Child Influencers in Illinois Will Be Able to Sue if Earnings Aren’t Set Aside

CHICAGO — Illinois is the first state in the U.S. to ensure child social media influencers are compensated for their work, according to Sen. David Koehler, of Peoria, who sponsored a bill that was signed into law and will go into effect on July 1, 2024.

“The rise of social media has given children new opportunities to earn a profit,” Koehler said in an emailed press release after the bill was signed Friday afternoon. “Many parents have taken this opportunity to pocket the money, while making their children continue to work in these digital environments.”

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The idea for the law, which covers children under the age of 16 featured in monetized online platforms, including video blogs (also known as vlogs), was brought to Koehler by a 15-year-old in his district, the Democratic senator said.

Besides coordinated dances and funny toddler comments, family vlogs nowadays may share intimate details of their children’s lives — grades, potty training, illnesses, misbehaviors, first periods — for countless strangers to view. Brand deals featuring the internet’s darlings can reap tens of thousands of dollars per video, but so far there are minimal regulations for the “sharenthood” industry, which experts say can cause serious harm to children.

“Videos with kids do really well,” said Bobbi Althoff, a TikToker with more than 5 million followers who used to feature her young daughter in paid advertising, but has since decided not to for privacy reasons.

Many states already require parents to set aside earnings for child entertainers who perform in more traditional settings such as movies and television, but Illinois’ law will be the first to specifically target social media starlets, according to Landon Jacquinot, who is tracking child labor legislation for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“We could see other states looking into doing something similar, especially in states that have a high volume of family vloggers and social media influencers,” such as California and New York, Jacquinot said. “It’s kind of a new world.”

The Illinois law will entitle child influencers to a percentage of earnings based on how often they appear on video blogs or online content that generates at least 10 cents per view. To qualify, the content must be created in Illinois, and kids would have to be featured in at least 30% of the content in a 30-day period.

Video bloggers — or vloggers — would be responsible for maintaining records of kids’ appearances and must set aside gross earnings for the child in a trust account for when they turn 18; otherwise, the child can sue.

Children “deserve to be shielded from parents who would attempt to take advantage of their child’s talents and use them for their own financial gain,” said Alex Gough, a spokesperson for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, after the governor signed the legislation.

Shreya Nallamothu, the teen who brought her concerns to Koehler and set the legislation in motion, first zeroed in on the issue while scrolling through social media during quarantine three years ago.

“I realized that there’s a lot of exploitation that can happen within the world of ‘kidfluencing,’” said Nallamothu, now 16. “And I realized that there was absolutely zero legislation in place to protect them.”

She clarified that the law is not meant for parents who share photos of their kids on social media for family and friends, or even those who post a viral video. “This is for families who make their income off of child vlogging and family vlogging,” she said.

Lawmakers in Illinois, where Democrats hold a supermajority, passed the bill in May with bipartisan support.

Other Democratic-led states have made efforts to regulate the child influencer industry with less success. A 2018 California child labor bill included a social media provision that was removed by the time it was passed. Washington state’s 2023 bill — spearheaded by Chris McCarty, another teen and the founder of Quit Clicking Kids, an advocacy organization focused on protecting minors being monetized online — stalled out in committee.

“I sincerely hope that this momentum continues in other states and eventually nationwide,” McCarty said Friday about the Illinois law.

But several Republican-led states this year have instead loosened child labor laws to help alleviate workforce shortages. An Iowa law signed at the end of May allows teenagers to work more jobs and for longer hours, and Arkansas in March eliminated permits that required employers to verify a child’s age and a parent’s consent.

source https://time.com/6304457/child-influencers-illinois-earnings/

Russia Downs 20 Drones Over Crimea Following a Spate of Attacks on Moscow

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia thwarted an attack by 20 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow-annexed Crimea overnight, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday.

Fourteen drones were shot down by Russian air defenses and a further six were jammed electronically, the ministry said in a Telegram post. No casualties or damage were reported. Kyiv officials neither confirmed nor denied Ukraine’s involvement in the attacks.

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As videos circulated on Russian social media Saturday appearing to show smoke rising above a bridge linking Russia to Crimea, the annexed peninsula’s Moscow-appointed governor, Sergei Aksyonov, reported that Russian air defense had also prevented an attack there by shooting down two Ukrainian missiles.

The bridge was not damaged, he said, although traffic was briefly halted. An adviser to Aksyonov, Oleg Kryuchkov, claimed that “a smoke screen was put up by special services.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the attempted attack on the Crimean bridge. The ministry said in a statement that such “barbaric actions” by the Armed Forces of Ukraine “will not go unanswered.”

Shortly after reporting the downing of the two Ukrainian missiles, Aksyonov said Russian air defense had shot down another missile over the Kerch Strait.

The bridge connecting Crimea and Russia across the Kerch Strait carries heavy significance for Moscow, both logistically and psychologically, as a key artery for military and civilian supplies and as an assertion of Kremlin control of the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014.

Last week, a Ukrainian sea drone hit a Russian tanker near the bridge, while an attack on the bridge last month killed a couple and seriously wounded their daughter, leaving a span of the roadway hanging perilously. The damage appeared to be less severe than that caused by an assault in October, but it again highlighted the bridge’s vulnerability.

The attempted drone and missile attacks follow three consecutive days of drone attacks on the Russian capital, Moscow. Firing drones at Russia, after more than 17 months of war, has little apparent military value for Ukraine but the strategy has served to unsettle Russians and bring home to them the conflict’s consequences.

Drone attacks have increased in recent weeks both on Moscow and on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 — a move that most of the world considered illegal.

Elsewhere, Russia claimed Saturday it had regained control of the village of Urozhaine in Ukraine’s easternmost Luhansk region in an overnight counterattack.

A 73-year-old woman was killed early Saturday morning in Russian shelling of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, according to regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.

Ukrainian internal affairs minister Ihor Klymenko said a police officer was killed and 12 people wounded when a guided Russian aerial bomb hit the city of Orikhiv in Ukraine’s partially occupied southern Zaporizhzhia region. Four of the wounded were also police officers, he said.

In the neighboring Kherson province, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said that two people were wounded in Russian attacks on Saturday. A 70-year-old was wounded when a shell hit a residential building in the village of Ponyativka, while a man, 72, was hurt when a drone dropped explosives on the village of Odradokamyanka.

A 70-year-old man was wounded when a shell hit a residential building in the village of Ponyativka, while a 72-

Local officials said explosions rang out Saturday morning in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown, but that there were no known casualties.

On Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, the city of Odesa opened several beaches for the first time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Odesa Gov. Oleh Kiper said that six beaches were open, but he stressed that accessing beaches during air raid alerts was forbidden.

The strategic port and key hub for exporting grain has been subject to repeated missile and drone attacks — particularly since Moscow canceled a landmark grain deal last month amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories — while Russian mines have regularly washed up on the city’s beaches.

source https://time.com/6304425/russia-downs-20-drones-crimea/

A Cherished Weekend Flea Market in the Ukrainian Capital Survives Despite War

KYIV, Ukraine — The Pochaina neighborhood in the Ukrainian capital comes alive every weekend as hundreds of people flock to its famous flea market, looking for finds.

Antique-hunters, collectors and many others look over seemingly endless rows of trinkets and time-worn wares. It’s a dizzying array that includes Soviet-era relics such as decorative medals, ceramics with communist leaders’ portraits, Cold War-era gas masks and military uniform items.

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Despite Ukraine’s ban on Soviet and Nazi symbols adopted in 2015 as a part of the country’s effort to distance itself from its totalitarian past, vendors, buyers and law enforcement all seem undisturbed by such historic relics being openly sold.

“It’s purely business, there are no (USSR) sympathizers around here. Items like this are in high demand,” says Kristian Zander, a 49-year-old market vendor, pointing at the “Buying USSR relics” sign at his stand. On display are kitchenware and utensils, hunting knives, Soviet badges and bottle openers.

The market has survived the Russia-Ukraine war, even with the disappearance of tourists and the decreasing purchasing power of most Ukrainians.

Despite more and more buyers having to tighten their belts, the market still offers a large and eclectic variety of goods to those with any money to spend. A single vendor may sell items including almost-vintage VHS tapes, World War II dishware, manicure scissors, brand-name sneaker knockoffs, decades-old lingerie, broken multimedia players and cracked guitars. The vendor often hopes to sell the wares for pennies before they go to waste.

source https://time.com/6304420/ukrainian-flea-market/

Celebrities Are Getting Full-Body Health Scans—Should You?

Convincing Americans to get their recommended health screenings can be an uphill battle. Data show that lots of people skip suggested cancer screenings even though they’re typically covered by insurance.

