US: Washington to spend over $500 billion on climate in next decade, study says

With climate change becoming a long-running issue that lawmakers look to address, the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was a significant step toward fighting the climate crisis. A study found that the United States government is going to spend over $500 billion to address climate change over the next 10 years.

A study by the nonprofit RMI published Monday found that Washington is set to spend more than $500 billion on the climate crisis over the next decade.

The amount comes from the tally of the recently passed laws: the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure law that was passed last year. All three laws would help fund climate-related research and pilot studies, and manufacturing.

“Together they form a coherent green industrial policy in the sense that there are strategic industries that they focus on and a set of tools designed to accelerate production up and down the supply chain,” said the report’s co-author, Lachlan Carey.

Making up the $514 billion total in funds for climate are $362 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, $98 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure law, and $54 billion in the CHIPS Act.

However, Congress will have to pass another legislation for some of the funding to be released. The report did not include additional agriculture and land-related climate spending.

The study found that the annual federal spending for climate and clean energy in the next five years would be around 15 times more than that of the 1990s and the early 2000s and triple that of recent years.

Meanwhile, the country’s top infectious disease expert who advised seven US Presidents in his 54 years of service, Dr. Anthony Fauci, announced Monday that he is resigning in December.

Fauci, who drew the ire of Republicans over COVID-19 guidelines and vaccinations, will be stepping down from his position as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, and the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Fauci served as NIAID chief since 1984.

“I definitely feel it was worth staying as long as I have. It’s unfortunate, but it is a fact of life that we are living in a very, very divisive society right now,” Fauci told reporters, adding that he never considered resigning because of the death threats he and his family have received from Republicans.