We’ve Had Other Climate Defeats. This One Is by Far the Weirdest.
When I started writing about climate change a few years ago, I tried to give readers regular dollops of hope with their gruel. I focused on renewable energy (which was getting cheaper) and American carbon emissions (which were falling) at the same time that I covered sea-level rise, extreme weather, or the collapse of major ecosystems.
The point wasn’t to sanitize the deterioration of the planet. It was to report on the topic honestly. Even after President Donald Trump took office, you could look across the economy and see bright spots of decarbonization, if only policy makers would capitalize on them.
Today, I’m finding very little to sugarcoat. When Senator Joe Manchin on President Joe Biden’s legislative climate agenda last week, he locked in a genuine setback for the country and the world, all but ensuring that billions of tons of unnecessary carbon pollution will stream into the atmosphere. The planet’s climate is not doomed. Indeed, the nature of the problem is such that until the Hudson River turns to ash or crocodiles migrate to Greenland, thetruly doomed.
