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The End Comes Again

Senator from West Virginia and Republican members of the US Senate join to end the Biden 'Build Back Better' plan

How One Senator Doomed the Democrats’ Climate Plan

Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia led his party and his president through months of tortured talks, with nothing to show for it as the planet dangerously heats up.

Via the NY Times

July 15, 2022

• https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/climate/manchin-climate-change-democrats.html

First, he killed a plan that would have forced power plants to clean up their climate-warming pollution. Then, he shattered an effort to help consumers pay for electric vehicles. And, finally, he said he could not support government incentives for solar and wind companies or any of the other provisions that the rest of his party and his president say are vital to ensure a livable planet.

Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who took more campaign cash from the oil and gas industry than any other senator, and who became a millionaire from his family coal business, independently blew up the Democratic Party’s legislative plans to fight climate change. The swing Democratic vote in an evenly divided Senate, Mr. Manchin led his party through months of tortured negotiations that collapsed on Thursday night, a yearlong wild goose chase that produced nothing as the Earth warms to dangerous levels.

“It seems odd that Manchin would choose as his legacy to be the one man who single-handedly doomed humanity,” said John Podesta, a former senior counselor to President Barack Obama and founder of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank....

“Rage keeps me from tears,” Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and a longtime advocate for climate legislation, wrote on Twitter late Thursday (7/14)...

A poll conducted in early May by the Pew Research Center found a majority of Americans, 58 percent, think the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of global warming while 22 percent said it is doing the right amount and 18 percent said it is doing too much. In the same survey, 71 percent said their community had been hit by extreme weather in the past year and a majority linked it to climate change.

President Biden has pledged to the rest of the world that the United States, the country that has historically pumped the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, would cut its emissions in half by 2030. Without legislation, it will be impossible to meet Mr. Biden’s climate goals...

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