In August, President Biden’s historic Inflation Reduction Act dedicated about $370 billion in clean energy and climate investments.
But concerns remain about the dangers carbon emissions, changing temperatures, and rising sea levels will have on the climate. Executive Director for the Environmental Resilience Institute at IU Gabe Filippelli warns of the potential dangers if people refuse to take action. He said some project global sea level rises of 22 to 24 feet.
“When you think about that for a minute, it ends up that about 70 percent of the human population and infrastructure on our planet will be under water,” Filippelli said.
Still, Filippelli said he’s encouraged by recent changes made, such as cleaner ways to use electricity, and the overwhelming enthusiasm from the younger generation to make change happen.
Filippelli is the author of Climate Change and Life and Climate Change and Resilience in Indiana and Beyond, which were both released last year. He said the books are honest.
“We’ll show the warts and all,” he said, “but it will also show the positive steps and (that) we engineered our way into some of these messes, but because of that we can engineer our way back out of it as well.”
