Climate Crisis: Only the Powerful Few Can Afford to Press 'Pause'
One month after the 2021 IPCC report on climate change and less than two months before COP26, Joe Manchin and others aim for disrupting the budget resolution and its climate provisions.
Every seven or eight years since 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases a report outlining the current understanding of the timeline and severity of climate change as a guide for policymakers.
Each report comes loaded with insightful data and predictions that underline the necessity for action regarding our massive and man-made challenges. It holds a lot of weight— the 2013 report was a major source for guiding the agreements of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. However, that does not always mean that leaders around the world will follow suit. The IPCC did feel it necessary to break the typical pattern, releasing an interim report in 2018 due to the fact that governments were taking limited action.
Whether or not the 2021 report will fully get through to many global policymakers remains to be seen at this point, but with the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) set to take place in Glasgow this November, there is an opportunity for leaders to take the dire signs from the assessment and translate it into action.
How much optimism should be placed on that week in Glasgow is up to the reader's judgement, but if anything's clear, it is that the effects of climate change have been here for a while and they're just starting to get mean.
Not to mention unforgiving. One of the primary takeaways from the latest IPCC report is the indication that there is, already, irreversible damage, and with the ways we're producing energy, that only risks getting worse.
"Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level," the report states.
In just this summer alone, the world has witnessed event after event of extreme weather, in a chain of succeeding events that are moving the goal posts for what's deemed "extreme."
There was apocalyptic rainfall from the storms in Western Europe and, more recently, Ida here in the states. While there were derechos and flooding in various regions, the first ever water shortage was declared on the Colorado River, threatening water cuts for major cities such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. Then, of course, there's the fires on the West Coast, headlined by the Dixie Fire— which is well over 900,000 acres now— and the Caldor Fire— which evacuated South Lake Tahoe for Labor Day Weekend. Plus, many more severe events.
Without a doubt, our leaders need to get to work because they have failed to do so for decades.
One of the tangible actions in the works is the $3.5 trillion budget resolution which has many climate provisions alongside "human" infrastructure components like expanding Medicare, lowering drug prices, universal pre-K, free community college, paid family leave, and taxing the rich, among many other transformative plans.
The climate-focused provisions include investments in clean energy, a clean electricity standard of 80% by the year 2030, clean vehicle incentives, wildfire prevention and forestry, border polluter taxes, and the Civilian Climate Corps.
It's safe to say that even getting everything in the proposed reconciliation bill won't put a stop to our climate crisis-- a larger transformation is needed. However, what it means in terms of our posture to combat it is paramount because it would serve as the first real step towards getting serious about the future.
So, of course, this should be a call to action in the face of the crisis and with a gathering of global leaders set for a little less than two months from now. But Senator Joe Manchin, and all who are entrenched in power, would beg to differ.
Manchin, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Friday, wrote that Senate Democrats should hit "pause" on the bill, citing the deficit, inflation, and the trillions of dollars being spent.
"Instead of rushing to spend trillions on new government programs and additional stimulus funding, Congress should hit a strategic pause on the budget-reconciliation legislation," Manchin wrote. "A pause is warranted because it will provide more clarity on the trajectory of the pandemic, and it will allow us to determine whether inflation is transitory or not. While some have suggested this reconciliation legislation must be passed now, I believe that making budgetary decisions under artificial political deadlines never leads to good policy or sound decisions."
Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema— the duo that, along with the nine moderate House Democrats, threatens this resolution the most— voted last month to advance the $3.5 trillion resolution, but said they would oppose a final bill unless the price tag is cut, so the future of the bill was always subject to being slashed.
Reports indicated this week that Manchin was looking for, at most, a $1.5 trillion price tag for the resolution, making his demands and interests known.
This op-ed and rhetoric came as no surprise given Manchin, Sinema, and others' indifference to making changes that will benefit the people. It also happened to occur in the same week that The Washington Post reported about the massive lobbying blitz aimed at the $3.5 trillion resolution, including opposition from oil and gas companies.
It is clear that the opposition's power and wealth is being rallied to stop the reconciliation bill which, if passed, would be a legitimate step in the right direction that, along with the IPCC report, could help move the ball forward at the COP26 in Glasgow in early November.
Sure, it may not be a lot given the massive challenges at hand, but squandering this opportunity in the interest of the egregiously powerful would be disastrous for the planet and its ordinary denizens.
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