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      Biden to unveil pledge to slash global methane emissions by 30%

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      Cop26Biden to unveil pledge to slash global methane emissions by 30% US-led alliance includes 90 countries but China, India and Russia have not joined the methane pact

      See all our Cop26 coverage
      Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editorTue 2 Nov 2021 02.26 EDTLast modified on Tue 2 Nov 2021 04.51 EDTUS president Joe Biden will try to underscore his green credentials by unveiling an action plan to control methane, regarded by the administration as the single most potent way to combat the climate crisis in the short term.Leading an alliance of 90 countries, including for the first time Brazil, he will on Tuesday set out new regulatory measures to limit global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by the end of the decade.The alliance includes two-thirds of the global economy and half of the top 30 major methane emitter countries. China, India and Russia have not joined the pact known as the Global Methane Pledge.Cop26: Biden urges action on climate change and vows US will ‘lead by example’Read moreThe pledge was first announced in September but Biden’s officials have been working hard to increase the number of signatories and the momentum behind the pledge. The detailed US proposals may prove to be one of the lasting successes of Cop26 in Glasgow where Biden will announce his action plan.Many of the regulatory measures do not require Congressional approval, and so give Biden some short-term effective measures to which he can point.Biden will focus on new plans to limit methane emissions by the oil and gas industry in the US, reckoned to be responsible for 30% of the methane emissions in the US.A new Environment Protection Agency rule that regulates leak detection and repair in the oil industry repealed by Donald Trump will be restored and for the first time applied to new operations in gas, including regulation of natural gas produced as a by-product of oil production that is vented or flared.The Biden team hopes that 75% of all methane emissions will be covered.Cut methane emissions to rapidly fight climate disasters, UN report saysRead moreThe other major sources of methane in the US are municipal landfills, thousands of abandoned oil wells and coal mines, and finally agriculture.New rules, due to be phased in, will require companies to oversee and inspect 3m miles (4.8m km) of pipelines, including 300,000 miles (480,000km) of transmission lines and 2.3m miles (3.7m km) of lines inside cities. In Boston alone it is estimated that 49,000 tonnes of methane leak each year.The administration says it is working in concert with the EU and is using a mix of incentives, new disclosure rules and regulation. It stressed that the plan will create thousands of unionised jobs.02:33TopicsCop26Climate crisisJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Cop26: Biden urges action on climate change and vows US will ‘lead by example’

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      Cop26Cop26: Biden urges action on climate change and vows US will ‘lead by example’‘Right now, we are falling short,’ US president says, urging other world leaders to embark upon a shift to clean energy01:43Oliver Milman in New York and Nina Lakhani in GlasgowMon 1 Nov 2021 13.01 EDTLast modified on Mon 1 Nov 2021 16.06 EDTJoe Biden has warned that the climate crisis poses “the existential threat to human existence as we know it” and urged other world leaders to embark upon a transformational shift to clean energy, as questions linger over the US president’s ability to deliver this vision at home.‘Brazil is a green powerhouse’ claims Bolsonaro at climate change summit – liveRead moreBiden, addressing a sparse chamber at crucial UN climate talks that have begun in a frigid and drizzly Glasgow, said that the conference must act as a “kickoff of a decade of ambition and innovation to preserve our shared future”.The president added: “We meet with the eyes of history upon us. Will we do what is necessary? Or will we condemn future generations to suffer?”Biden’s administration is attempting to reassert America’s credibility at the gathering of nearly 200 countries in Scotland, known as Cop26, after Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US from the Paris climate agreement and his dismissal of climate science. Scientists have warned the world is badly off track to avoid disastrous climate change, with leaders of poorer, vulnerable countries using the talks to warn their populations face looming cataclysm.“We will demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table but hopefully leading by the power of our example,” Biden said in his speech, in a tacit acknowledgement of Trump. “I know it hasn’t been the case, which is why my administration is working overtime to show our climate commitment is action not words.”