Ben Arnoldy

ALT CULTUREELECTRIC VEHICLES SUBSCRIBE POLITICS The Climate Coalition Is Threatening to Split Apart Why permitting reform could break the political alliance that produced America’s most significant climate law JOSH LAPPEN • 06/22/2023 Protesters, the Capitol, and clean energy. Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images The U.S. climate coalition is under serious strain. The tension has been brought to a head by last month’s debt-ceiling compromise, which enacted a variety of reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act and exempted the long-debated Mountain Valley Pipeline from federal environmental review. While environmental groups have decried the concessions as “a colossal error … that sacrifices the climate,” clean-energy trade groups are praising them “an important down payment on much-needed reforms.” This gulf now threatens to disintegrate the political alliance that, less than a year ago, won the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), its most tangible accomplishment and by far the country’s