Climate Change Becomes Central Part of Biden Spending Law

WASHINGTON — Climate has emerged as the largest category in President Biden’s new framework for a massive spending bill, placing global warming at the center of his party’s domestic agenda in a way that was inconceivable just a few years ago.

As the bill was cut from $3.5 trillion to $1.85 trillion, paid family leave, free community college, lower prescription drugs for the elderly, and other Democratic priorities — losses in negotiations between progressives and moderates in the party — were dropped. But $555 billion remains in climate programs.

It was unclear on Thursday whether all Democrats would support the package that would be necessary to pass without Republican support in a closely divided Congress. Progressive Democrats in the House and two key moderates in the Senate, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Cinema of Arizona, publicly disapproved of the president’s framework. But Mr. Biden has expressed confidence that a deal is in sight.

If passed, it would be the largest action ever taken by the United States to address climate change. And it will embed climate action into law, making it harder to reverse by a future president.

In his remarks on Thursday, Mr Biden described it as “the most important investment in tackling the climate crisis that has ever occurred, beyond any developed country in the world”.

NS at the center of climate spending $300 billion in tax incentives for wind, solar and nuclear power producers and buyers are incentives aimed at accelerating the transition from oil, gas and coal. Electric vehicle buyers will also be able to take advantage of tax credits of up to $12,500 depending on which part of the vehicle parts are made in the United States.

The remainder will be distributed among a range of programs, including money to build charging stations for electric vehicles and upgrade the electricity grid to make it more conducive to transmitting wind and solar power, and money to promote climate-friendly agriculture and forestry programs.

The plan will still lag behind Mr Biden’s ambitious commitment to halve the country’s greenhouse gases from 2005 levels by the end of this decade. Scientists say nations must quickly and deeply cut emissions from burning oil, gas and coal to avoid the most distressing effects of climate change.

Climate remained a priority during weeks of tense negotiations between the White House and progressive and centrist lawmakers, as many of the social spending programs were pushed aside.

Mr. Manchin, who played a major role in shaping the debate, can kill NS most powerful mechanism In Mr. Biden’s climate plan – a program that will reward energy companies that switch from fossil fuels to clean energy and punish those that don’t. Mr. Manchin’s province is the top coal and gas producer and personal financial ties to the coal industry.

But during the negotiations, Democratic lawmakers with different political leanings made climate policy a priority.

Rising activists and constant pressure

Many Democrats said they were gaining new energy to take on climate change after a succession of climate disasters last year. Record droughts, floods, wildfires and heatwaves, which scientists say are made worse by climate change, have devastated nearly every corner of the country.

Liberals and many moderates in Congress, including vulnerable House members in swing districts, have forced the administration to focus on the issue. A group of moderate House Democrats even suggested that Democrats not worry about balancing their climate spending with tax increases.

There was also a constant urge within the administration to raise the issue. Mr. Biden has consistently linked reducing emissions with job creation, echoing the views of many top economic advisers, such as Brian Deese, who chairs the National Economic Council. Mr. Deese said he saw the fate of America’s middle class in the coming decades intertwined with the country’s ability to dominate the industries that power emissions reductions.

At the same time, a new generation of climate activists advise the president on his agenda and warn lawmakers that they risk losing young voters if they don’t act.

Biden gave a nod to the generational aspect of the crisis when he spoke about meeting an electrical worker in Pittsburgh on Thursday who was concerned that climate change was threatening the future of his children. “Guys, we all have this obligation, an obligation to our children and grandchildren,” Mr. Biden said.

In Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer instructed the committee to draft climate change legislation that would meet Mr. Biden’s emissions reduction targets.

And Mr. Biden is under increasing pressure to show that the United States, as the country fueling climate change by emitting the most greenhouse gases, took action when it appeared at a pivotal United Nations climate summit on Monday. Coming empty-handed undermines the credibility of the United States on the world stage.

