From coal-rich West Virginia
See this is how we know nobody who could is going to do anything to slow global warming:
The most powerful part of President Biden’s climate agenda — a program to rapidly replace the nation’s coal- and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear energy — will likely be dropped from the massive budget bill pending in Congress, according to congressional staffers and lobbyists familiar with the matter.
Why? Because Joe Manchin doesn’t like it. One guy who is beholden to the coal industry is all it takes, and we have the one guy. We’ll always have the one guy, or whatever equivalent for want of a nail the war was lost it takes. There will always be some missing nail.
Senator Joe Manchin III, the Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia whose vote is crucial to passage of the bill, has told the White House that he strongly opposes the clean electricity program, according to three of those people. As a result, White House staffers are now rewriting the legislation without that climate provision, and are trying to cobble together a mix of other policies that could also cut emissions.
One guy. Just one guy, who puts his career interest ahead of the planet and the beings that live on it. Joe Manchin might lose the next election if he voted for the bill so go ahead, planet, keep getting hotter.
It will always be like that. One person’s self-interest versus the planet. One person’s self-interest will always win.
Democratic presidents have tried but failed to enact climate change legislation since the Clinton administration. During a year of record and deadly droughts, wildfires, storms and floods that scientists say are worsened by climate change, Democrats had hoped to finally garner enough political support to enact a strong climate law, even as scientific reports say that the window is rapidly closing to avoid the most devastating impacts of a warming planet.
Short-term self-interest is always going to win.
We have the same guy. One guy. The deputy Prime Minister who wants AU$250 billion to prop up coal, won’t take action on emissions mitigation “because he doesn’t know how much it will cost”. FFS, he’s the government and can’t find that out?
We have a Prime Minister who is only going to Glasgow because he was shamed into it by Prince Charles!! Not by his party. Not by his government. Not by his electorate. Not by the nation. But by a fucking foreign potentate!
The bloke holding the coal is our Prime Minister. The bloke in the red tie is his Deputy PM, and he looks as though he’s never seen coal before in his life.
https://i.postimg.cc/GhpT7DjJ/image-20170214-19635-12efun8.webp
Yep. Like Ben Nelson (D-NE) held up the ACA until they had an amendment to prohibit funding of elective abortions. I’d be glad he’s gone, but what we sent to replace him is even worse.
Our system is broken.
This sort of thing is entirely predictable. It’s what happens when you spread your tent so wide as to include your ideological opponents, which is precisely what the Dems have done since I can remember. Every loss is reason to broaden the party’s appeal, but which is meant becoming more palatable to Republicans.
Coal, oil, and natural gas are wasteful in terms of the amount of energy required to extract and refine them into a usable source of energy for the consumer. If we cut down on those, then we reduce our demands for electricity, allowing for other sources of electricity to meet our consumption demands. The energy industries that are addicted to carbon sources don’t exemplify the “workings” of a free market where money and efficiency drive the solution. There are solutions available to us for supplying energy, but subsidizing the existing ones is delaying the development of the renewables, and perhaps but not necessarily nuclear sources such as modular reactors and the always 10 years away fusion reactors.
Enbridge Line #3 is being built, adding a channel for more oil to flow to the refineries at great risk to the environment. Scott Morrison holds up a chunk of coal in parliamentary session to say “see kids, It’s not krypton!” and pretends that Australia can fuel its needs forever on a depleting resource that blackens the air as much as it emits carbon. Shell, Phillips, and others are dropping platforms in the North Sea, and there’s no guarantee that the Scottish coast and Orkney won’t see a disaster like the two that have hit the Southern California Coast in my lifetime. It’s probably likely.
We’re not dependent on petroleum, natural gas, and coal. We think we are. The promise of capitalism is that our cigar smoking executives would be looking for the most efficient and least expensive sources of energy in order to maximize profits. (I’m not saying socialism would do any better.) Instead they are guarding the familiar, and making commercials to blow smoke about their mandate to provide clean energy. They’re doing what they know. Spend money on politicians who will help protect them from innovating or saving the planet from destruction.