Manchin Will Effectively Control Climate Legislation; Nonpartisan Atmospheric CO2 Growth To Continue

[hatrack]

EDIT

He signed a letter in 2016 opposing Obama’s Clean Power Plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power plants—the only Democrat to join with the 33 Republican senators and 171 Republican members of the house who fought the plan. In 2017, he applauded President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. And in recent years, he’s been a major supporter of the Trump administration’s efforts to promote a petrochemical and plastics manufacturing hub in the Upper Ohio River Valley, one that has not materialized.

But Manchin also helped negotiate major energy and pandemic relief legislation in December with a number of clean energy provisions. And when he was governor, he was behind state legislation, which was later repealed, designed to encourage renewable energy and fossil fuels with reduced carbon emissions.

EDIT

“He likes pipelines,” acknowledged Thom Kay, the legislative director with the Appalachian Voices, an environmental group working to create a new economy in the region. “It wasn’t long ago, he was voting against the stream protection rule,” an Obama-era regulation that sought to reduce mining impacts on waterways. But he’s not the same politician on climate issues as he was a decade ago, when he made the ad where he shot the cap-and-trade bill, Kay said. “He is considerably better on climate change than some people might suspect.”

Sen. Manchin “has come a long way in recent years,” said Chuck Keeney, who teaches history at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College. “He came out against mountaintop removal mining, which he had been supportive of, and he’s been embracing a more slightly climate friendly model.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13012021/joe-manchin-west-virginia-senate-democrat-climate-legislation/

[NoMoreRepugs]

1. One RePutinican vote negates Manchin.

It’s a long shot but not totally impossible.