Climate action, concussed
Build Back Better was dead, until it wasn’t.
Welcome to Planet Days, a green newsletter for a greenwashed Planet.
If you’re new to this newsletter, every Monday, we curate a five-minute roundup of the latest climate news and what it means for our Planet. If this was forwarded to you, smash that subscribe button:
Unfortunately, that’s not the case today, as I’m still recovering from a concussion I got several weeks ago. But I felt like an update was still in order, especially with the recent news on the American climate action front.
Initially, I was going to use my limited brain activity today to make a metaphor between American climate action and my concussion, which has forced me to severely limit the use of my phone, computer, TV (and even books!) for the last two and a half weeks:
The restless, hopeless feeling of my concussion protocol is probably similar to what many felt only weeks ago when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), a centrist lawmaker with deep financial ties to the coal industry, pulled the plug on climate talks. With that, he effectively killed Build Back Better, President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill.
Fortunately, I can sacrifice that hook for a dose of reality: Last week, Sen. Manchin surprisingly reversed course and agreed on a package that includes nearly $370 billion in climate spending.
If passed, the Inflation Reduction Act, as it’s now called, would be the United States’ largest, most ambitious action to fight climate change.
Though I’ve been unable to dive deeper into the proposed bill (shoutout to my partner, Sarah, who read to me several newsletters that break down the bill), I did want to pull more from this legislation and explain what it means for individual climate action.
The existence of Joe Manchin and the power he wields are at odds with the interest of the general electorate and the majority of voters who want climate action passed at the federal level.
And so, navigating climate action at an individual, or even local, level is tough when we know that billions of dollars of clean energy investments hang in the balance of one lawmaker.
But as Bill McKibben wrote in his Substack newsletter, The Crucial Years, we’re not powerless in the face of such a frustrating situation. Manchin’s reversal wasn’t a change of heart so much as the consequence of an unavoidable momentum shift, driven by more and more voices demanding climate action:
[W]e fight to change the zeitgeist, people’s sense of what is normal and natural and obvious. Yes, we fight to block this pipeline or divest that pension fund, and each of those is important: but they add up to something more, a slowly moving weight that eventually shifts from one side to the other. That’s what happened last night when Joe Manchin caved.
Such momentum is driven by all of us, whether we work in policy in D.C. or simply want to see more bike lanes in our community. The common denominator is our shared vision of a greener, smarter, and better Planet.
That shared vision manifests in actions that I call “climate superpowers”: something you do to advocate for a greener Planet, or as McKibben calls it, “change the zeitgeist.”
That’s why it’s been so frustrating to be on the sidelines for nearly three weeks: I don’t have the power to push through or block major climate legislation, but I do have this newsletter, which I consider my climate superpower.
Like Joe Manchin’s abrupt reversal, my bruised brain will hopefully take a sharp turn for the better these next weeks, and we can get Planet Days back to cooking on its regular schedule.
Until then, feel free to pass along this newsletter to friends, coworkers, and family members — and also, ask yourself: What’s my climate superpower?
Nice sidekick to read to you. You’re a blessed man 😇
climate superheroes would be a good party theme