As advocates of family leave, low-prescription drugs, and other policies lobbied hard for their cause, environmentalists felt an intense urgency given the warnings from the scientific community that the world only has until the end of this decade to make significant cuts in carbon dioxide. methane and other emissions or face a sad future.

Kidus Girma, 26, from Dallas, is one of several activists who have been on hunger strike outside the White House and Capitol building for the past nine days to promote the passage of climate law.

“If you look at the history of how politicians did what they had to do on issues like civil rights and climate change, it wasn’t politicians taking their word for what they wanted,” Mr. Girma said. “But because people force them to do it.”

Changing climate policy

Ten years ago, when former President Barack Obama tried and failed to enact climate law, pressure for climate action was unthinkable, even by moderates in Congress. This measure faded in the Senate after Democrats failed to garner enough votes from their respective parties to put the bill to a vote.

“It’s very, very different now,” said Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democratic Senator who served in the Senate when Mr. Obama’s climate bill died.

Ms. Stabenow, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, said she did not receive political support from farmers for a climate bill during the Obama administration.

“Today has completely changed,” he said. “Today, we have every major agricultural group, food companies, and researchers supporting the climate bill. What I’m hearing from the farmers now is, yes, you’re absolutely right, the climate crisis is real. But we need help on what to do about it.”

Like many in her party, Ms. Stabenow attributes the new urgency in climate policy to the rise of extreme and deadly weather.

The past two years have only highlighted this case: 22 climate disasters costing at least $1 billion each United States in 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This record is on track to be broken again this year. This summer, the hottest The country saw record levels of wildfires devastate large areas of California and the Pacific Northwest scorched by a deadly heat wave. Floods that occur every 200 years in New York and New Jersey have killed dozens of people.

The disasters created a new awareness of the warming planet among many Americans. And during the 2020 presidential campaign, environmental activists sought to capitalize on these growing concerns.

In particular, the Sunrise Movement, an activist group, convinced nearly every candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries to endorse the Green New Deal, a plan that would eliminate the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade. While Mr. Biden did not embrace the entire program, he did endorse parts of it.

After Mr. Biden clinched his party’s candidacy, Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, joined the team that created the climate policy.

“We built a political movement and changed the political climate to make it the North Star of the Democratic Party,” said Lauren Maunus, director of advocacy at Sunrise.

An early push

As soon as the Democrats on Capitol Hill gained a thin majority in early 2020, their leaders began laying the groundwork for a climate plan.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer of New York has never been a dedicated champion of climate action.

But that changed when he took control of the Senate.

“I will fight for a big, bold climate package,” Mr Schumer said in an interview in late 2020. “And as a leader, I will focus on creating a climate package that meets the scale and scope of the problem.”

Mr. Schumer has tasked Democrats on Senate committees responsible for tax policy with drafting climate-related tax laws that could be rolled into a larger budget bill.

Mr. Schumer’s staff developed a computer modeling tool to assess the impact of each piece of potential climate legislation on emissions. As climate policies were drafted, Mr. Schumer’s staff ran them through the program to determine how many tons of greenhouse gases they would eliminate – and used the software to quickly identify replacement programs that would achieve similar emission levels as climate policies fell. cuts.

Mr. Schumer has tasked Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden with drafting an approximately $300 billion clean energy tax credit package that will measurably reduce emissions.

Mr. Schumer and other Democrats sought to gain Mr. Manchin’s support on another critical climate policy: a $150 billion program that would pay power plants to quickly shut down coal and gas-fired power plants and replace them with wind and solar generators.

But just two weeks after the UN climate summit in Scotland, Mr Manchin told the White House he was against the clean electricity program. At the same time, he demanded that the total bill be reduced from $3.5 trillion to roughly $1.5 trillion.

While the White House and congressional staff sought to shrink the package, activists and members of Congress, including Ms. Pelosi, insisted that climate provisions be maintained.

Jim Tankersley contributing reporting.