Yesterday, Senate Democrats made a surprise announcement that they finally had a climate bill likely to clear the chamber after Sen. Joe Manchin (D – West Virginia) finally acquiesced after blocking a series of earlier efforts. Unfortunately, the bill, dubbed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, offered almost no support for transit, housing, or investments in walking, rolling, and biking. Instead, the bill’s $369 billion in investments over the next decade are overwhelmingly centered around electric vehicle (EV) rebates and clean energy.

While many environmentalists appear to be celebrating the legislation as a promising step in the right direction, for urbanists, it’s hard not to lament the failure to grapple with the underlying car dependence and sprawling land use that undergirds American’s massive fossil fuel habit and heavy impact on the environment. As the proposed bill demonstrates, American climate and transportation policy continues to be all about cars.

An urbanist approach to climate action would rightly tackle sprawl and car dependence head on. It would entail an aggressive expansion of transit, a rapid buildout of energy-efficient sustainable social housing in transit-rich areas, pedestrianized green streets, protected bike routes, electric bike rebates, street trees, wider sidewalks, and low-emission zones to vastly improve quality of life in cities. It may sound like a pipedream to American ears, but climate-leading countries are already implementing much of this package.

It's nice to see the US taking action on climate change—it is a huge deal to finally have a bill. But, when it comes to transport, this bill is one-dimensional & unlikely to be transformative. It will not do much to contribute to producing vibrant, green cities we need.

Instead, here in America, we double down on our car-based lifestyle and keep the same sprawling land use and car-first planning, but with electric cars grafted on top of this destructive and inequitable system. Yes, the proposed bill will help on climate, but only so much. Other problems like the housing affordability crisis and the traffic safety crisis — nearly 40,000 Americans die in car crashes every year — remain unaddressed. Cleaner traffic jams may not offer much solace to frustrated commuters. And electric cars are cleaner, not 100% clean. Toxic chemicals from car tires will still threaten salmon runs and other ecosystems and contribute to the particulate pollution that causes asthma. Heavier battery-laden electric cars are likely to be even more deadly for pedestrians, and rising pedestrian fatalities are already a troubling national trend.

Still in a time of political gridlock and apathy, it is commendable that Senate Democrats are on the verge of passing a climate bill — assuming Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic caucus’s other squeaky conservative wheel in the senate, goes along. Lowering energy costs in a time of high inflation is a good move, and it could repair some faith in the Democratic Party’s ability to get stuff done at the federal level.

“Both high energy costs, and the growing impacts of climate change, pose a significant burden to every American,” Senate Democrats wrote in their summary of the bill. “The historic investments included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will bring down consumer energy costs, increase American energy security, while substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

The sponsors go on to claim that the bill’s combined investments “would put the U.S. on a path to roughly 40% emissions reduction by 2030, and would represent the single biggest climate investment in U.S. history, by far.” Economic modelers at Rhodium Group said that the 40% figure was “plausible” after an initial review of the bill, Vox‘s Rebecca Leber reported.

“Without any new action from Congress or the president, economic modelers at Rhodium Group estimated that climate emissions are on track to be, by 2030, somewhere between 24 percent and 35 percent lower than they were in 2005, the peak year for carbon emissions,” Leber wrote. “That’s not a lot, even if it sounds like it: Biden had set a target under the Paris climate agreement of slashing those 2005 levels in half by the end of the decade.”

In other words, the climate bill still wouldn’t get us to our Paris climate agreement commitments and that 40% figure piggybacks on emissions reductions that are already expected. A 40% emissions reduction sounds hopeful, but it’s also important to note that electric car incentives do not have a stellar track record at propelling EVs to market dominance. California has had similar electric car rebates in place for a decade, but adoption was still slow, and the state has only reached the point where 12% of new car sales are EVs. And even once nearly all new car sales are electric, it still will take the better part of a decade for the car fleet to turn over as people gradually replace their aging vehicles.

The bill’s investments in solar and wind power, energy efficiency, and clean technology research are certainly wise and will pay dividends in emissions reductions. But, nonetheless, it’s still not enough to rectify the climate crisis or deliver for Americans the true mobility justice and choices they deserve.

The $2 trillion climate plan that President Biden campaigned on was much more ambitious than what the U.S. Senate is weighing now. The Senate’s $369 billion 10-year bill whittled down the House bill’s $555 billion for climate investments, but kept many of its programs at lesser levels. Gone are the public transit and high speed rail investments that headlined the president’s earlier climate vision. And the $300 million Biden had proposed for affordable housing creation in his earlier jobs plan also hasn’t found traction, with investment absent in it from both the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed late last year and the new Senate climate bill.

Despite everything it’s not, the Senate climate bill is still better than nothing. Below are the programs in the bill according to the summary provided by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his caucus.

American Energy Security and Domestic Manufacturing ($64.5 billion)

Invest in Communities and Environmental Justice ($10 billion)

Farmers, Forestland Owners and Resilient Rural Communities (~$30 billion)

Doug Trumm is the executive director of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrianizing streets, blanketing the city in bus lanes, and unleashing a mass timber building spree to end the affordable housing shortage and avert our coming climate catastrophe. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. He lives in East Fremont and loves to explore the city on his bike.

Check out The Urbanist’s summer tour series. Next up, we’re in Bellevue. On Saturday August 6, we’re hosting a Wilburton light rail station area walking tour starting at 11am. On Saturday August 13, we’re doing a Wilburton biking tour starting at 11am. Details and registration here.

Toshiko Grace Hasegawa, a Seattle Port commissioner and rising star in local politics, joined us for our June virtual meetup. Watch the video.

Claudia Balducci, King Council Council Chair and chair of the Sound Transit System Expansion Committee, was our May Meetup guest. Watch the video.

Our April Meetup guest was Marc Dones, CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. We did a deep dive on the housing and homelessness crisis. Watch the video.

On March 8th, we hosted Anna Zivarts, director of the Disability Mobility Initiative. We talked about how to make our transportation network work for everyone, disabled and able-bodied, driver and nondriver. Watch the video.