“Right now, we are falling short, there’s no time to hang back, sit on the fence or argue amongst ourselves,” the president continued. “This is the challenge of our collective lifetimes, an existential threat to human existence as we know it and every day we delay the cost of inaction increases.”Biden said that wealthy, major polluters such as the US have an “overwhelming responsibility” to aid smaller countries that are struggling to cope with growing floods, fires and heatwaves spurred by global heating.Before arriving in Glasgow, Biden also took aim at some other leading emitters for not doing enough to prevent global heating surpassing 1.5C. He said these countries are “not only Russia but China (which) basically didn’t show up in terms of commitments to deal with climate change. I found it disappointing myself”.At a side event, Biden also effectively apologized for his predecessor. “I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States – the last administration – pulled out of the Paris accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball,” Biden said.But climate activists, many of whom gathered outside the Glasgow venue that hosted more than 120 world leaders on Monday, argue that Biden is failing to live up to his own words. The president touted vast proposed climate legislation that would be the “most significant investment to deal with the climate crisis that any advanced nation has made, ever,” but the bill remains stalled in Congress, after being winnowed away by a senator who has extensive ties to fossil fuels.“Biden is at Glasgow empty handed, with nothing but words on paper,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise Movement. “It is humiliating and fails to meet the moment that we’re in.”Biden has also been attacked over his administration’s reluctance to drastically scale back oil and gas drilling in the US. The president’s narrative of “climate leadership” contradicts the daily suffering by communities on the frontline of gas and oil production in the US, activists say. In the first six months of the Biden administration, about 2,500 new oil and gas permits were authorized – a figure Trump’s administration took a year to reach.Speakers outside Cop26 on Monday – only 23 civil society observers were allowed in to hear the leaders’ speeches – included Black and Indigenous leaders whose communities are on the frontline of fossil fuel extraction impacts, including air pollution and contaminated drinking water and land across the US.Tom Goldtooth, Native American leader from the Indigenous Environmental Network, said: “We’re here as the original people of the US to denounce the polluters conference – it’s not a climate conference – it’s been taken over by corporate interests. If we Indigenous people don’t come we’ll be on the menu. We’re here to defend our people, we want to live.”Biden’s speech came shortly after an official opening of Cop26 that acknowledged the growing anguish over the escalating, and largely unchecked, climate crisis. Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, said “the people who will judge us are children not yet born”, adding “if we fail they will not forgive us”. Antonio Guterres, the secretary general of the UN, warned that “we are digging our own graves” due to the failure to dramatically cut planet-heating emissions.TopicsCop26Joe BidenClimate crisisUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Resilience: the one word progressives need in the face of Trump, Covid and more | Robert Reich

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      OpinionUS politicsResilience: the one word progressives need in the face of Trump, Covid and moreRobert ReichThe climate crisis, the economy, Biden’s struggle to enact his spending agenda. The list goes on. The lesson? Be strong Sun 31 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 31 Oct 2021 01.09 EDTI often tell my students that if they strive to achieve full and meaningful lives, they should expect failures and disappointments. We learn to walk by falling down again and again. We learn to ride a bicycle by crashing into things. We learn to make good friends by being disappointed in friendship. Failure and disappointment are prerequisites to growth.‘A deliberate, orchestrated campaign’: the real story behind Trump’s attempted coupRead moreThe real test of character comes after failures and disappointments. It is resilience: how easily you take failures, what you learn from them, how you bounce back.This is a hard lesson for high-achievers used to jumping over every hoop put in front of them. It’s also a hard lesson for people who haven’t had all the support and love they might have needed when growing up. In fact, it’s a hard lesson for almost everyone in a culture such as ours, that worships success and is embarrassed by failure and is inherently impatient.Why am I telling you this now? Because we have gone through a few very difficult years: Donald Trump’s racist nationalism and his attacks on our democracy, a painful reckoning with systemic racism, angry political divisions, a deadly pandemic accompanied by a recession, and climate hazards such as floods and wildfires.We assumed everything would be fine again once these were behind us. But we now find ourselves in a disorienting limbo. There is no clearly demarcated “behind us”. The pandemic still lurks. The economy is still worrisome. Americans continue to be deeply angry with each other. The climate crisis still poses an existential threat. Trump