As Manchin Makes Wanking Motions With His Mouth, Prospects For Climate Legislation Dim

[hatrack]

Twelve years ago, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, the country teetered on the edge of passing its first-ever comprehensive climate bill. A triumvirate of senators were negotiating bipartisan legislation that would invest in clean energy, set a price on carbon pollution, and — as a carrot for Republicans — temporarily expand offshore drilling. Then an oil rig — the Deepwater Horizon — exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. The loose bipartisan coalition collapsed. As President Barack Obama later wrote in his memoir, A Promised Land, “My already slim chances of passing climate legislation before the midterm elections had just gone up in smoke.”

Today, the sense of déjà vu is strong. The first half of 2022 has been stacked with events that have pushed climate change far down the list of priorities. The Biden administration has been caught between the war in Ukraine, surging inflation, the fight over Roe v. Wade, and, horrifically, continued gun violence. A month ago, many Democrats cited the Memorial Day recess as a loose deadline for having a climate reconciliation bill — one that could pass the Senate with only 50 votes — drafted or agreed upon. Any later, and the summer recesses and run-up to midterms could swallow any legislative opportunity. That date has now come and gone. “If you’re paying attention, you should be worried,” Jared Huffman, a Democratic representative from California, told E&E News last week.

It’s both a sluggish and anticlimactic result for a party that, in 2020 and 2021, threw its weight behind climate action. The Build Back Better Act, President Biden’s massive $2 trillion spending framework, passed the House of Representatives last November, with $555 billion in spending for climate and clean energy. The bill would have invested in wind, solar, and geothermal power, offered Americans cash to buy EVs or e-bikes, retrofitted homes to be more energy efficient, and much, much more — but it died in the Senate, when Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia refused to support it.

Since then, climate action has virtually disappeared from the public and political agenda. Activists — who during the Trump administration seemed poised to transform U.S. politics — are tired and disillusioned. Meanwhile, in Congress, Manchin has arranged bipartisan energy talks and waffled on the importance of electric vehicles and even renewables.

EDIT

https://grist.org/politics/democrats-and-the-endless-pursuit-of-climate-legislation/

[femmedem]

1. Unfathomable that an environmental tragedy would kill, rather than spur, climate action.

Even if climate action isn't high on our political agenda, it isn't far from most peoples' minds. Almost everyone I know is tamping down a sense of despair over global warming and all it entails.