Feeling The Heat

Democrats are in trouble.  Real trouble.  And so is the planet.

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (below), who represents West Virginia - a coal-producing state - objects to President Biden's Clean Energy Performance Program, which gives incentives to utilities to provide more clean energy to its customers.  Manchin has argued that the market is already incentivizing clean energy because of steadily increasing demand for wind and solar power.  Such a position would have more resonance and credibility if it came from a lawmaker who wasn't bringing in contributions from the fossil-fuel industry. 

Manchin's opposition could mean that the President's infrastructure plan could fail completely if progressives don't want to vote for an infrastructure package without something related to fighting climate change.  But it's not just progressives; it's virtually the entire Democratic .Party that wants this climate provision, and for all I know, that might even include Arizona Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema.  I think a lot of the criticisms of Senate procedure are overblown, given that the reason we have a Senate is to allow more deliberation on legislation and to balance the interests of the small-population states against those of the large-population states, but the Senate was never meant to allow for one member to kill a legislative provision that the entire majority caucus - or, in increasingly rare bipartisan circumstances, the entire chamber - wants.

On the bright side, President Biden has vowed to move ahead with plans to build offshore wind farms up and down the East Coast, which can hopefully get underway before a possible Republican administration taking office in 2025 gets a chance to to stop them.  But Manchin's action on the eve of an important climate summit in Scotland is nothing sort of an atrocity.

President Biden has signaled optimism that he can get passed later what he can't get passed now, but that seems unlikely during the 2022 midterm election campaign season and downright impossible in the coming 118th Congress in which Republicans will likely control one of both chambers of Congress before striking the final blow against our democratic two-party system in 2024.   I can't think of a worse time for progress in These States than now.

Until tomorrow.