and other insurrectionists have not yet been brought to justice. Democracy is still threatened.And Biden and the Democrats have been unable to achieve the scale of change many of us wanted and expected.If you’re not at least a bit disappointed, you’re not human. To some, it feels like America is failing.But bear with me. I’ve learned a few things in my half-century in and around politics, and my many years teaching young people. One is that things often look worse than they really are. The media (including social media) sells subscriptions and advertising with stories that generate anger and disappointment. The same goes for the views of pundits and commentators. Pessimists always appear wiser than optimists.Another thing I’ve learned is that expectations for a new president and administration are always much higher than they can possibly deliver. Our political system was designed to make it difficult to get much done, at least in the short run. So the elation that comes with the election of someone we admire almost inevitably gives way to disappointment.A third thing: in addition to normal political constraints, positive social change comes painfully slowly. It can take years, decades, sometimes a century or longer for a society to become more inclusive, more just, more democratic, more aware of its shortcomings and more determined to remedy them. And such positive changes are often punctuated by lurches backward. I believe in progress because I’ve seen so much of it in my lifetime, but I’m also aware of the regressive forces that constantly threaten it. The lesson here is tenacity – playing the long game.The US should cut the Pentagon budget to fund social | Emma Claire FoleyRead moreWhich brings me back to resilience. We have been through a difficult time. We wanted and expected it to be over: challenges overcome, perpetrators brought to justice, pandemic ended, nation healed, climate saved, politics transformed. But none of it is over. The larger goals we are fighting for continue to elude us.Yet we must continue the fight. If we allow ourselves to fall into fatalism, or wallow in disappointment, or become resigned to what is rather than what should be, we will lose the long game. The greatest enemy of positive social change is cynicism about what can be changed.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS domestic policyJoe BidenBiden administrationDemocratsDonald TrumpRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver

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      Cop26Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver President faces challenges to reassert US credibility after Trump but critics say Biden’s actions have yet to match his wordsOliver Milman@olliemilmanFri 29 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 Oct 2021 04.17 EDTWith no major climate legislation firmly in hand and international allies still smarting after four bruising years of Donald Trump, Joe Biden faces a major challenge to reassert American credibility as he heads to crucial UN climate talks in Scotland.Is Joe Biden about to show up to Cop26 empty-handed? | Kate AronoffRead moreThe US president, who has vowed to tackle a climate crisis he has described as an “existential threat” to civilization, will be welcomed to the Cop26 talks with a sense of relief following the decisions of his predecessor, who pulled his country out of the landmark Paris climate agreement and derided climate science as “bullshit”.But Biden, who departed to Europe on Thursday and arrived in Rome on Friday morning for a G20 summit, will head to Glasgow with his domestic climate agenda whittled away by a recalcitrant Congress and a barrage of criticism from climate activists who claim Biden’s actions have yet to match his words.This disconnect has perturbed delegates keen to see a reliable American partner emerge from the Trump era, amid increasingly dire warnings from scientists that “irreversible” heatwaves, floods, crop failures and other effects are being locked in by governments’ sluggish response to global heating.“The US is still the world’s largest economy, other nations pay attention to it, and we’ve never had a president more committed to climate action,” said Alice Hill, who was a climate adviser to Barack Obama. “But there is skepticism being expressed by other countries. They saw our dramatic flip from Obama to Trump and the worry is we will flip again. A lack of consistency is the issue.”Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who was a key architect of the Paris agreement, said that Biden had put climate “at the top of his agenda” and that US diplomacy has helped eke some progress from countries such as Saudi Arabia, South Africa and India.But she added the US had a “historical climate credibility problem” and that other leaders fret about its domestic political dysfunction and long-term commitment.