Negotiating Climate Policy: My “Eureka” Moment
The magnitude and complexity of climate change mean it has to be addressed steadily over time. It’s too big a problem to solve with one bite of the apple.
The magnitude and complexity of climate change mean it has to be addressed steadily over time. It’s too big a problem to solve with one bite of the apple.
It’s worth considering that today’s children could still be around in 2100 and beyond when the global temperature increase could be 3 degrees C and higher.
I’m wondering what it is that President Biden and his entourage of 12 Cabinet members and assorted other high-ranking officials will be able to promise their counterparts from other nations over the course of COP26.
In the final analysis, if national policies and programs capable of combating climate change in a meaningful manner are to be enacted, then the Democrats must find a way to reconcile their differences in ways consistent with words like harmony and congruous.
What’s being talked about on Capitol Hill is infrastructure and President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. What’s currently being built, however, are ramparts in anticipation of the 2022 and 2024 federal election battles that I am confident will be “take no prisoners” affairs.
Biden and the Democratic progressives have put together the semblance of an integrated energy and environment policy framework for the first time in US history. It can only be whittled on so much before it’s just another bunch of disjointed pieces.
What will Joe Biden be remembered for? It likely depends on the fate of two pieces of legislation that encompass nearly the entirety of his once-in-a-generation agenda, including infrastructure, climate, voter rights, higher taxes for the wealthy, equal justice for people of color and low incomes, healthcare, and greater assistance for low-income families and children.
I can relate to Biden’s feeling that he’s seen it all before and his urge to rely on his decades of experience to short-circuit the decisionmaking process. We think we’ve seen all this before, but we haven’t.
The closing 100 days of 2021 will be looked back on as among the most critical in the environmental history of the United States—rivaled only by those in the 1970s when the cornerstones of today’s environmental protections were laid.
In the past, socio-political fires like this have usually burned themselves out eventually—but not before a lot of people got hurt.
It’s critically important for climate activists to understand what policies and programs are possible under reconciliation. According to the House Budget Committee, only policies that change spending or revenues can be included.
John Wood, Jr. is a national leader for Braver Angels, a former nominee for Congress, former Vice-Chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, musical artist and a noted writer and speaker on issues of political and racial reconciliation.
He addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”