The Georgia election changes everything

Jim Watson/Getty

All eyes are glued to Georgia today, as its two Senate runoff elections on Tuesday may have unexpectedly handed Democrats their best shot at saving the climate. It’s not, as writers for Apocalypse Soon have repeatedly pointed out, that a Biden administration would be completely incapable of decarbonization policies without the Senate—far from it. But Raphael Warnock’s win in Georgia, and Jon Ossoff’s narrow lead as of publication time, have reopened all kinds of possibilities that many thought lost as of election night two months ago.

Last night, climate watchers on Twitter were already mixing messages of dare-to-hope relief with caution: Democrats did not pursue ambitious climate policy with their Senate majority last time around. Another point also quickly made the rounds: If Ossoff wins, the new Democratic majority in the Senate will be only as durable as its most rightward member, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. “A Senate where Joe Manchin is the 51st Democratic vote is not a liberal Senate,” the FiveThirtyEight account tweeted, “but it’s well to the left of one where McConnell decides what gets voted on.”

As we wait for the few remaining votes to be tallied, I’d like to draw your attention to Kate Aronoff’s piece in October about this exact scenario. Manchin is not exactly a decarbonization stalwart. In fact, in a bonkers ad in 2010, he shot the cap-and-trade bill with a rifle. “But there’s an interesting twist in this narrative,” Kate wrote. “While Manchin could indeed be the legislative barrier activists worry about, this would leave him out of sync with his constituents. Whatever Manchin’s own politics, West Virginians aren’t as right-wing as many assume.” Many West Virginians are in a vulnerable position as coal continues to decline and shale gas fails to lift all boats as promised. But that also means, Kate argued, that they could be sold on climate legislation if it’s paired with policies providing better, greener jobs.

There’s a lot more to be said about this; Apocalypse Soon is currently cooking up several pieces on what the Georgia runoff results could mean. More soon.

—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor

Advertising

That’s the total emissions from petroleum products Exxon sold in 2019—a stat the company released for the first time this week and that, as Bloomberg pointed out, is "about the same as for the entire country of Canada."

Massachusetts came into the new year caffeinated, baby. It's taking all that talk of California's climate leadership personally. Hard on the heels of the Baker administration's recent release of a legally binding plan to cut the state's emissions to 45 percent of 1990 levels in the next ten years, the state legislature Monday sent the governor a bill raising that to 50 percent, mandating emissions limits for six sectors of the economy and committing to cut emissions to 75 percent below 1990 levels by 2040 and 85 percent below by 2050. (Worth noting: A retired Tufts University professor told The Boston Globe the bill should be banning or at least eliminating subsidies for wood-burning power plants as well, which is of particular environmental justice concern right now, given a plant set to be built in Springfield.)

Grasslands, an invaluable carbon sink, are now emitting as much gas as they absorb, thanks to expansions in meat and dairy farming. Dharna Noor lays it out at Earther.

On Tuesday, which was National Bird Day (you can't make this stuff up), former oil lobbyist and current Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt finalized a move gutting protections for migratory birds. Under existing law, companies are fined for killing protected birds. Bernhardt’s Interior Department, however, thinks companies shouldn’t be fined for those deaths if the birds were not deliberately and specifically targeted. In other words, companies won’t face penalties for slaughtering birds by the thousands through avoidable oil spills or pesticides known to be fatal.

Advertising

Copyright © 2020, The New Republic, All rights reserved.