Audience: Frontline Communities

Disruptive capacity is one of the five “critical capacities*” we focus on at the Lab, which we explored on our Spring Community Call*. During that call, Lab members expressed a particularly strong interest in learning and growing their understanding of disruptive capacity and its role in supporting a powerful climate movement. Read on to learn more about disruptive capacity, what we’re learning from organizations that are employing disruptive tactics, and recommendations for organizations looking to build more disruptive capacity.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will invest $40 billion total, including $27 billion in direct spending, towards environmental justice communities and low-income residents—despite supporters claiming that the amount is $60 billion. Just Solutions Collective performed its own section-by-section analysis of the IRA’s text, adding up appropriations and other tailored spending to produce its own calculation. In total, the IRA includes $228 billion in appropriations and an additional $324 billion in tax expenditures. Direct appropriations in the IRA for environment, climate, and energy total $145 billion. This is dwarfed by the $270 billion provided in energy-related tax expenditures, through a variety of tax credits intended to incentivize primarily the private sector to invest in different aspects of the alternative energy economy: from mining companies extracting lithium to factories manufacturing inverters to refineries making biomass-based jet fuel to utilities installing solar arrays.