Climate experts experience an odd sensation after the Manchin budget deal: optimism

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/29/ [login to see] /climate-experts-experience-an-odd-sensation-after-the-manchin-budget-deal-optimi
In just under two weeks, the United States went from shirking its climate pledges to breaking ground trying to meet them.

The nearly $370 billion energy and climate spending deal struck between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and conservative Democrat Joe Manchin would be the single largest federal clean energy investment in U.S. history. While it falls short of the $555 billion package Democrats proposed last year, preliminary assessments of the legislation by climate change modeling experts indicate that it would put the United States in a much stronger position to meet its pledges.

"It really makes me incredibly optimistic," said Jesse Jenkins, leader of the REPEAT Project at Princeton University, which analyzes the impact of government climate actions.

With the new policies in the bill, called the "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" (IRA), Senate Democrats ballparked that the United States could lower its greenhouse gas emission by 40% from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. That does not quite meet President Biden's stated goal of reducing emissions by at least half at that point.