“We do worry, because it has happened before and could happen again,” she said. “The US is the world’s largest historical emitter and never passed a significant climate bill. [Biden] has still got a long way to go to make up for Trump’s lost years.”In a show of soft American power, Biden is bringing a dozen of his cabinet members to Glasgow, where delegates from nearly 200 countries will wrangle over an agreement aimed at avoiding a disastrous 1.5C of global heating, a key objective of the Paris deal. But perhaps the most consequential figure to the American effort, rivaling the president himself, is remaining at home – the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.Manchin, a centrist Democrat, looms large at the talks having derailed the centerpiece of a landmark reconciliation bill that would slash US emissions. The White House still hopes the bill, which would be the first major climate legislation ever passed in the US, will help convince other leaders to also increase their efforts in Glasgow to head off climate breakdown.Cop26 delegates have become acutely aware of how Biden needs the vote of Manchin, who has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, to pass his agenda and help determine the future livability of places far from the West Virginia senator’s home state.“Bangladeshis probably know more about American politics than the average American does, people know about Joe Manchin,” said Saleemul Haq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, based in Bangladesh, which faces looming devastation from flooding. “Joe Manchin is in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry and is trying to cut everything the coal lobby doesn’t want.“Biden’s agenda is stuck in Congress with his own senators and he hasn’t delivered anything near what the US should deliver. It’s just words. His actions are woefully inadequate.”Biden has admitted that “the prestige of the United States is on the line” over the reconciliation bill, according to Democrats who met with the president, but publicly he has remained upbeat. When John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, said that the failure to secure the legislation would be like “President Trump pulling out of the Paris agreement, again”, Biden gently rebuked him, saying that Kerry had indulged in “hyperbole”.“In every single day of this administration we’ve been driving forward a whole of government approach that sets us up to go into this climate conference with an incredible deal of momentum,” said an administration official.The White House has pointed to the rejoining of the Paris accords, the resurrection of several environmental rules axed by Trump and what it is calling the “largest effort to combat climate change in American history” with the reconciliation bill, which is still set to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars in support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles.Progressives argue, however, that the Biden administration has done little to curb the fossil fuel industry, most notably in allowing two controversial oil projects, the Dakota Access pipeline and the Line 3 pipeline, to proceed. Just a week after the end of Cop26, the administration will auction off 80m acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, an area larger than the UK.“The president is doing so much, but he is simply not doing everything he can to deliver climate justice and save lives – and we need him to now,” said Cori Bush, a progressive Democratic congresswoman who has visited the site of the Line 3 construction in Minnesota.Protests have erupted in front of the White House over this record, with several young climate activists currently staging a hunger strike to demand Biden does more.“President Biden started very strongly by rejoining the Paris agreement but it’s been a frustrating past few months, things have slowed down,” said Jade Begay, a climate activist who is part of a White House advisory council. “Joe Manchin is holding hostage our survival on planet Earth for his own political career and people are really questioning if Biden will stick to his promises.”05:18The US has also declined to set an end date for the coal sector, unlike countries such as the UK and Germany. This position runs contrary to a key objective of the British government as Cop26 hosts, with Alok Sharma, the conference’s president, pledging the talks will help “consign coal to history”.Asked by the Guardian about the US’s stance on coal, Sharma said progress on the issue has been slow until now but “we want to see what is going to be possible” at the Glasgow summit. “I welcome the fact we now have an administration in the US that is very focused on taking climate action and supporting the international effort,” he said.Sharma added: “It is ultimately on world leaders to deliver. It is world leaders who signed up to the Paris agreement and … if I can put it like this, it is on them to collectively deliver at Cop.”TopicsCop26Joe BidenClimate crisisUS politicsUS foreign policyJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden plan pledges ‘largest effort to combat climate change in US history’

