Why are Democrats behaving as if the climate change problem can be negotiated away? If the planet is on fire, how will jobs in coal save West Virginia?
Where is the plan to convert jobs in coal to renewable energy jobs? Why is nobody designing a future for West Virginia and Texas that does not require the inhabitants of those states to continue to depend on the fossil fuel industry to survive?
Why do we keep having the same inane conversation over and over, never approximating a solution to the single biggest problem facing all of us? Where are the brilliant scientists and environmentalists when we need them?
Yes, money is part of it. Manchin isn’t the only person in the Senate or House to take lobbing money from the fossil fuel industry or earn dividends from stock in oil, gas, and coal companies. But how can members of Congress believe that protecting those interests is more important than saving our planet?
I guess they don’t care about the future because they’ll all be dead anyway.
But what about their children and grandchildren? Who do they think will suffer if we fail to deal with climate change now? Do they believe money will save their progeny? It won’t. Mother Nature doesn’t care if we’re rich or poor.
When the fires and the floods come, money won’t stop them.
For all their high-minded talk, the Democratic party is doing nothing to solve this problem. This is the same dynamic we’ve seen for decades and it’s why politicians are generally despised. They consistently ignore companies like Walmart, who rely on government subsidies to invade communities, lower prices to eliminate competition, then up the prices until nobody can afford to shop there. Then after they’ve destroyed the local economy, they close the store, abandoning the people who’ve made their success possible.
When will we start electing people who are committed to ending this vicious cycle?
The anger Trump’s followers feel toward the political elite is not misplaced. Our politicians have failed us. Too many of them are short-sighted, money-hungry, elitists who are out of touch with the American people. There is no law against big business abusing a community the way Wal-Mart has been doing for decades. And it goes without saying that Wal-Mart is not the only company doing this. Amazon immediately comes to mind. Why aren’t politicians doing more to protect the American people from such abuse?
Today we are facing the single most pressing issue affecting every person on the planet, yet efforts to solve the problem are being negotiated away by the likes of Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema--who used to be in the Green party, so WTF happened to her?
Neither of them is proposing an alternative solution to what has been proposed—they are simply obstructing the plan as written. What is Chuck Schumer doing about this? Not a fucking thing.
A friend and I recently wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Schumer, which has not been acknowledged by Schumer, Jackie Speier, or Alex Padilla—two Senators who represent our home state of California and who also receive the letter. In the letter, we asked Leader Schumer to strip Manchin of his role as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. That was about a week before Manchin announced he won’t support Biden’s Build Back Better plan because he can’t get behind the climate change stuff.
Nobody we sent it to has acknowledge the content of the letter, which was sent over ten days ago, but Padilla’s office was quick to put me on a mailing list for his political propaganda. To-date I’ve received four emails from his office, climate change wasn’t mentioned in any of them.
If Joe Manchin is worried about coal workers, why doesn’t he put his energy towards guaranteeing first dibs at alternative jobs for those who will be unemployed once coal production is phased out? Why isn’t Manchin telling the people of West Virginia that better paying jobs that are safer and have long-term viability are part of the Build Back Better plan?
Why is Manchin working to defeat the climate change agenda rather than educate his constituents about the need to pass it while promising he’ll work to ensure they don’t suffer from the shift toward green energy?
Instead, he’s perpetuating the lie that keeping their jobs in coal is a viable solution. I can only think of two reasons for this: 1) He’s too much of a coward to tell them the truth, and 2) He is raking in the bucks from the coal brokerage company he founded in 1988 and he’s not willing to give that up.
Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema are destroying the progress we could be making and are damaging the last vestige of credibility President Biden has. Neither should be re-elected, and neither should be allowed to sit on any committees or head any legislative agendas.
The Democrats may be more solution-oriented than Republicans, but if they can’t make anything happen, what difference does it make?