And yet, even as lots of people forgo routine care, a certain type of wellness-minded consumer is hungry for as much health data as they can find, giving rise to a market for pricey proactive tests, scans, and screenings done mostly for curiosity or peace of mind—and sometimes against the recommendations of medical experts.

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In recent years, millions of people have bought direct-to-consumer tests to screen their saliva, blood, or urine for markers of future disease, and companies—including the now-infamous Theranos—have raked in millions of dollars in funding to provide such services. Some people have spent thousands of dollars for “executive” or “white glove” physical exams that include a battery of tests. And celebrities, most recently Kim Kardashian, have preached the benefits of expensive full-body MRI scans, which promise to detect health problems early.

The pandemic likely plays a part in this trend—survey data suggest many Americans feel more health-conscious now than before it—but it predates COVID-19.

When standard care isn’t sufficient

For some people, proactive services may fill a void left by standard U.S. medical care, with its long waits, short appointments, and rushed providers. For others, it may feel like the logical next step in a culture where measuring steps, sleep, and calories is now standard. Or maybe, says Dr. Marianne Dubard-Gault, an oncologist, geneticist, and preventive medicine doctor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, it’s about a sense of control and a desire to fend off the randomness of chronic disease.

Some studies have found that full-body scans can catch early signs of cancer and other health problems in some patients. People with family histories or other risk factors for certain diseases may particularly benefit from extra screenings, Dubard-Gault says.

But other medical experts believe the trend has gone too far.

“People [think] that knowing about something is always good,” says Dr. Jeffrey Linder, chief of general internal medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. But “there’s a reason why doctors don’t test everybody for everything all the time.”

Many people have nodules, cysts, or masses in their bodies that could look concerning on a scan, but are actually harmless; similarly, some test results may fall outside the “normal” range without actually being dangerous, Linder says. It’s hard not to get anxious about an abnormal finding, though, so many patients end up scheduling follow-up tests that may be risky, invasive, expensive, and ultimately unnecessary, he says.

Read More: The 4 Types of Doctors Visits You Should Make For a Long, Healthy Life

A 2019 research review concluded that “healthcare providers should not offer whole‐body MRI for preventive health screening to asymptomatic subjects outside of a research setting,” noting that such scans often produce false positives or inconclusive results that require potentially unnecessary follow-up care. Medical groups including the American College of Preventive Medicine, American College of Radiology, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have taken similar positions, citing limited evidence that proactive scans provide measurable benefits to most healthy people.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)—a group of experts who issue screening guidelines that inform both clinical practice and insurance coverage policies—has not made a specific recommendation about full-body scans. “We would encourage people to focus on preventive services that are proven to keep people healthy,” USPSTF chair Dr. Michael Barry said in a statement provided to TIME.

Some experts even argue that Americans should be getting screened less, not more, than they already are. There are good data to back certain screenings, such as for colorectal cancer, but debate about how well some, such as a blood test that can help assess prostate-cancer risk, actually prolong life. Only 14% of cancers in the U.S. are diagnosed through screening tests, some research suggests.

Certain experts have been similarly hesitant about direct-to-consumer testing services, some of which claim to reveal genetic predispositions to disease.

There can be value in genetic testing, even for seemingly healthy people, Dubard-Gault says. Lots of people don’t know they carry markers for cancer, and having that information could inform their medical care moving forward. But “context matters,” she says.

Interpreting the results

Dubard-Gault’s “secret sauce” as a physician, she says, is interpreting test results while taking into account a person’s entire health profile. Much of that granularity is lost when someone takes an at-home test, which also may not be as accurate or comprehensive as those ordered by a medical professional, she says. “You do need a health care professional to do this,” Dubard-Gault says. “The interpretation of all of these is not trivial.”

Despite reservations from experts, these services aren’t likely to fade away any time soon. Body-scanning company Prenuvo has performed “tens of thousands” of scans since 2009 and increased the number of MRI machines in its fleet by 500% since 2020, according to a company spokesperson; it reportedly plans to open new U.S. clinics soon. And the self-testing market, buoyed by widespread use of at-home COVID-19 diagnostics, is projected to nearly double in valuation over the next decade. As the market expands, Dubard-Gault says, so does demand from patients.