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      Joe BidenBiden plan pledges ‘largest effort to combat climate change in US history’Hundreds of billions to be given to clean energy, electric vehicles and flood defenses, officials say – but some key parts left out Oliver Milman in New York@olliemilmanThu 28 Oct 2021 11.41 EDTLast modified on Thu 28 Oct 2021 15.05 EDTThe Biden administration has said a vast spending bill is set to result in the “largest effort to combat climate change in American history”, with hundreds of billions of dollars set to be funneled into supporting clean energy, electric vehicles and new defenses against extreme weather events. But some key parts of Joe Biden’s original plan were left out.Biden makes $1.75tn pitch: ‘My presidency will be determined by what happens next’ – liveRead moreFollowing negotiations with Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, two centrist Democratic senators who have opposed large portions of the original Build Back Better bill, the White House said it was confident a reduced version of the legislation will be able to pass both houses of Congress and will “set the United States on course to meet its climate goals”.This proposed framework includes $555bn in incentives, investments and tax credits aimed at bolstering the deployment of renewable energy such as solar and wind, as well as a tax break that will deliver up to $12,500 to people who buy an electric car. The bill will help deploy new electric buses and trucks, build community resilience to disastrous wildfires and floods and employ 300,000 people in a new “civilian climate corps”.In all, the White House said the legislation will cut planet-heating emissions by 1bn tons by 2030 and bring the US significantly closer to its goal of slashing carbon pollution in half this decade.At a press conference held on Thursday, Biden said the bill will represent “the most significant investment to address the climate crisis ever” and “will truly transform this nation”.“We are going to get off the sidelines of manufacturing solar panels and wind farms,” the president said, adding that the package will help double the number of electric cars on US roads within three years and provide 500,000 new charging stations for the vehicles. “We are once again going to be the innovators. It’s a big deal.”“The weather is not going to get better, it’s going to get a heck of a lot worse,” Biden continued. “It’s a blinking code red for America and the world.”The legislation has been significantly reduced following objections raised by Manchin and Sinema over its scope – Biden needs every Senate Democrat to vote for the bill to overcome unified Republican opposition to it – but the remaining framework still represents the first, and largest, major attempt by the US to tackle the unfolding climate crisis.“It’s a historic day for people and the planet,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “Congress must swiftly pass the Build Back Better Act and send it to President Biden to sign into law.”On Thursday, Biden will travel to Europe for crucial UN climate talks to be held in Scotland. The US president has said it would be “very, very positive” for the reconciliation bill to pass before the Cop26 summit, in order to bolster American credibility and help convince other countries to do more to address the catastrophic wildfires, floods and heatwaves increasingly being unleashed by global heating.This effort has been repeatedly stymied by the objections of Manchin, a West Virginia senator with deep ties to the coal industry who managed to strike out of the bill a system that would have phased out fossil fuels from America’s electricity grid. This plan was responsible for a third of the emissions cuts in the original version of the legislation, according to analysts.The new framework does not include fees paid by oil and gas producers when they emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Manchin was also opposed to this fee in the original bill and rejected a proposal to include a tax or price on carbon emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency is, however, poised to regulate methane emissions through its existing powers.These omissions mean that the legislation’s framework represents a historic investment in clean energy but doesn’t include any mechanisms to reduce fossil fuel usage or even cut subsidies flowing to the oil, coal and gas companies that have caused the climate crisis.“Given the prime opportunity to cancel billions of dollars in domestic subsidies for oil and gas polluters, the president and congressional leadership have rolled over,” said Mitch Jones, policy director of Food and Water Watch. “A climate plan that fails to directly confront the oil and gas industry cannot possibly be considered meaningful.”Climate experts have, however, pointed out the bill, if passed, would represent a major step forward in acting on the climate crisis, while making clear that further emissions cuts will be needed to avoid the US, and the world, spiraling into a barely livable climatic state.Leah Stokes, a climate policy expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said it would be “great news” if the legislation passes because “the climate math is brutal”.“Even if we are lucky enough to get this bill over the finish line, we need more next year,” she tweeted. “The climate clock is ticking.”TopicsJoe BidenClimate crisisUS domestic policyUS CongressJoe ManchinUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Is Joe Biden about to show up to Cop26 empty-handed? | Kate Aronoff

