Major Climate Action in Danger in Fight Over Pending Twin Bills


WASHINGTON — President Biden framed this moment as the country’s best chance to save the planet.

He said weeks ago in Queens, “the nation and the world are in danger”, where 11 people drowned in their basement apartments after Hurricane Ida’s floodwaters devastated communities from Louisiana to New York. “And that’s no exaggeration. This is real. They warned us that in ten years the extreme weather will become even more extreme, and we are currently living in real time.”

Mr. Biden’s trial plan strengthen the United States Against extreme weather – and reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that warm the Earth and fuel disasters – are placed in two pieces of legislation pending on Capitol Hill. The future of both bills remains questioned, with tensions between moderate and progressive Democrats over the scale and scope of many details.

Together they include what would be the most significant climate action ever taken by the United States. If Congress can’t pass major climate laws now, it could be years before American political cycles provide another opportunity – a delay that scientists say the planet can’t afford.

Climate provisions are designed to rapidly transform energy and transportation, the country’s two largest sources of greenhouse gases, into sectors powered by clean energy, which currently mostly comes from systems that burn gas, oil and coal, from solar, wind and nuclear power.

The impact will affect a wide cross-section of American life, from the types of cars Americans drive, to the types of crops grown by farmers, to the way homes are heated and buildings are built. One measure could shut down nearly all of the country’s remaining coal plants, causing sweeping change in mining-dependent communities, while at the same time, a study It is estimated that as many as 50,000 premature deaths from pollution will be prevented by 2030. And other measures will provide billions of dollars to replant national forests, repair roads for hikers, and provide clean shrubs to reduce the risk of wildfires.

“Every time you let these opportunities slip through your fingers, you pass on a much more difficult problem to future generations,” said Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a mother of four. “It’s hard to swallow that we are dooming children born today and not yet born to the future of dangerous climate impacts.”

United States of America Contributed more to global warming more than any nation, and its action will be felt far beyond its borders. Inadequacy will stall Mr Biden next month, when he is expected to attend a major UN climate summit in Scotland to try to persuade other world leaders to take stronger climate action.

“The whole world is watching,” said Rachel Kyte, dean of Tufts University’s Fletcher School and climate adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General. “If these bills are not passed,” he said, “then the USA will come to Glasgow with some nice words” but “nothing more. It won’t be enough.”

As part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, nearly 200 countries have agreed to try to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius compared to temperatures before industrialization. It’s the threshold that scientists say the dangers of global warming, such as deadly heatwaves, water shortages, crop shortages and ecosystem collapse, have grown enormously.

But the world get off track to achieve this goal. The Earth has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius as countries continue to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. To avoid the most disastrous effects of warming, scientists say, by the end of the decade, nations must cut emissions in half and initiate this change immediately.

Mr Biden has pledged to reduce US emissions by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, but his ambitions are curtailed by the very thin Democratic majority in the House and Senate and the fate of the twin bills.

The first article of the legislation, $3.5 trillion budget package It has been the focus of discussion as it is packed with social programs recommended by House Democrats, including free community college, paid family and medical leave, and extended Medicare.

But it also includes hundreds of billions of tax credits for companies that build wind and solar power, or build polluting facilities to capture and bury carbon dioxide emissions before they enter the atmosphere. And it’s expanding tax incentives for Americans to buy electric vehicles, giving consumers up to $12,500. It will also punish oil and gas companies that leak methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

The strongest climate measure in this legislation is the $150 billion Clean Electricity Performance Program, which rewards utilities that generate increasing amounts of electricity from wind, solar, nuclear or other clean energy sources and punishes those who don’t. The policy aims for the United States to get 80 percent of its electricity from sources that do not produce carbon dioxide, from 40 percent today to 2030.

“If that happens, it would be the biggest thing Congress has ever done on climate,” said John Larsen, director of the Rhodium Group, an energy research and consulting firm. In a recent study, Mr. Larsen found that the biggest climate provisions could only get the US halfway through Mr. Biden’s emissions commitment. However, “it would be huge to get halfway through on just one bill,” he said.

It can be Transforming states like Florida, Mississippi and Alabama are still dominated by fossil fuel power plants.

“A policy like this would really have a huge impact in the Southeast,” said Maggie Shober of the nonprofit Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “We often lag behind on clean energy.”

The second major bill in Congress, $1 trillion infrastructure plan It has bipartisan support. It will provide the largest single coin infusion to prepare communities for the extreme weather conditions currently fueled by ongoing climate change. It includes $47 billion in resilience funding over five years to improve the nation’s flood defenses, limit damage from wildfires, develop new sources of drinking water in drought-affected areas, and move some communities away from high-risk areas.

The bill comes after a record-breakingly hot summer in the United States, when cascading disasters swept through nearly every corner of the country: rivers overflowing in Tennessee, a hurricane that left record amounts of rainfall and a devastation from Louisiana to New York. The heatwave that killed hundreds in the Pacific Northwest, the wildfires that covered the Sierra Nevada, pumped so much smoke into the air that it was hazy in Boston.

The infrastructure bill will change America’s approach to tackling climate threats that can no longer be avoided. Rather than reacting wildly after disaster strikes, the country would be better prepared to reduce damage.

“We’ve been telling lawmakers for a long time that climate change could further strain freshwater supplies in the West and we need to plan before a crisis happens,” said Dan Keppen, executive director of the Family Farm Alliance. Farmers, ranchers and irrigation districts in 17 Western states.

This summer, with the worst drought in memory in the American west, Mr. Keppen saw these dire warnings unfold. An irrigation district in Oregon had to turn off the water in the summer before crops were ready for harvest at local vineyards and orchards. Farmers in California had to send their cattle as they ran out of feed.

Mr Keppen said the infrastructure bill, which includes $8.3 billion in financing for water projects, could make a big difference by improving water storage and financing conservation measures. “I think we would have been much better prepared for this year’s drought if we had done this 20 years ago,” he said. “The only silver lining of this year’s drought was that it really brought attention to the problem.”

The infrastructure bill also includes billions of dollars to make buildings more energy efficient. About 30 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions come from energy to heat, cooling and power buildings.

“For many of us, climate change feels like there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” said Donnel Baird, director of BlocPower, which aims to turn gas and fuel oil heating systems into green electricity. especially in low-income communities. “But no, we can actually green all of America’s buildings.”

However, there is no guarantee that even the infrastructure bill will pass. Many House Democrats said they would not vote on the law unless it passed in line with the compromise bill aimed at addressing the root causes of global warming.

Environmentalists fear that if Congressional Democrats fail to reach an agreement on the law this year, it could be the last chance for major climate action in a long time, as the party could lose control of Congress in next fall’s midterms. While many Republicans endorsed funding for climate resilience, they showed much less support for federal action to reduce emissions.

How much the world will eventually warm will depend on many factors, including how other major polluting countries like China and India handle their emissions. Even so, scientists say the chances of reducing global warming to around 1.5 degrees, or at least below 2 degrees, are gradually decreasing.

“Even if the 1.5-degree window slams shut, it will be worth doing everything we can to limit as much warming as possible,” said Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences at Princeton. “Every fraction of the degree of warming leads to additional damage and risks.”

Mr Oppenheimer said procrastination was not an option. “We’ve been doing this for 40 years and now we’re learning firsthand what that means,” he said.



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