Some people may see benefits. But Linder worries that as such services become more widespread, their lofty promises about improving health may distract from the things that are proven to work: the “boring” but effective essentials like eating a balanced diet, exercising, and getting plenty of sleep.

source https://time.com/6304107/full-body-mri-health-scan/

Saudi Pro League Spent Big Money on Big Stars. But the Fans Aren’t a Sure Bet

After months of courting big-name European soccer champions and signing them with eye-watering price tags, Saudi Arabia’s Pro League kicks off with its most star-studded and highly-anticipated season since its founding back in 1976.

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This year’s inaugural game on Friday will see Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ahli face off against Al-Hazm.

The kingdom has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into attracting top European talent, including Cristiano Ronaldo, who joined Al Nassr last year as part of a €200 million ($219 million) per year package that makes him the world’s highest paid athlete. Other top players that have recently joined Saudi teams include Karim Benzema in a $107 million deal with Al Ittihad, Sadio Mané in a $43.83 million deal with Al Nassr, and Riyad Mahrez with a $32 million deal with Al-Ahli. (Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé turned down even more staggering sums to join the Saudi league.)

The recruitment drive follows a deal that saw Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund take ownership of the nation’s top four soccer clubs. The soccer league also announced that it has entered into a range of broadcast deals with as many as 130 global markets, excluding the U.S.

“I’ve worked in sport for 40 years and I’ve never seen a project as big, as ambitious and as determined to be a success,” Peter Hutton, who sits on the Pro League’s board, told the BBC.

With all the money and talent being poured into Saudi soccer clubs, here’s what to know.

Why is Saudi Arabia investing so much in soccer?

In 1994, Saudi Arabia qualified for the World Cup for the first time, a boon for the sport’s popularity in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia has since regularly qualified for the tournament and, when it comes to the Asian Champions League, has ranked fairly well in recent years. The decision to invest more in Saudi Arabia’s most popular sport is logical, says Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at France’s SKEMA Business School.

In 2015, the nation’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, decided to privatize Saudi’s soccer clubs, which had previously relied on the government to pay off their debts. The move paved the way for increased sponsorship deals, merchandising, and ticket sales that Saudi officials hope will help diversify their oil-dependent economy.

“The ultimate ambition as a result of this privatization program is for Saudi Arabia’s League and its clubs to start appearing in global rankings of the most commercially lucrative leagues and teams in the world,” Chadwick says.

To some degree, soccer is also being used as a tool to liberalize social mores in the ultra-conservative kingdom. 2018 marked the first time women could buy tickets to attend soccer matches, and in 2022, Saudi Arabia’s national women’s team won its first ever international tournament against Pakistan.

Will non-Saudis tune into the Pro League?

With broadcasting deals across the globe, including a landmark one with British sports broadcaster DAZN, Saudi leaders are certainly hoping so.

Moqbel al-Zabni, the editor-in-chief of the Saudi capital’s ar-Riyadiyah newspaper, told Al Jazeera that officials want “the compass of professional football to point to the Middle East and the Arab world.”

But Chadwick and others have raised concerns about whether the league’s approach is sustainable. “The big challenge for Saudi Arabia is to make sure that this isn’t just a 2023 phenomenon and people are still watching, still listening, still engaging years later,” he says, adding that the Chinese Super League followed a similar trajectory but failed to retain major fan interest over time.

The English Premier League, by far the world’s most popular league, established its profile organically over decades. The fact that these deals also target the world’s biggest stars, at the tail-end of their soccer years, raises further concerns about the sustainability of the approach.

“Unless there is an alternative model that Saudi Arabia can derive from its [soccer], then essentially for the foreseeable future, at least, it’s going to be locked into signing these kinds of big name players,” Chadwick says.

Read More: Stunning Golf Merger Shows How Saudi Cash Could Change Sports

Is the big-money another sign of ‘sportswashing’?

Soccer is hardly the only sport that Saudi Arabia has poured billions of dollars into. The kingdom has spent $10 billion on players, teams, and leagues across soccer and golf, according to the Economist, with many accusing Saudi Arabia of “sportswashing” to burnish its reputation globally. The kingdom has come under growing criticism for its human rights record, including the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

“Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi government has spent billions of dollars investing in sport to deliberately mask the country’s egregious human rights record,” Joey Shea, a Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch, tells TIME. “MBS has aggressively bankrolled and expanded investments in major sports to deflect criticism from rights abuses, while Saudi authorities have nimbly evaded accountability for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder and other terrible crimes,” she adds. 

