King Coal

Any chance of getting a climate package through Congress this year is probably dead.   Any chance of getting a climate package through Congress next year or in 2024 is probably dead as well, because the House will likely be under Republican control and will likely impeach Joe Biden while investigating Hunter Biden rather than doing anything about a problem they believe is a hoax.

As usual, everyone's favorite Republican, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, is the reason for it.  Manchin has said he won't support the climate package because the cost will add to inflationary pressures but added he'd likely support it later after reviewing the cost factors.  The real reason, most likely, is depicted in the picture below.

Coal.  West Virginia produces a lot of it.  Joe Manchin is heavily invested in it.  Need I say more?

What's the matter with Manchin, anyway?  The West is in its worst drought in twelve centuries.  Europe is undergoing its fourth major heat wave in as many years - including Britain, where a heat wave is usually considered a stretch of days of 79 degrees Fahrenheit - while Paris may not be burning but the forests in France are. Parts of China are over 100, while other parts of China are.

Of course, Manchin is 74 and so won't live to see the worst effects of climate change, and those effects, ironically, are the reason his grandchildren might not live as long as he. 😠

No Appeal

Coal is a dirty energy source, nuclear power is too dangerous for America (though in France they handle it with little trouble to speak of, but then the French can make bullet trains and did make supersonic airliners), and both coal and nuclear energy are dying in These States.  So how do you keep Mr. Peabody's coal train and Mr. Neutron's reactors humming along if you're Donald John Trump, champion of coal and nuclear power and President of the United States?  You might issue a directive to the Energy Department telling them to keep coal-powered and nuclear-powered electricity-generating plants from closing based on national security reasons, which would stifle competition from alternative-energy power sources, even though a more diverse energy portfolio would enhance national security by allowing some electricity-generating plants to run if others were disabled.

So much for the free market.

Lawsuits are expected to be filed against this directive, but Trump, still flexing his presidential prerogatives, has made it clear that this, like the Veterans' Day military parade, is what he wants, and there's no stopping it.  There is no appeal to a Trump decision.  What he wants is what he gets.  That's why Rudolph Giuliani says Trump can pardon himself and doesn't have to answer subpoenas.           

It won't be long before the Democratic Party and all minor parties are outlawed by a Republican congressional majority happy to appease Trump.

For national security purposes, of course.  

No Turning Back

The world is finally doing something about climate change.  It's not much, but it's something.

And what a something it is!  The Paris Agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions has just gone into effect, with 55 nations joining in to ensure that it will go into force in early November.  While it can't exactly - okay, not even remotely - reverse carbon emissions, its efforts to keep mean global temperature increases  below 2 degrees Celsius and push it down to 1.5-degree-Celsius increase is encouraging, if only because it will highlight the necessity to move away from fossil fuels and more toward cleaner and renewable energy.  It's admittedlygoing to be a long process; people aren't going to give up their Chevy Suburbans for Nissan Leafs and VW e-Golfs overnight.

The deal requires any country that wished to get out of it to wait until November 2019 to do so.  So, even if Donald Trump does get elected President, he has to wait two years and ten months into his term to make good on his bad idea.  And lo and behold - November 2019 is a year before the next presidential election, and if President Trump tries to take the United States out of this deal, that just might prove to be politically disadvantageous for him.     

One thing Trump won't do if elected is bring coal back.  The market has spoken; coal is no longer cool.  More and more businesses that use coal in mass quantities, like power-generating companies,  are moving away from the dirty fuel in favor of more clean-burning natural gas.  Public Service Electric & Gas in New Jersey just announced the closing of its last two coal-fired power plants in the state.

Even corporations are committing themselves to a cleaner and greener energy future.  There is indeed no turning back.    

Clearing the Air

The two biggest polluters on this planet we call ours, the United States and China, formally agreed to adopt the Paris Agreement negotiated in late 2015 to keep the increase in the average global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.  The United States has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 28 percent below levels of emissions produced in 2005. The deal also hopes to provide $100 billion a year between 2016 and 2020 in financing to help developing countries meet their gas reduction goals.  As soon as the deal takes effect, nations that have ratified it have to wait for at least three years to leave it.

Unfortunately, climate-change denier Donald Trump is gaining in the presidential election polls and a presidential term is four years.  

Despite Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, despite the drought in California and some of the worst flooding in Louisiana in decades, despite the receding beaches in Miami, congressional Republicans still don't believe climate change is real and Trump is happy to please them by promising to commit the country to producing more coal.  President Obama knows this and has framed the deal as an executive agreement rather than as a treaty because he knew the Senate would never ratify it as a treaty.  But if the deal goes into effect before the year is out, that means a President Trump would be able to take the U.S. out of the deal by the end of 2019.  If you thought the United States was the skunk of the world under Ronald Reagan of George Walker Bush, wait'll the Donald takes over; you ain't seen nothing yet!

The one thing that gives me hope is that efforts to combat climate change are going full tilt boogie all over the world, including this country, as more energy producers are turning away from coal and more toward cleaner fuels like natural gas, as well as wind power.  Even if Trump gets into the White House, there's no stopping the tide of history.  And when the tide of the ocean floods his own properties, maybe then the Donald will come around.

On the other hand, maybe he'll eat the loss and build condos in a melted Greenland. :-O :-(