The Democrats Really Are That Dense About Climate Change
The party doesn’t even seem to realize that it’s blowing a once-in-a-decade chance to pass meaningful climate legislation.
By Robinson Meyer
MAY 11, 2022
MIAMI BEACH, Fla.—On Monday night, I saw one of the most despair-inducing performances about the hope of climate action that I’ve witnessed in years.
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, took the stage here at the Aspen Ideas: Climate festival to discuss what congressional Democrats are doing on climate change. Her remarks were more effective as a litany of missed opportunities. Susan Goldberg, recently the editor in chief of National Geographic, now a dean at Arizona State University, asked the speaker point-blank whether Democrats were going to pass climate legislation, and Pelosi all but shrugged. The House has already passed a roughly $2 trillion bill containing President Joe Biden’s climate priorities, she said. Now it was in the Senate’s hands. If it happened to get a bill back to her, the House would pass it.
Missing was any sense that this legislation is a make-or-break moment for the broader Democratic caucus. Gone was any suggestion that if Democrats fail to pass a bill this term, then America’s climate commitment under the Paris Agreement will be out of reach, and worse heat waves, larger wildfires, and damaging famines across the country and around the world within the next decade and a half will be all but assured.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/05/nancy-pelosi-democrats-climate-change-bill/629822/