Others, however, see the increased attention on Saudi Arabia because of sport as an opportunity to lobby the kingdom to improve its rights record. For example, global condemnation over the deaths of migrant workers erecting infrastructure for the 2022 Qatar World Cup pushed the nation to reform its labor laws against migrant workers, who form 90% of Qatar’s population.

source https://time.com/6304203/strongsaudi-arabia-soccer-pro-league/

Netflix’s Heart of Stone Is a Mission: Impossible Wannabe That Mostly Misses

The throwaway diversion is nothing new in the world of movies, though the era of content may very well be its golden age. Never has there been so much stuff, of varying quality, for you to put in front of your bored eyeballs. As throwaway diversions go, Netflix’s Heart of Stone—starring Gal Gadot as a secret operative who at one point flies through the air in a puffy flying-squirrel suit—is neither great nor terrible. It occupies that vast middle zone of small-screen movies that easily fill the void of a few empty hours, if you happen to have any to spare, though it’s nothing you’d carve out time in your schedule to watch.

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Read More: Wonder Woman Breaks Through

Gadot’s Rachel Stone is the rookie on a team of MI6 agents, eagerly learning the ropes from her peers. There’s ace driver Bailey (Paul Ready), a sweet, bearded bachelor who’s eager to show off pictures of his adored marmalade cat before anyone even asks; Yang (Jing Lusi), a no-nonsense, take-charge type who doesn’t mind having Rachel under her wing; and well-dressed swagger-dude Parker, played by Jamie Dornan, whose handsomely chiseled face always throws me for a minute when I first see it: Is that one of the Christmas Prince/Princess Switch guys? (Eventually I place him, and although his performance is perfectly serviceable here, it’s good to remember that he was wonderful as the father in Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, and he may very possibly be a brilliant comedic actor, if his turn as sexy evil henchman Edgar Pagét in Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is any indication.)

Cautious newbie Rachel, who’s excellent at following instructions, is exceedingly fond of her colleagues, and she shares their disappointment when they botch the first mission shown in the movie: they’re supposed to nab a baddie at a luxe Italian ski resort—the first of the film’s several handsome locations, which also include Lisbon and Reykjavik—but someone else gets to him first. They return to London not for a new assignment, but to do paperwork. But it’s all OK with Rachel; she’s really more of a behind-the-scenes person anyway.

Read More: The 49 Most Anticipated Movies of 2023

Or is she? The plot of Heart of Stone involves a group of top-level former intelligence agents who comprise the Charter, an organization that makes use, for good not evil, of a vast data-tracking thingie known as the Heart, which has the power to make planes drop out of the sky, highjack nuclear weapons, and so forth. The smarties of the Charter include ringleader Nomad (Sophie Okonedo) and a group of operatives with nicknames drawn from the suits of playing cards (in tiny snippets of screentime, we meet BD Wong’s King of Clubs and Glenn Close’s King of Diamonds). A mysterious tech-head named Keya (Alia Bhatt) seeks control of the Heart. Somehow, Rachel Stone fits into all of this, and she gets to wear some fine spy outfits, including a marshmallowy puffer jacket that magically makes her look slender and, much later, a jersey dress like an orange flame.

In addition, there are lots of explosions and action sequences in Heart of Stone, as well as a pinwheeling car chase, though none of that should come as a surprise. (The director is Tom Harper, who made the lovely 2018 film Wild Rose, starring Jessie Buckley. The script is by Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder.) The movie’s plot is negligible, seemingly stitched from vague bits and bobs of various Mission: Impossible movies—unsurprising because like those pictures, it’s a product of Skydance Media, and quite clearly intended to be the beginning of a franchise. But Heart of Stone is quite glossy and beautiful to look at, and though there’s not much that’s dynamic about her, Gadot at least has a charming insouciance. Even if you’ll be hard-pressed to remember any of it three hours later, the runtime of Heart of Stone flies by quickly enough. But not nearly as fast as Gadot’s character in her flying-squirrel onesie.

source https://time.com/6304150/heart-of-stone-review/

How the Inflation Reduction Act Has Reshaped the U.S.—and The World

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In late July, I visited a steel mill in Gallatin, Ky., operated by the company Nucor. During my visit, I watched as the facility churned out massive rolls of low-carbon steel destined for use in renewable infrastructure. Nucor’s stock price has increased nearly five-fold in the last three years, and the day before I visited the company had announced blockbuster profits citing, in large part, all the demand created by businesses racing to take advantage of money flowing from federal spending programs, including and especially the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

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Kentucky is far from alone. Across the country, the IRA has spurred hundreds of billions of dollars in investment in clean technology. Lithium-ion battery makers are opening factories near auto industry hubs to serve the growing electric vehicle market. Solar manufacturers are setting up shop in red states like Georgia. And old-school oil companies are investing in hydrogen. “It’s a transformation of the economy,” says John Podesta, President Joe Biden’s senior advisor charged with implementing the IRA.

