Today, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. The IRA will cut national greenhouse gas emissions up to 40% by 2030, while also creating 1.5 million new jobs, averting 100,000 asthma cases per year, and potentially preventing 3,900 premature deaths annually, mostly in Black and Brown communities. This is a truly historic win—and it’s all thanks to people like you who have raised their voices and taken action. Grassroots organizing WORKS.

And yet—the devil is in the details. The IRA will also open up millions of acres of public land and water to potential drilling for oil and gas. Most troubling of all, House and Senate leaders have made a sweetheart side deal to bring a vote on a separate bill to smooth the pathway for construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline—a fracked gas pipeline that would cross hundreds of streams and wetlands, some on Indigenous land. 

How can one bill be so good and yet so bad? Yes, two truths that are in conflict are able to exist simultaneously. This new law is both a historic solution and a continuation of the same systems of oppression that caused and perpetuated the climate crisis—including the closed-door side deal for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. No, this isn’t the climate bill we all deserved—but, it is the one we have.

So—today we celebrate and tomorrow we organize.

ACE is committed to continuing our fight to ensure that the next bill actually includes those who will be most impacted at the table—including young people from all backgrounds who will be disproportionately impacted by fossil fuel development and climate destruction. 

We will continue to organize and build local power to fight fossil fuel infrastructure in our communities, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and demand the legislative and executive action needed to address the climate emergency where this bill falls short.

Ready to help? Sign up to attend our national call on September 1 and join the nearly one million ACE Youth Action Network members across the country to find out what you can do to get President Biden and your local governor to use their executive authority to declare a climate emergency NOW.