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      OpinionCop26Is Joe Biden about to show up to Cop26 empty-handed?Kate AronoffThe tools at Biden’s disposal to limit dangerous global heating are enormous. If he wants it, he can do it – but does he want it? Thu 28 Oct 2021 09.24 EDTLast modified on Thu 28 Oct 2021 12.39 EDTAfter months of bullish rhetoric about the United States’ climate leadership, the US could still show up to COP 26 empty handed. That doesn’t have to be the case – whatever charismatic obstructionists like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema have to say about it. The climate certainly isn’t waiting on them to change: the UN Emissions Gap Report released this week finds that the world is on track to warm by a catastrophic 2.7C degrees.The White House has pegged its Paris Agreement success on being able to pass an ambitious spending package, with plenty of money built in for key climate priorities. In recent weeks the administration pegged its audacious goal, of slashing emission by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, to something called a Clean Electricity Payments Program (CEPP). That’s out. And even if the compromise $55bn a year of climate spending the White House promised on Thursday makes it through to legislation, carrots for green spending can only go so far. The US will still not have picked up critical sticks needed to go after the polluting industries driving up temperatures. The dirty dozen: meet America’s top climate villainsRead moreThey’re desperately needed. According to the UN-backed 2021 Production Gap Report, the world’s governments are on track to produce double the amount of fossil fuels than is consistent with capping warming at 1.5C degrees. In the US, oil and gas production are now on track to expand by 17 and 12%, respectively, by 2030.The United States showing up in good faith to Glasgow will require it to step on the third rail of both US and global climate politics: going after fossil fuels. Those words don’t appear in the Paris Agreement itself. But rapidly winding them down is essential to achieving its goals of limiting warming by “well below” 2C degrees, with an aspiration (repeated frequently by the Biden administration) to limit temperature rise to just 1.5C degrees.The Biden administration is also on track to approve more oil and gas drilling on federal lands than any president since George W Bush. Sadly, this is not the first time Democrats have let us down on climate action. It was just days after the Paris Agreement that the Obama administration quietly repealed the 40 year-old crude oil export ban as part of an omnibus, must-pass spending measure in 2015. In the four years after its passage crude oil exports expanded by 750%, allowing the US to eventually cross the threshold to becoming a net oil exporter in the winter of 2020. The same year the United States was the world’s third largest gas exporter.This trajectory is plainly out of step with a liveable planet. Indigenous leaders who converged in Washington under the banner of People v Fossil Fuels earlier this month were joined by 13 members of Congress recently in calling on the administration to use the full extent of its powers to start treating the climate crisis like the emergency it is, putting a stop to fossil fuel expansion. The tools at Biden’s disposal, as they note, are enormous.The EPA has the power to stringently regulate carbon dioxide and methane, which it’s expected to make steps toward soon. By declaring a national emergency, Biden could reinstate the crude oil export ban virtually overnight, stemming the flow of US fossil fuels being burned abroad to make a handful of executives here rich.Such a declaration would unlock the power to finally put the US on a wartime footing to rapidly deploy renewable energy and create millions of union jobs in the process, rather than relying only on piecemeal measures like tax credits. The Department of Energy could reject export permits under the Natural Gas Act. The Department of Interior could stop selling below-market rate leases to drill on public lands, activity that accounts for roughly a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.There’s plenty of other low-hanging fruit, too: Biden could move to cancel the Line 3 pipeline, along with the Dakota Access Pipeline, Line 5 and the Mountain Valley Pass Pipeline. A recent analysis by Oil Change International, in fact, found that the White House has to prevent 1.6bn metric tonnes of emissions per year by rejecting those and another 20 fossil fuel projects. Existing laws like the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act grant the executive branch broad authority to do so. Internationally, the administration could join the UK and Italy at the G20 this week in pushing to phase-out coal and formally end overseas financing for all oil and gas projects through the US Export-Import Bank, as well. The State Department could drop its longstanding objections to concrete discussions of loss and damage financing and historical responsibility for rising temperatures at the UN climate talks in Glasgow.Joe Biden and members of his administration have frequently called climate change an “existential threat.” If the White House wanted to act like that’s true – and assert real US leadership at COP 26 – it could.
      Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic. She is the co-author of A Planet To Win: Why We Need A Green New Deal (Verso) and the co-editor of We Own The Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style (The New Press)
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      Joe Manchin pushes for climate cuts as West Virginia battered by crisis

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      West VirginiaJoe Manchin pushes for climate cuts as West Virginia battered by crisis The conservative Democrat is busy trying to strip out many of the policies to tackle the problems his home state is facingKyle Vass in West VirginiaWed 27 Oct 2021 03.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 27 Oct 2021 03.02 EDTThe rise of Joe Manchin as a key power player for Democratic policymaking in 2021 is the result of a perfect storm for the US senator from West Virginia.Spies next door? The suburban US couple accused of espionageRead moreHis position as the Senate’s most conservative Democrat means he often has final say in what his party is able to push through, especially when it comes to Joe Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda on infrastructure, far-reaching social policies and a powerful attempt to tackle the climate crisis.A drive through West Virginia’s countryside – which is still enthusiastically Donald Trump country – reveals a patchwork of communities battered by the climate crisis and barely held together by deteriorating infrastructure. Yet Manchin – balking at a $3.5tn price tag of Biden’s reconciliation bill – is busy trying to strip out many of the policies that would try to tackle these crises that are so seriously affecting many of his fellow West Virginians.West Virginia, a landlocked state, leads the nation in the number of the infrastructure facilities – hospitals, fire stations, water treatment plants, power stations – located on land prone to severe flooding. It even beats out Louisiana and Florida. Of course, the climate crisis is seeing flood events hit record levels across the US.Beyond the inspiration for John Denver’s hit song, West Virginia’s country roads are actually a source of fear and frustration for residents. Nearly half of the roads in the state are routinely battered by severe flooding.When power outages – some of the longest and most frequent in the nation – hit the state, they are often lethal, a reality made clear when a single flood event in 2016 took out power for over half of the state’s homes and killed 23 people in 12 hours.Earlier this year, tens of thousands of people were left without power for more than two weeks in freezing temperatures when ice storms felled trees on to power lines across the state and closed roads.But, for many West Virginians the reality of flooding and infrastructure failure are more insidious than isolated events.For Jill Hess, it’s trying to make it back to Fairmont, her home town and the birthplace of Joe Manchin, every time there’s talk of a storm. For the past five years, Hess made it a priority to see to it that her mother, Sue Hess, who was surviving on oxygen concentrators, wasn’t stranded powerless and alone.“Every time it would rain or snow she would really go into panic mode.”Jill said that growing up, outages weren’t frequent. But as her mother grew older and weaker, so has the power grid.Despite spending over a billion dollars trying to prevent the grid from failing, the frequency and duration of outages have steadily increased as the temperature of the Earth has risen, causing places like West Virginia to experience increased storm activity.“I can’t tell you how many times she would say, ‘I need you to be ready and available if anything happens because we have a severe thunderstorm warning coming through.’”Jill would hop in her car to drive towards her mother, dependent on oxygen machines, in Fairmont. But with storms in West Virginia come road closures, shutting down the most direct route to any given place. Adding 15 minutes to be rerouted around a mountain felt like 15 hours to Jill knowing her mother was running out of oxygen.For Jill, there’s a cruel irony to how her mother spent her final years. Sue had been a home health nurse, traveling across the county to help people who couldn’t make it to hospital. In 1968, she traveled to nearby Farmington, the 375-person town, to take care of wounded survivors of the Farmington mine disaster. In the floods of 1985 that killed 38 people across the state, Sue had gone from house to house helping provide medical assistance and supplies to families whose livelihoods had been devastated by flooding.Now, despite having retired in a nice home less than a mile away from the same hospital at which she had completed her nursing program, Sue found herself helpless. She relied on a combination of asking her daughter to drive in and calling 911 for ambulance rides to take to her somewhere she could breathe.Before she died, Sue racked up a four-figure ambulance bill nearly every time the power went out.