The unraveling of US President Joe Biden’s climate plan — which would have pumped about $300 billion in tax incentives into renewable energy, subsidized the electric vehicle market and accelerated efforts to halve carbon emissions by 2030 — underlined the polarization that still exists when it comes to prioritizing climate issues. ONE overview conducted by the Pew Research Center in May found that 49 percent of Americans said the Biden administration’s climate change policies are moving the country in the right direction, while 47 said the opposite. And while the majority of Americans can recognize that the climate is changing, they don’t always agree on what’s driving that change and what to do about it. An aerial view shows damaged homes in a flooded area of Montegut, La., after Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana in August 2021. Nearly three-quarters of Americans said they experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past year, according to a Survey of the Pew Research Center. (Marco Bello/Reuters) Along with political divisions, Democratic progress on the climate agenda has been undermined by the fact that, at a time of painfully high gas prices and inflation exceeding 9 percent, voters in both parties do not see it as a top priority. “Climate change continues to rank well behind inflation and gun violence as an issue of great concern to Americans,” said Tim Malloy, an analyst for the Quinnipiac University Poll, which tracks voter sentiment. “It remains an uphill battle to get Americans to focus on what experts believe is a clear and present danger.” Quinnipiac and other recent polls rank climate change behind inflation, gun violence, immigration and election integrity as the most pressing issues facing the country. ONE CNN poll taken from June 13 to July 13 found that even among Democratic-aligned voters, climate change ranked fourth among the issues respondents wanted addressed in November’s midterm elections. WATCHES | Why the US climate bill was defeated before reaching the Senate:
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A single Democrat is siding with Republican colleagues to block US President Joe Biden’s climate agenda in the Senate. That has the White House scrambling for alternatives as more than 100 million Americans bake under heat guidelines.
“The bottom line is inflation”
It’s that sentiment that centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin tapped into when he failed to support his party’s climate plan last week, ensuring defeat in the US Senate, whose control is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans. “The bottom line is inflation,” the West Virginia lawmaker told reporters earlier this week. “I’m worried about the person who can’t feed their family, who can’t basically put gas in their car to go to work and is struggling to pay their utility bills… I’m more worried about that Nothing else.” Manny Villa thinks voters may change their tune in November. The North Carolina native who visited Washington, DC this week says his home state has seen more days above 32C this summer than usual – and similar unusual weather patterns across the country are drawing the public attention. North Carolina’s Manny Villa, pictured at the Capitol, says he believes the intense heat many parts of the U.S. are experiencing. (Jason Lowther/CBC) “I think climate change is going to have a bigger impact on voting after this summer when we had record heat,” he told the CBC’s Katie Simpson. “The economy will probably be the biggest impact, but climate change has to be up there.” He would like to see more investment in wind, solar and nuclear power and more tax credits for home solar, he said. “Anything they can do to increase the use of this.”
Divisor energy transfer rate
How quickly the transition from fossil fuels will happen is a polarizing question in the US Eighty-two percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters say they oppose phasing out production of new natural gas vehicles by 2035, while 65 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters say they favor it, according to Pew. overview. Daniel Brooks, 42, is firmly in the camp that sees Biden’s push to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels as too fast. The farmer from Tate County, Miss., said he was opposed to Biden shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline and the potential jobs that would come from it. “We’re so dependent on fossil fuels and we’re not efficient enough yet with our solar, wind and electricity for everyone to go right away,” he said as he and his wife and two children posed for photos outside White . Home this week. “It should be a slower transition.” A driver pumps gas in Lynnfield, Massachusetts this week. Americans disagree about how quickly they should move away from fossil fuels. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images) As a the majority of Americans, Brooks supports the use of more renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. “I farm and use a lot of fuel and I agree that we need to be good stewards of our energy and our oil, but I disagree [with] the way we do it,” Brooks said. “I think cutting things off right away is not the answer.” Republicans and Democrats agree on some policies, such as planting trees to absorb carbon emissions and giving tax credits to businesses for carbon capture and storage, but differ on fossil fuels, with 76 percent of Republicans prefers more offshore oil and gas. drilling, compared to 27 percent of Democrats. While not a single Republican in the House or Senate has supported Biden’s climate bill, younger Republicans support some federal climate action, such as incentives for hybrid and electric vehicles and requiring power companies to use more renewable energy , said Cary Funk, Pew’s science director. and society research. Younger Democrats, meanwhile, say even the policies that failed to pass Congress don’t go far enough. WATCHES | How heat affects your health:
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Most have experienced extreme weather conditions
The Pew survey found that a majority of Americans (71 percent) say their community has experienced extreme weather events in the past year, such as droughts, floods or periods of unusual heat. Whether or not they associate these events with climate change may determine whether or not they support policies to address them. Interventions to limit climate change are still viewed by many Americans as damaging to the economy, says Samatha Gross, director of the energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “I feel like we’re missing the fact that rampant climate change is terrible for the economy,” he said. “I’m disappointed that we’re not more proactive … We’ve focused on the costs rather than the benefits.” Anthony Harris wipes sweat from his face during a heat warning in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday. (Lisa Krantz/Reuters) Although Biden promised Wednesday that he “won’t take no for an answer” and will use his executive powers to advance his climate agenda, Gross fears the U.S. missed an opportunity to pass federal legislation beyond the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed last year, which expanded funding for clean energy technologies and infrastructure; While states can make their own laws, there are areas where federal standards can make a difference, Gross said. “Transportation is the largest polluting sector in the US, and many of the modes of transportation are federally mandated, such as fuel efficiency standards,” he said. “Also, things like cap and trade … if you really want an economy-wide carbon price that allows trade-offs between sectors, that’s a federal thing.” WATCHES | Biden says he will use executive orders to enact climate policies:
Biden announces new measures on climate change amid heat warnings
With millions of Americans living under heat warnings, US President Joe Biden announced a series of new measures to tackle climate change, but stopped short of declaring a state of emergency.
Some states are not waiting for federal action
Federal law can also be more difficult to overturn than at the state level, Gross said, although recent EPA Decision The reversal of federal limits on power plant emissions shows that this is not always the case. In Manchin’s home state of West Virginia, for example, Republicans tried unsuccessfully this year to repeal the Virginia Clean Economy Act introduced by Democrats two years earlier, which requires utilities to divest from coal by in 2050. Manchin cited high utility bills as one of the reasons he wasn’t ready to support funding for ambitious climate initiatives, but James Van Nostrand, director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at West Virginia University, says it’s the the state’s own reluctance to accelerate adoption of cheaper renewable energy that hurts the very people the senator claims to protect; Steam rises from a pile of coal at a mine in Bishop, W.Va. Many coal mines in West Virginia have closed, but coal still powers most of the state’s electricity generation, according to 2020 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. (Brian Snyder/Reuters) “Our utility rates are rising faster than other states in the country because…