The IRA, which will mark one year since its signing on Aug. 16, is a classic piece of D.C. lawmaking. It came about in a windy legislative process that began with a big campaign promise from Biden and ended with backroom deal-making on Capitol Hill. And it has an odd, misleading name with a funny acronym, to boot. 

But while the law was born in D.C., to understand its impact you need to look outside the capital as it reshapes industry across the country and the world. From Miami to Mumbai, Boise to Brussels, wherever I’ve traveled in the last year, the IRA has been top of mind for policymakers, business leaders, and civil society. It will not only determine whether the U.S. meets its emissions reduction goals, but also shape the global economy for decades to come.  

“I want to make it clear: the Inflation Reduction Act is the single most important climate action since the Paris Agreement in 2015,” Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, told me in May.

‘Quick and immediate’

At the core of the IRA is a mantra oft-repeated by members of the Biden Administration: the law is designed to be private sector-led and government-enabled. Instead of introducing mandates, the IRA offers tax breaks to companies that deploy clean technologies.

The impact was swift. “It was quick, it was immediate, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down,” says Greg Matlock, who leads EY’s Americas Energy Transition practice. Matlock says that “within a week” of the law’s passage he noticed “tangible movement on investments” from clients.

Companies have invested more than $270 billion in U.S.-based clean energy projects—think wind, solar, and battery—since the IRA became law, according to a report from the American Clean Power Association released earlier this week. Electric vehicle technology investment has totalled more than $130 billion, according to White House data. And the private sector is expected to spend trillions more to take advantage of the incentives in the law over the next decade. “People are deploying capital because of the IRA. If you talk to anyone in the finance world, where people are seeing uptake in capital formation is in the clean sectors,” says Podesta. “And there’s no question that the bill itself has spurred this.”

The IRA has also convinced some longtime skeptics of the clean energy transition about the opportunity to make money with lower-carbon solutions. Even as oil and gas companies double down on their commitment to fossil fuels, for example, they have also allocated billions in the past year to pursue technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture that can take advantage of federal subsidies. ExxonMobil is even exploring getting into the lithium game, hoping to exploit its knowledge of drilling to make money off the transition.

Read more: The IRA Is Our Best Shot at Tackling Climate Change—But Only If We Don’t Squander It

The movement on big, capital-intensive projects in manufacturing and the power sector is easiest to see. But forward thinkers in other industries are also considering how IRA incentives can help their bottomline, from tax deductions for energy efficiency in retail space to tax credits for electrifying fleet vehicles. In April, I participated in a discussion with local business leaders in Milwaukee who were all clamoring to learn how their companies could take advantage of the IRA incentives. “Fuel cells, solar, heat pumps, clean vehicles, vehicle charging—there’s something in there for everybody,” said Chuck McGinnis, a vice president at Johnson Controls, a conglomerate that makes HVAC among other things, at the event. 

All of this enthusiasm means that the federal government may end up spending a lot more on the law’s clean-energy incentives than originally thought. Prior to the law’s passing, Congressional backers citing the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the federal government would spend close to $400 billion on the law’s climate provisions. A paper published in March by the Brookings Institution estimated that it could top $1 trillion as companies and consumers take advantage of the law’s uncapped tax incentives. 

A critic of the law might balk at the extra cost to the taxpayer, but there’s another way to look at it: higher uptake means the law is working.

‘Good jobs’

In late June, top officials from the Biden Administration fanned out across the country to make the case to the American public that the IRA and other policies are creating jobs and reinvigorating communities. They were armed with good news: a report from the Department of Energy showed that the U.S. added 114,000 clean energy jobs last year. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited a burgeoning corridor of electric vehicle manufacturing in the southeast that’s become known as the “battery belt,” for example, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan traveled to Vermont to announce a new $7 billion grant program to provide solar power to low-income households.

