new spending to speed up cleanenergy deployment incentivize consumer purchases of electric cars and boost other green priorities alongside expanded federal mandates for oil and gas developmentnow biden has signed it into law i am confident this bill will endure as one of the greatest legislative feats in decades said schumer at the signing on tuesday doing so secures a landmark victory for democrats who acted in unison without a single republican vote and delivers on the climate agenda that formed a part of the presidents campaign promisesits by far the biggest financial commitment the us government has ever made to fight climate change the emissions reductions that will result from this law will be roughly the same as eliminating the annual planetwarming pollution of france and germany combined or about 25 of the total global greenhouse gas output according to researchers who specialize in climate modeling it might be just about enough to revive the virtually leftfordead goal of limiting warming to 15 celsius as enshrined in the paris agreementbut this turning point almost didnt happen perhaps more than any previous moment in the effort to reverse rising temperatures this one hinged on a handful of personalities and interpersonal relationships this is the story of how quiet backchanneling helped shape the climate policies in the new lawgates started wooing manchin and other senators who might prove pivotal for cleanenergy policy in 2019 over a meal in washington dc my dialogue with joe has been going on for quite a while gates said almost everyone on the energy committee of which manchin was then the seniormost democrat came over and spent a few hours with me over dinner with president donald trump in the white house there was little prospect the dinner would turn into sweeping policy still the evening was organized around a very bill gates theme the role of innovation in climate he recalled of the discussion how the us was really the only country given how quickly this needs to get done that has that innovation power in our universities our national labs our risktaking abilitygates asserted to the senators that the world needed american innovation unleashed if there was any hope of halting climate change and it needed to start with leadership in washington dc weve seen in industry after industry how that mattersbut innovations that start in university labs often need even more government support to reach mass adoption according to the way gates sees things take a startup making carbonfree cement success means bringing to market a product thats as much as three times as expensive as normal cement this is no hypothetical for gates his investments through breakthrough energy the gates organization that does climate work has sunk at least tens of millions into green cement startups such as ecocem chement and brimstone none have yet reached commercial scale he saw the bankruptcy filing of a battery startup he backed aquion that might have had a fighting chance if energystorage