Democrats May Be on the Verge of Climate Disaster

This is an excerpt from The Atlantic’s climate newsletter, The Weekly Planet. Subscribe today.

Updated at 11:26 a.m. on September 23, 2021

I’m starting to become concerned about President Joe Biden’s ability to pass a climate bill. They’re speaking sotto voce, but still: In the past few days, Democrats on the party’s left and right flanks have started to hint that, well, in some circumstances, given some contingencies, they might prefer no bill to a negotiated compromise with the rival flank.

The most worrying signs so far have come from Senator Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has received from the coal, gas, and oil industries in the current election cycle than any other senator. Manchin was never going to be an easy customer; in 2010, he through President Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade bill. Yet he seemed on board with the Clean Electricity Performance Program, the all-important Democratic proposal that would push utilities to generate more of their energy from every year. The CEPP would eliminate the greater part of 1 billion tons of climate pollution by itself and is essential to meeting the U.S. goal under the Paris Agreement.