Is the US uniquely bad at tackling climate change?

[Natal]

Shannon Osaka,
Grist

A Democratic president was in the White House. The Democratic Party held a majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But a single senator — a moderate Democrat from West Virginia — blocked the White House’s preferred climate plan.

No, this wasn’t 2021 — the year was 1993: Jurassic Park had just been released, Bill Clinton was president, and atmospheric carbon dioxide was only 357 parts per million (it’s 415 ppm today). Senator Robert Byrd of fossil-fuel laden West Virginia was the chair of the Senate Appropriations committee, and without his support, the Clinton administration couldn’t pass a tax on carbon emissions to address climate change. The White House opted to support an energy tax instead, which passed the House but, faced with substantial opposition and fossil-fuel lobbying, never became law.

It was the first climate policy failure of many. Four years later, Byrd spearheaded a resolution that prevented the U.S. from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Other efforts to pass climate legislation stalled nearly every year after. Indeed, the last three decades of U.S. climate policy look like a graveyard of failed bills: Carbon taxes have died on the Senate floor and been torched by attack ads. Cap-and-trade systems have been endorsed — and then abandoned — by Republicans and Democrats alike.

According to the Climate Change Performance Index, the U.S. is 55th in the world when it comes to climate policy; another analysis by Yale University and Columbia University ranked the country 24th for environmental performance. Now, as Democrats struggle to regroup after current West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s refusal to support President Joe Biden’s landmark climate and social welfare bill, it seems to be happening again. The U.S. is within reach of passing climate policy, but perilously close to falling short.

Biden’s giant climate bill — known as the Build Back Better Act — is still in play. Democrats have vowed to try and pass it regardless of Manchin’s stance, while the West Virginia senator has said publicly that the climate sections of the bill may be easier to reach agreement on than, say, the Child Tax Credit. But earlier this week, Manchin also claimed that there have been “no negotiations” about the bill. For the moment, Build Back Better looks like a grim bookend to decades of inaction on climate change.

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I wonder what John Denver is thinking from On High. . .

[LakeArenal]

1. I think willful blindness to climate change.

[RainCaster]

2. The US is uniquely bad at doing Anything not in the interests of corporations

We have created a system that protects the Constitutional rights of the wealthy and corporate America.

[YP_Yooper]

3. "Is the US uniquely bad at tackling climate change?" - NOPE

Not at all. Asia has now put out more CO2 now than the US has, well, ever historically. They continue to build more coal plants and pour vastly more CO2 than the US ever will with no plans on stopping. Scientists have already said we're well past the tipping point in Antarctica to prevent that huge glacier on the western coast from going into the ocean. A common argument is that the US has the highest per capita emissions. Well, the earth doesn't care about that, it only cares about total emissions, and even if the US were to disappear, this still wouldn't stop. https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2

As the article says, the US is certainly in a tough spot politically to make the necessary changes, but to be uniquely bad is to dismiss the impact. Since there is nothing the US can do to stop other countries from dumping CO2, politics or not, why are we uniquely bad? The top "high performing countries" don't have a chance in God's green earth to do anything about global climate change, no matter how green they are. So they may be the best rated, but it doesn't amount to a damn thing but virtue signalling.

A downer I am, yes, because the immensity of the scale that needs change had nothing to do with the US anymore (or Europe for that matter) except as being some kind of intangible, moralistic "lead by example" reasoning. The BBB, while I really think we desperately need it for other reasons, won't help stop or slow global climate change at all :/

[Skittles]

4. an asshole from West Virginia blocking progress

ugh