“What we’re going to do is go out and tell the story,” says Podesta. 

The cable news airwaves may be relatively quiet about the IRA, yet the trillions in investment catalyzed by it have undoubtedly begun to shape politics in the U.S. IRA supporters love to talk about green jobs in red states, particularly in the emerging “battery belt.” Manufacturers of batteries as well as EVs, solar panels, and other technologies have clustered in red states like Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia, leading even some Republican officials, like Trump-aligned GOP Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, to embrace clean energy when the components are being built in their backyard.

But beneath the surface the narrative gets more complicated. Many states winning the race for clean energy investment—think of say Georgia or Tennessee—appeal to companies in part because of their “business friendly” approach. That includes offering tax incentives to attract companies as well as laws that make it more difficult to form unions. The fast pace of the transition—particularly for automakers—has already raised concerns among workers. Ensuring that jobs created by clean energy investment are what Biden has called “good jobs” will be a continuing thread in the coming years. 

Whatever wrinkles that need to be sorted out haven’t stopped officials in red and blue states alike from clamoring for dollars from the law. Beyond the private sector investment, the law funds everything from climate resilience to environmental justice—and cities and states have an important role to play in implementing it. 

In Boise in April, I attended a dinner with Mayor Lauren McLean who said the law can help the city achieve its goal of running its facilities on 100% clean electricity. “We’re blessed by funding from the Inflation Reduction Act,” she said. “It’s allowing me to advance priorities that we had faster.”

Going Global

For all the complexity of domestic politics, the international dynamics may be even more complicated. The law will inevitably help bring down emissions, a win that nearly everyone can get behind. But it favors American industry, something that allies and competitors alike aren’t too happy about.  

The European Union, in particular, went through stages of reaction. First, officials were excited that the U.S. had finally passed a big climate law. Then, upon reading the details, they were outraged by the support for domestic industry. And, finally, they came to accept that the law just meant that the E.U. would need to do more to encourage its own industry. “Any policy you devise… like the IRA right now, has the potential of creating tensions because you’re taking things in a different direction, which was not envisaged when you entered into trade agreements,” Frans Timmermans, executive vice-president of the European Commission, told me last September. 

A few months later, Amitabh Kant, the Indian official charged with leading this year’s G20 summit in India, brought up the IRA before I could even turn to it when we met at his office in Delhi. He told me it was “the most protectionist act ever drafted in the world” and said that its incentives had already stung the nascent Indian hydrogen industry. “You believed in market forces and now you do this?” he told me of his message to U.S. officials.

The uproar has quieted since then. That’s in part because other countries have little recourse to push back, but it’s also the result of a common concern over China. Over the last decade, the country has built out a domestic clean energy supply chain, and now controls production of many necessary products that countries around the world—including the U.S. and in Europe—rely on for green investments. The IRA contributed to a reckoning with this dependency, and now places like the E.U. and India are following in the footsteps of the IRA to finance a buildout of their own domestic industries.

“We spent a lot of time talking to our trading partners,” Podesta says. Now, “we’re working with our friends and allies to create secure supply chains and friendly supply chains rather than fighting about specific provisions of the IRA.”

Regardless of the political and economic wrangling around it, the IRA will ultimately need to be judged on how well it brings down emissions. Analysis from the Rhodium Group shows that with the IRA, complemented by other climate policies on the books, U.S. emissions will decline somewhere between 29% and 42% by 2030 from 2005 levels. 

There’s a significant difference between those two percentages. Some of the factors at play—think of oil prices and economic growth—will be difficult for any political leader or even single government to shape. But other factors, including whether the U.S. can sort out the mess of permitting to get clean energy projects out faster, remain live issues that can be addressed with policy. 

One of the biggest questions that comes up on the road, especially outside the U.S., is whether the IRA would survive a future Republican administration and the whiplash that would accompany it. There’s no question that a future Republican president might succeed at chipping away at the law around the edges, but early indicators suggest that, at its core, the law is here to stay.  

Earlier this year, a contingent of Republicans whose districts are benefiting from clean energy investments pushed back when House Republicans proposed gutting the law as part of budget negotiations. Podesta likens it to the Affordable Care Act, the law passed under President Barack Obama that Republicans tried and failed to repeal: “Once these plants are built, once these jobs are created, it’s going to be hard to reverse that.”

source https://time.com/6304143/inflation-reduction-act-us-global-impact/