The Seven Lawmakers Who Will Decide the Climate’s Fate
It has been bizarre, over the past few weeks, to see the attention lavished on the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. The summit was lauded as the world’s “last, best hope” and the place where the “fate of the planet” would be negotiated. And fine, it was very important.
But Glasgow was not, last week or now, the world’s most important city for staving off climate change. That title belongs to Washington, D.C.
Over the next few weeks, Democrats in Congress will make a far more influential and far-reaching decision than anything that happened at the UN conference. They will decide whether to pass President Joe Biden’s signature spending bill, the Build Back Better Act. Because of the president’s slim majorities in Congress, the bill’s fate will be decided by just seven Democrats:
