Last chance for US climate legislation

August 7, 2021 4:53 PM

The home stretch. It’s time to pay attention, call your members of Congress, and mobilize your networks. Crunch time: this is America's last chance at serious climate policy for a decade. It's going to be a clean energy standard & clean energy tax credits, or nothing. David Roberts explains the climate policy in the upcoming reconciliation bill, which needs all 50 Democratic votes to get past the US Senate.

Maybe Roberts is being too pessimistic: if legislation fails, there's still executive action. But legislative action would be great.

Leah Stokes and Sam Ricketts explain how a national clean electricity standard would get the US to 80% clean electricity by 2030, and 100% by 2035.

posted by russilwvong (18 comments total)

We can’t get Americans to get a vaccine or wear masks in a plague. Wildfires burn red states like Wyoming and Idaho and the red areas of states like California and Oregon yet the voters in those areas are more Republican than ever. Florida is sinking but they voted in DeSantos and will probably re-elect him. They just keep building down there.
posted by interogative mood at 7:33 PM on August 7, 2021 [5 favorites]

Kern County commissioners are trying to block support of solar initiatives and outright installations, unless we do the same for big oil. I live in a banana republican mess. Who's our daddy? Kevin McCarthy. And the guy who is the chief competitor to Gavin Newsom in the recall is offering $0.00 minimum wage, he says stuff like, two adults work out what the pay is going to be on a sliding scale that starts at nothing. Environment has supporters here, but my county delivers 70% of California's oil. The money to buy opinion is enormous.
posted by Oyéah at 8:00 PM on August 7, 2021 [3 favorites]

But legislative action would be great

Americans are buying coal-rollin' pickup trucks like candy. This isn't going to be fixed with laws.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:24 PM on August 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

The links in this post are worth reading.

I’d be interested to read informed takes on whether Roberts is being overly optimistic about the supply/demand impact of CEPP and the tax credits he discusses. Roberts has elsewhere been critical of carbon capture technology, which is likely to be Manchin’s gesture toward addressing the climate because it allows fossil fuels to carry on (and also happens to be totally ineffective for the job at hand).
posted by chimpsonfilm at 9:03 PM on August 7, 2021

I would like to recommend Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry of the Future. It is a work of fiction, starting with climate events around 2023. I have not had anything else give me a wake up call like this book.
posted by andreinla at 9:30 PM on August 7, 2021 [9 favorites]

We could have a new Reapportionment Act, repealing the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 and expand the House and thus the Electoral College and undermine the minoritarian power of the GOP without trying for solutions that require Constitutional Amendments. We could make it nigh-impossible for the right-wing whack-jobs who have taken the Republicans to Trumpy places from being able to hold the House for at least a generation and thus make climate legislation a requirement for getting anything done. Sure that means having a number of Representatives that numbers over 700 but for a nation of 330+ million people we really should be looking at many more than that.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 10:27 PM on August 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

I still have my representatives's contact info from the last time I asked a question like this in a thread like this, so this time, all I need is a sound bite. Can someone please provide me with 2-3 sentences to pass on to my representatives?
posted by aniola at 11:05 PM on August 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

https://call4climate.com/ - which provides a single number you can call to automatically call your Senator's office - suggests the following:

Hi, my name is [YOUR NAME], I am one of the Senator’s constituents living in [YOUR CITY/TOWN, STATE]. I wanted to ask the Senator to support a big, bold climate bill, that invests at the scale of the crisis, including the following 4 things:

• A Clean Electricity Standard that cuts pollution and modernizes our grid.
• Directing 40% of funding to frontline communities.
• No more subsidies for fossil fuel corporations.
• A Civilian Climate Corps that puts people to work.

There are many more climate investments we need now. The bottom line is the climate investments must be big to meet the climate crisis head on.

From David Roberts' article, it sounds like the Clean Electricity Standard and clean-energy tax credits are really the two key measures.
posted by russilwvong at 11:55 PM on August 7, 2021 [10 favorites]

Americans are buying coal-rollin' pickup trucks like candy. This isn't going to be fixed with laws.

I'm always surprised by comments like this. Isn't the takeaway rather that this can only be solved with laws? That you can't expect personal behavior changes to have a significant impact? And that you will need serious top down laws such as :

* a ban on new Ice personal vehicles starting 2035
* closure of all coal power plants
* government supported loans for massive build out of solar and wind
* government supported training for construction and service of renewable energy
* free public transit
* a ban on new oil or gas heating/cooling systems (heat pumps only)


...All of that in order to affect a scheduled drawdown in the use of fossil fuels.

Essentially we can not consumer choice our way out of this mess. We must use the law to target fossil fuels companies.
posted by molecicco at 12:15 AM on August 8, 2021 [20 favorites]

Btw David Roberts is excellent, and targeted green electricity is one of the biggest legs of any significant reduction in fossil fuels.
posted by molecicco at 12:20 AM on August 8, 2021

Anyway - CEPP sounds great. RPS always seemed a clunky mechanism to me. CEPP basically says "you figure it out, we can help, you'll get a fine if you don't" as far as I can tell.

If the US goes 80% green electricity by 2030 we can rejoice.
posted by molecicco at 1:18 AM on August 8, 2021

I have no idea if something significant gets passed through congress, but I am becoming somewhat less pessimistic about what's going on in the private sector.

Solar panels continue to get cheaper, as does wind. Huge pools of private capital are looking for green projects to invest in. The major car companies are pushing an increasing share of capital to EV development, and abandoning new ICE research. We know largely how to decarbonize: Electrify everything, and put renewable electricity into an upgraded grid.

There's a lot happening that some corrupt politicians can't hold back, and there's real money behind a lot of the initiatives that will bring progress. It would be nice if the government could lead, or at least get out of the way.
posted by thenormshow at 7:44 AM on August 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

If you call your legislator, you should also talk to them about the Green New Deal for public schools.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:55 AM on August 8, 2021

Decarbonising heat isn't mentioned directly in either article, and crops up very rarely in what I see of US discourse but probably accounts for maybe a third of emissions. While 'electrify everything' addresses it indirectly, not having any plan to adopt the tech to use low carbon electricity for heat is going to delay efforts substantially and at a large scale.
posted by biffa at 12:17 PM on August 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Jeepers, andreinla, I just downloaded and read the first chapter of KSR's Ministry of the Future as you recommend. It sure does read like a terrifying work of non-fiction.
posted by PhineasGage at 1:09 PM on August 8, 2021

Reading The Ministry for the Future was a revelation of sorts, in that it pulled no punches regarding likely climate outcomes, but more importantly laid out a large number of ways we might be able to take the edge off our self-inflicted doom. In short, it gave me some hope, for which I am grateful.

The Green New Deal for Public Schools mentioned by tofu_crouton is another one of those things that gives me some hope. I suspect that a lot of the climate initiatives included in the giant reconciliation bill will be whittled away over time, but if we can get some kind of legislative jump-start, even one a few decades too late, then maybe some Ministry for the Future-type shit will be possible here in the US.
posted by heteronym at 3:24 PM on August 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

Climate is the most important issue on our planet as we know it.

USA has to fix the dysfunctional voting system first, in order to help prevent future governments from undoing any useful measures.
posted by ovvl at 7:05 PM on August 13, 2021

Personally, I think climate is only a part of a much larger picture, but I'm not the person to get into that. Instead, I will share a book I just found that is now on my reading list.

Are you ready to believe in the future again? The New Possible
posted by aniola at 8:51 PM on August 13, 2021