Biden’s big climate policy died. But that’s not the whole story.

America’s political commentary about climate change has been rather gloomy recently.

Core parts of President Joe Biden’s climate plan have crumbled in the face of Washington political realities. This month, the lack of one key Senate vote in his own party forced the president to scrap a clean electricity proposal that supporters had described as essential for lowering the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Now that same lawmaker, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, is reportedly opposing another climate component of the Build Back Better Act, this one involving fees on emissions of methane, a gas with even more planet-warming potential than the carbon that often leaks from gas and oil wells.  

Pundits have suggested that all of this threatens U.S. standing at a key international climate conference that opens next week, the COP26 gathering. Some advocates have questioned whether the American political