Once again, the U.S. has failed to take sweeping climate action. Here’s why

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Opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, has likely sounded a death knell for the Biden administration’s ambitious plan to cut emissions that drive climate change.

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Emissions rise from a smokestack in Ohio. The United States has contributed more heat-trapping pollution than any country over time and has been the prime driver of global climate change.

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Vice President Al Gore who became a Nobel Prize-winning climate activist, speaks in Kyoto, Japan, where an international greenhouse-gas treaty was created in 1997. However, the U.S. Senate had preempted the Clinton administration from signing it.

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In 2009, the American Petroleum Institute lobbied against clean-energy co-sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

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In 2009, the American Petroleum Institute lobbied against clean-energy co-sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

At the time, Democrats were under lots of pressure: The country was in the middle of a historically deep recession, and Congress was working to pass President Obama’s highly-controversial Affordable Care Act.

The cap-and-trade bill narrowly passed in the House. Democratic Sen. John Kerry, independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham worked on a similar bill for months in the Senate. But the opposition grew stiffer over time.

The American Petroleum Institute called for rejecting cap-and-trade, citing think tanks its members bankrolled. The oil industry had powerful allies, such as the country’s biggest farm lobby, that also decried the bill and organized its members to demand Congress vote it down.

Think tanks that had thrived thanks to millions of dollars in grants from the oil industry labeled the climate bill «cap-and-tax.» Conservative media picked up the idea that the legislation was a tax and amplified it. The Senate leadership understood over time that the bill would fail. In the end, it didn’t even make it to a vote on the Senate floor.

Last chance for bipartisan climate policy

Ultimately, the Obama administration’s legacy of cutting carbon pollution stems from the regulations it passed, which led to some decline in emissions. But regulations lack the staying power of laws.

«In many, many cases, [EPA regulations] can be reversed by the next administration, as Trump did to a lot of the good Obama initiatives,» says Kert Davies, who runs the watchdog group, the Climate Investigations Center.

And while the Trump administration took steps to pull out of the Paris Agreement, his team also worked tirelessly to undo countless Obama-era environmental regulations. «So, they’re not permanent solutions,» Davies says. «What makes it permanent is when you get the companies to invest.»

That idea — incentivizing companies to invest rather than imposing a tax — is at the heart of the Clean Electricity Performance Program, or CEPP, Biden’s main climate plan. The program calls for $150 billion to pay utilities to produce clean, carbon-free electricity and penalize those that don’t. One study by the think tank Energy Innovation found that a third of the emissions reductions in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill would come from the CEPP.

But despite months of negotiation with the White House, Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, a coal and natural gas state, said he was against the program. Manchin told CNN recently that energy companies already invested in clean energy and asked why the federal government should be the one paying for it.

Utilities, in fact, are making the transition to carbon-free energy, but far too slowly to stave off the worst effects of climate change. The CEPP’s carrot-and-stick approach is aimed at hastening the transition so that emissions levels get closer to what climate science says we need right now.

The coal industry has been shrinking in West Virginia for decades. But Manchin himself made nearly $500,000 last year from investments in the state’s coal sector. He also raised $400,000 in campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies in the third quarter of this year, as he questioned the need for the CEPP. Manchin is the top recipient in Congress of donations from the oil and gas industry.

Manchin’s office did not respond to requests for comment on his decision and his industry ties.

Where does this leave us now?

Stripping away the CEPP means a large chunk of the emissions cuts that a House climate bill banked on are now gone, according to an analysis from Princeton’s ZERO lab. The lab also found that if Congress failed at passing any measure at all, the president would fall far short of meeting his 2030 climate commitment.

Some climate activists and scientists say many climate initiatives in the infrastructure bill may live on. There are dozens of measures that, in a patchwork way, could lead to emissions cuts, such as building more charging stations for electric cars. Or funding for low-income solar projects and aid to rural areas adopt cleaner energy.

One proposal still left would impose a fee on leaks of methane from oil and gas fields and facilities. This could be especially significant because methane is a greenhouse gas about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Scientists estimate that meaningful global action to curtail methane emissions would have a fast effect on reining in warming. Yet in the last few days, Manchin has indicated that he would like to weaken or remove the methane provision, too.

Editor’s note: Exxon Mobil is among NPR’s financial supporters.