To paraphrase, we fiddle while Yosemite, the American Southwest, Europe, and pretty much anyplace else where it is summer, burns. We now know that the Congress will not pass legislation in response to the climate crisis. That reality, which with the benefit of hindsight has been clear for months, has landed with a thud in the middle of this summer of discontent. The focus of the anger has been directed at Joe Manchin and, while a lot of it is both well-earned and deserved, it’s also lazy and unproductive.
Congressional climate inaction is the result of systemic problems within the institution and with the American electorate. The oddity of a 50/50 Senate gives any one Democrat an oversized influence over what passes. Sure, Manchin has bludgeoned the president’s climate plans with the club he has been handed, but he is nothing more than a mere symptom of the disease. Listening to David Brooks praise Manchin’s actions the other day, a commentary I otherwise found enraging, he made the good point that concerns over inflation don’t mean that you can’t have policy objectives. What seems to be dooming us now on climate is that in the absence of a real energy and climate policy we have proxy war fights over legislation that are really about a broader ideological struggle. The result is status quo. The problem really is that in this instance, doing nothing is really doing something and that something is a continuation of practices that are clearly bad for the long-term well-being of humanity.
I don’t have a Nobel Prize in economics, but neither does Senator Whip Inflation Now (sorry for the nostalgia trip to the Carter administration). It is hard for me to believe that an economy more reliant on clean energy and electric cars wouldn’t be less susceptible to the oil price shocks from Russian war-making that created the high gas prices driving inflation than the economy we have now. In a sane world where we had a real policy on climate and energy, the discussion would be how, not if, to achieve our aims while lowering inflationary pressures. Such a fantastical feeling place would allow us to have a Congress that solves problems and not one that in the name of not worsening a problem (inflation) it is otherwise doing nothing to fix or do anything to deal with climate. In the long run, paying for the response to climate disaster has more long-term fiscal implications than current gas prices will.
In the end, Congress is what we all allow it to be. Because the system held, even just barely, on January 6, we still elect those empowered to make decisions on our behalf. So, my friends, it all comes back to us, as it always does. You have a voice, use it. You have a vote, use it. Be mad at Joe Manchin if you want. I am. But unless you do something about it at the ballot box, your anger will be wasted. I assure you, Manchin doesn’t care. Neither does Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz. They and others like them are already in power somewhere waiting for his or her chance to take advantage of the opportunity we continue to allow them to have to work against our best interests.
