investment for the first time in decades in the form of renewable energy industry will want more. It has the potential to be really transformational.
Plenty of solid reasons to criticize Biden. Climate is not one of them. He's made progress that is difficult to fathom for people who only have cursory knowledge of the US energy economy.