“They would just literally park her in the waiting room of the ER, on oxygen until it was clear that the power came on.” The average power outage in the state lasts for 11.4 hours – the second highest in the nation.The five years of needless suffering her mother was put through before she died in December comes down to infrastructure for Jill. What she finds especially frustrating is that Manchin isn’t detached from this reality – it’s the one he grew up in. Before he was a politician, the Hess family used to get Christmas cards from the Manchins.Jill has no doubt that Manchin knows exactly how hard climate change is making life for the people he grew up around.National news outlets have been quick to connect the financial dots on Manchin. Clean energy initiatives could affect his bottom line in multiple ways because that bottom line is joined at the hip to one of the biggest drivers of climate change in the world: the fossil fuel industry.Put simply, the US senator is blocking legislation that would demand better of the dirty energy companies that make up his investment portfolio and his 2022 election cycle contributors list. And, he’s doing so to the environmental, social and economic detriment of his state.According to a report by the West Virginia Climate Alliance, efforts at addressing climate change such as the Green New Deal, which Manchin has opposed, would create 10m jobs across the nation and introduce regulations that could clean West Virginia’s notoriously polluted waterways – a byproduct of the state’s reliance on coal.Manchin’s own coal company, which he formed before assuming public office, has earned him $5.2m in dividends over the past 10 years. Manchin also has received more money from oil and gas companies than any other senator in next year’s election.As Manchin has gotten richer, his state has gotten warmer. The decrease in cold snaps through the year could, according to the Climate Alliance report, bring about a proliferation of invasive plant species and a significant increase in ticks which transmit Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.But, putting personal profits over his own party and its environmental initiatives is hardly new for Manchin. In fact, it’s a fundamental part of the story behind his rise to power.Before he was the single greatest source of frustration for Democrats in America, he showed West Virginia he would rather work with Republicans against his own party than support anything that resembled environmentalism.In 1996, Charlotte Pritt beat Manchin in the Democratic primary for governor – the only person, to this day, to hand him a defeat in an election. But Pritt ran as an environmentalist, urging West Virginia to develop industries that weren’t centered on polluting the earth and creating deplorable working conditions.Shortly after losing to Pritt, Manchin sent 900 letters to top Democrats around the state saying he wouldn’t support Pritt because she wasn’t “interested in the concerns of moderate and conservative Democrats”. Instead, Manchin’s letter added he would be supporting the Republican candidate, Cecil Underwood. Underwood won.But, two decades later, economists and climate scientists have sided with Pritt, not Manchin, on what’s best for the state.A 2019 report from the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy emphasized the dangers of the state continuing to depend on its “rich non-renewable depleting natural resources”, because it made terrible financial sense. Failures to diversify the economy, the author wrote, only perpetuates the boom and bust economies that have plagued the state and put it on a “collision course with efforts to combat climate change.”Nicolas Zégre, a hydrologist at West Virginia University, agrees that there is a false dichotomy where economic progress is wrongly pitted against combating climate change. Zégre, who researches flood risk vulnerability in West Virginia, said in fact it’s the opposite: the state and its already struggling economy can’t afford to continue to be battered by climate change.Pelosi ‘very confident’ Democrats will reach deal to salvage Biden agendaRead more“What are our elected representatives doing to protect West Virginians? The answer is very little.”For Zégre, the way forward for Manchin and anyone claiming to represent the interest of West Virginians is to invest in a sustainable and clean version of what this state could be, adding “none of that is going to happen until our decision makers, first of all, acknowledge that climate change is happening”.One example of how Zégre sees the state positioning itself for both economic diversification and a shift towards alleviating climate change is by cleaning up its waterways – 70% of which are too dirty to “support natural biological function”.A shift towards clean water, according to Zégre, would create a pathway for West Virginia to provision even more water than it does for surrounding states, a practice that’s only going to increase in value as climate change causes unprecedented droughts.Zégre urges West Virginia’s politicians, especially Manchin, to realize how vulnerable their state is to the reality of climate change.“We have so much opportunity, yet many of our leaders look backwards for a model of what the future should be.”TopicsWest VirginiaClimate crisisDemocratsUS CongressUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More