The potential global consequences of such a failure are difficult to exaggerate. The Democrats look set to be clobbered in upcoming midterm elections and there is little reason to expect the party will be resurgent at the next presidential election in 2024.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has brokered a deal with his Democrat colleague Joe Manchin.AP
As a result,President Joe Biden’s promise to cut US emissions in half from 2005 levels by 2030,with the goal of hitting net-zero by 2050,looked to be sunk too.
And without US action,hopes that the world might achieve its Paris Accord goal of holding warming to as close to 1.5 degrees as possible fade too – why should emerging economies make sacrifices if the nation that had pumped out the most climate warming gasses in history would not?
The consequences of Manchin’s calculation,of Republican recalcitrance and of Democratic failure could be globally devastating.
Then,on Wednesday Australian time,came the everyone believed had long since failed.
The bill that had once been named the Build Back Better,had been shrunk and rebranded as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
But even in its new form,the IRA would be the single largest emissions’ reduction action ever taken by US congress.
Three weeks ago,the prominent US climate policy analyst Dr Leah Stokes,a professor at the University of California tweeted:“Manchin says he won’t support the climate bill. I’m holding my children and sobbing. I don’t know how Manchin will look his own grandchildren in the eyes tonight. He is condemning them to a broken planet.”
Last week,in startled celebration,she tweeted that the new bill,if passed,would be “a game changer”,delivering cheaper energy to Americans and bringing the nation 80 per cent of the way to reaching Biden’s ambitious climate goal.
She was not the only one celebrating.
In analysis from the research firm The Rhodium Group,it’s estimated the bill will cut US emissions to 31-44 per cent below 2005 levels in 2030,compared to 24-35 per cent under current policy.
“I am pleased to report that this will be,by far,the biggest climate action in human history,” said one of senate’s climate champions,Brian Schatz of Hawaii.
In simple terms,the climate elements of the bill work by pumping US$370 billion in public funding into climate and energy programs. It includes subsidies to help Americans dump the use of gas in the home and adopt electric vehicles.
Crucially for Manchin,the bill is likely to have a deflationary impact. It does this by pulling more money out of the economy than it injects,by hiking some company taxes and improving public spending on drugs;and by increasing the availability of clean energy.
Critics say (rightly) that despite its vast scope the bill requires far too little climate action,done far too late. This is true,as it is of all advanced economy climate efforts. And they condemn it for the inclusion of a requirement for the government to hold lease sales for oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.
Either way,the deal should be celebrated,and the world should hope that it survives a vote with the support of another crucial Democratic senator,Kyrsten Sinema,who has declared she may seek changes.
And it reminds those of us watching from the other side of the world how fragile the project to fight off warming is that it might be derailed not just by the political vagaries of another nation,but by a single vote in a single chamber of government wielded by a man whose political and personal fortune are bound up deep in the coal seams of West Virginia.
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