The perverse argument against the bipartisan infrastructure bill: It wants to address climate change
clock One place where no one will be reading the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes massive new report on the evolution and future of global warming is at the library in Greenville, Calif. The library, a small building with a sloped roof , no longer exists beyond a few free-standing walls surrounding piles of ash. Last week, a pair of photographers documenting the massive Dixie Fire in the state captured the buildings still-burning remnants. We just entered Greenville on Hwy 89 This video was taken from Bidwell & Ann St. Im so sorry for the town of Greenville. #DixieFire pic.twitter.com/vtAiYpy1Dl The Dixie Fire is the sort of catastrophic event that we can expect to happen more regularly, according to the report. Higher temperatures and drier conditions will lead to deeper, longer droughts as California is experiencing drying out vegetation and increasing the risk of massive wildfires. Six of the seven largest wildfires in California have occurred in the past 12 months . The report by the IPCC makes clear both that the extent of the warming the planet is experiencing is a function of human activity, primarily burning fossil fuels, and that we can expect warming to increase and for negative events to occur more frequently. Higher sea levels, larger storms, more heat. All of this will strain not only human quality of life but environments built without the expectation that Portland, Ore., would see heat over 100 degrees for days on end or that the ocean would threaten to submerge significant parts of Miami. Its a grim coincidence that the IPCC report was released on the same day that the Senate is poised to approve a compromise infrastructure package that scaled back President Bidens proposals for addressing global warming. The package under consideration has significant components that will increase a transition away from current levels of fossil-fuel consumption, including improving the electrical grid and improving infrastructure for electric vehicles. But climate activists and legislators focused on the issue lament where it comes up short. And yet amazingly and predictably one of the key arguments being made against the bill by far-right opponents is that it addresses climate change at all. Youre probably familiar with the Green New Deal, at least in broad strokes. Introduced in early 2019 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), it was largely an effort to consider and prepare for how climate change might reshape the economy. Ocasio-Cortez and Markey advocated for changes based on addressing climate change and, more broadly, for building a more equitable economy as it evolved. But in part because climate change has become deeply saturated with partisan signifiers and in part because of a fact sheet about the proposal that made a tongue-in-cheek comment about the effort to reduce rather than eliminate emissions saying that getting rid of flatulent cows and airplanes would take too long this was elevated by critics as a claim that Green New Deal proponents wanted to ban air travel, even to Hawaii, a refrain thats been associated with the proposal ever since. In other words, the Green New Deal turned into the Green New Deal a straw-man depiction of out-of-control bureaucrats trying to overhaul the country and force change on Americans in order to address threats that are presented as overblown if existent at all. In fact, the ire focused on climate change for more than a decade has largely been subsumed by anger at this one particular policy proposal, in part because of its sponsors. When Biden first announced his infrastructure proposal, it did mirror the Green New Deal in one way: It included large-scale efforts to both address and prepare for climate change and its impacts on the country. Key pieces of Bidens plan and the Green New Deal were both about rebuilding literally and metaphorically because of how the world is changing. As his proposal went through a process of bipartisan negotiation, big parts of that effort were excised, shunted to a unipartisan reconciliation bill thats being moved in parallel to the bipartisan effort. Yet for those seeking to undercut the bipartisan bill and to therefore deny Biden a big political win the Green New Deal framing has proved irresistible. Donald Trump, as responsible as anyone when he was president for driving the idea that the Ocasio-Cortez proposal was mostly about cows, disparaged the Biden proposal in a statement as the beginning of the Green New Deal. Eternally incapable of subtlety, Trump in his statement directly mentioned that it would likely aid the Democrats and Biden politically, a key focus of Trumps as he thinks about potentially running in 2024. But he wasnt alone. Right-wing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) similarly charged that the bill is the Green New Deal. She offered a specific point of criticism (as she has in the past): that the focus on electric vehicles would enslave America to China because of the need for vehicle batteries that are mostly manufactured in that country. This, too, is ironic. For years, observers urged the United States to move quickly to build the clean-energy economy, including on things like manufacturing batteries, but because climate change was a politically loaded issue, the government (and Republicans specifically) failed to act to bolster the industry. Now that failure to prepare for the need for electric vehicles is cited as a reason not to embrace electric vehicles. In a flier-slash-memo to members, Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, created a veritable monster mash of boogeymen that he claimed would emerge from the infrastructure agreement. Its the Green New Deal fulfilling AOCs vision of expanded train deployment. It empowers woke regulators and it pushes Lefts social justice mission, among other things. In short, it was a Trojan horse for the radical Pelosi/Biden agenda and it is awfully long. Politics is politics. If you oppose something, you gin up reasons for others to join you. And in the Republican Party, addressing climate change continues to be anathema because its the purview of the hated left. That Banks ties climate change to social justice and that Greene ties it to China are flip sides of one coin: If the left wants it, its bad for all of the reasons that everything the left wants is bad. Scientists have been saying for decades that we need to change directions on emissions and/or prepare for sweeping, dramatic downsides. An international consortium of scientists said it again on Monday, in a report that is far longer and far more detailed than the infrastructure bill. Its all there for Greene or Banks to read, this articulation of how the world will warm and what it means for the United States. For example, the report frequently mentions the recent droughts that afflicted the Southwest and California in particular. The language is academic, and the findings often constrained by qualifiers. But the report includes statements like this one: Burnt area extent in western US forests (Abatzoglou and Williams, 2016) and particularly in California (Williams et al., 2019) has been linked to anthropogenic climate change via a significant increase in vapour pressure deficit, a primary driver of wildfires. Sure, but on the other hand: Green New Deal. Hard to argue with that.