Source: RealClimate: Climate impacts of the #IRA
…The biggest unknowns are the geopolitical implications. Now that the US federal government is finally acting on climate, what impact does that have on the eagerness of China or India to fulfill their pledges or even increase their ambition? How much global technological innovation will be spurred by these investments? Historically, these estimates have tended to be conservative (i.e. the indirect impacts have generally proven to be much larger than anticipated). Thus predicting the eventual impacts on temperatures and other climate variables is fraught with uncertainty – not that that will prevent some folks from making all the minimizing assumptions and ignoring any follow-ons and international impacts…
However, the key point to remember is that global warming will only stop once we get to global net zero CO2 emissions (with minor caveats related to methane and aerosol levels). So estimated changes in US emissions on the order of 40% is very significant and, for the first time, commensurate with the size of the problem. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, this might not be the beginning of the end for climate policy, but it is likely to be the end of the beginning – at least at the federal US level.
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