Monday, November 1st, 2021
Because of the President of the Climate
Biden comes to Glasgow empty-handed
From Roland Peters
Will Joe Biden manage to bring all national interests under one roof and initiate the energy transition in the United States? The US president started with high hopes in office. There is hardly any progress. In Glasgow this collides with its claim to international leadership.
Anyone who helps to slow down climate change is doing a forward-looking social policy. This is how you could judge through rose-colored glasses what has been going on in Washington for months. For the time being, this is a struggle for the braking distance in a master plan that US President Joe Biden presented a few days ago. It provides for $ 555 billion for the climate, but at the same time many core social projects have disappeared. “Nobody got everything they wanted,” says Biden soothingly. But that is an exaggeration, because no one has yet received anything: The whole package, and thus also the climate legislation of the United States, is still pending.
“We will not go there disappointed,” Biden’s National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy said defiantly of the climate summit in Glasgow. to keep up. ” The US President wants to present himself in Scotland as a leader and admonisher of international efforts. And this despite the fact that almost 80 percent of the energy in the US comes from gas, oil and coal. Though everyone can watch Biden bite granite in Congress.
The fact is: the Democrat, who would so much like to be seen as climate president, who started office with great expectations at the beginning of the year, comes to Glasgow empty-handed. But the United States is the second largest polluter in the world after China. The White House is convinced that it will be able to achieve its climate goals with the framework plan now presented: 50 percent reduced emissions by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. Quite a few doubt that this is possible. In addition, this plan is still an internal party compromise proposal that individual senators can block.
Because of climate change, the global temperature has so far been on average by more than 1 degree increased. In the northwest of the USA, for example, it is up to 2.3 degrees more, by the year 2100 it could be 5.6 degrees according to forecasts if nothing changes. Just a few months ago, the northwestern United States suffered from a gigantic heat dome that drove people into specially prepared cooler public buildings.
The plan is just a plan
Meanwhile, senators and the two wing of the ruling Democrats were already negotiating in Congress and the White House. The legislative package including climate measures has shrunk to half its original size in these months. Now it’s only $ 1.75 trillion in size. Why? Industrial interests and their representatives in Congress got in the way, the so-called Corporate Democrats.
Because the majority in the Senate is so tight, the Democrats need every single vote. For months now, two senators, Joe Manchin for the state of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, have been able to make the whole company dance to their tune with their open displeasure. Perhaps this is not at all wrong for other senators. You can hide behind the two pretty easily: Manchin is considered a Republican in disguise anyway, he represents the interests of the coal industry in his home state. Sinema has strong connections in the pharmaceutical industry.
Despite the large deletions, both have not yet made it clear whether they will agree to Biden’s compromise package. You and your supporters are in no hurry. The longer everything drags on, the more the measures are likely to be watered down. The Democrats have their fate and that of the United States in their own hands, for better or for worse.
Central projects for the energy transition are still planned, which amount to more than 555 billion dollars, i.e. a third. This is intended to finance, among other things, state incentives to buy electric cars and the installation of charging stations and solar cells on house roofs. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, one of the authors of the Green New Deal, on which the climate plans go back, told the “New York Times” that the original plan was already far too small. To halve CO₂ emissions by 2030, it would take around $ 10 trillion from public investments. Eighteen times as much.
Clumsy tanker
A couple of existing social programs for families are to be expanded, but what have dropped out are key campaign promises made by the Democrats that would noticeably improve the lives of their voters and everyone else: the introduction of parental leave, home care by relatives, and government intervention in drug prices. The latter was the last for voters according to the survey the main concern. Not to mention the great promise of public health insurance for everyone, which dominated the entire democratic election campaign, but hardly addresses a democrat apart from the progressive wing.
On the one hand, one could argue that Biden is trying with all his might to get at least part of the climate agenda through – and is thus making the longer-term social policy despite the canceled measures, since the consequences of climate change hit people with low incomes particularly hard. But the other part of the truth is that as president, Biden could be much more aggressive, against his own senators and with decrees from the White House. But he fights a bit against himself: For decades he sat for Delaware in the Senate, a corporate oasis of the financial industry; he knows the ways and interests, seeks compromises and does not want to offend. That costs him parts of his agenda and the USA a quick maneuver in the direction of climate protection.
The midterms, the congressional elections, will be scheduled for next year. A third of the senators and the entire House of Representatives will then be re-elected. Normally, the party whose president sits in the White House almost always loses seats, often also majorities. In polls, things are not looking good for the Democrats and the window of opportunity is closing. Voter satisfaction with Biden has also decreased in recent weeks. It needs to be successful, and the legislative package on social and climate policy is, along with infrastructure, its largest domestic project. Everything is interconnected: if one fails, all of them fail.
It is corporate and personal interests that navigate the clumsy tanker of US politics through the smoke of the climate crisis. But this leaves no time for protracted developments in new political processes or even a culture of action. The key to some of the world’s problems lies in Washington. But so far nobody has straightened it to get to the bridge. Not even Biden.