The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) turns one year old next week — and unless you’ve just woken from a Rip Van Winkle-style slumber, you know it’s the United States' most momentous climate legislation in a generation, intended to cut U.S. climate pollution by up to 42 percent by 2030. 

As the anniversary approaches, I keep thinking about a talk that Columbia University economist and sustainable development authority Dr. Jeffrey Sachs gave at the CDP U.S. Workshop in May. 

The main takeaway of Sachs’ talk? Business net zero plans are inadequate without real climate policy. And the IRA’s not it. So what is truly needed to confront the climate crisis? 

The IRA is limited

Some of the main grounds of Sachs’ lecture have been well-trodden over the IRA’s first year: The legislation itself is not capable of delivering the carbon reductions promised because it’s essentially a set of tax incentives; its provisions are not a plan designed to bring about systemic decarbonization. “It is based on a set of tax credits, because the only thing that works in Washington is tax cuts,” he told a group of dozens of corporate and public sector executives, all of whom report environmental data through CDP. 

The bill gets us part-way there, he said — it just isn’t enough. “So we'll come to 2030 and we'll hear, 'Oh, we didn't quite meet the 40 percent reduction target, but we made some progress. It was a good thing’,” said Sachs, who directs Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development. “But this is really not such a good thing because we're not just talking about the time it takes to reach decarbonization–we're talking about avoiding tipping points."

A broader, more comprehensive global plan

Without holistic policy to transform economic, political and physical systems  — and specifically to overhaul energy, land use and transport — in which the IRA’s tax incentives operate, we simply won’t succeed. That, according to Sachs, “requires a global effort with national governments making national plans, with governments cooperating across borders within their regions, as well as globally. With subnational governments, especially our cities, having the financing and the means to invest in key infrastructure and with businesses aligned with those broader strategies." 

Business cannot solve this alone

Companies, in the above hierarchy, would nest in a broader policy framework, rather than attempting to aggregate emissions reductions largely in isolation. As Sachs put it: "This is n