The Campaign for the Future: The Long Road to the Inflation Reduction Act

A presentation from 2023–2024 Jeffrey S. and Margaret Mais Padnos Fellow Leah Stokes

Leah Stokes is the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She works on energy, climate, and environmental policy. Her award-winning book Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States (Oxford University Press, 2020) examines why we are behind on climate action, telling the history of fossil fuel companies and electric utilities promoting climate denial and delay.

At Radcliffe, Stokes is writing a book documenting how climate policy rose to the top of the agenda, became a priority in Congress, and eventually became law through the Inflation Reduction Act. This project will use ethnography and interviews with leading organizers and policymakers.

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