Democrats Appear To Have Climate Bill Passed

An old school chum who went on to become a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown and I were talking about the coup attempt, during which I wrote: “I’ll never forget what you wrote in my yearbook: words to the effect of ‘Sadly, you’ll probably spend this summer on the golf course.   What you should be doing is following Watergate; this is one of the most interesting and important times in our country’s history.’”

Knowing that my focus is environmental stewardship, he asked, “Hi Craig.  Don’t know whether to laugh or be embarrassed about that golf comment!  Speaking of important stories, what are your thoughts about the Senate Dems’ climate deal?”

My response:

I’m surprised that anything like this is moving forward at all, though, of course, the numbers on emissions reduction are all aspirational.

Re: the size, it’s $370 billion for climate/environment, which actually IS something. I’ll be interested to see the specific allocation.

The very first thing we need is an energy policy that states our intention to phase out fossil fuels as rapidly as is feasible.  That doesn’t sound like a big deal to me.  It’s not like this country is timid about creating and adopting policies.  Why not this one?

The problem really is that GHG emissions in the US and the EU are holding steady (which isn’t good) but those in Asia are going through the roof, which is terrible. This is an international problem, and any “solution” that fails to address it accordingly is largely a waste of time and resources.