No doubt most of our readers who care about the environment and the issue of climate change were disappointed when Senator Joe Manchin put the proverbial final nail in the coffin of the Build Back Better Bill (BBB) that, by some estimates, would have reduced U.S. emissions to 45 percent to 51 percent of 2005 levels by 2030.
However, as we have written previously in this space, we believe the real blame for the failure of the bill lies with the progressives of the Democratic Party, who should have coalesced last summer to pass the basics of the bill, rather than “playing politics” last year when they held up the separate infrastructure bill and then loaded up the Build Back Better bill with items that were extraneous to climate change.
They overplayed their hand and as a result, they got nothing — zero — nada and did more than Republicans to sink Joe Biden’s presidency.
However, in addition to being bad at politics, the progressive environmentalists also are hypocrites because of their failure to tell the truth to the American people. Despite the statistic quoted above, the BBB actually would have done very little to keep global warming from reaching the 1.5 degree Centigrade threshold that scientists (and the 2015 Paris Climate Accord) say will be catastrophic for the planet.
Instead of blaming Joe Manchin, if progressive politicians were to tell the truth to the American people, they would explain that each and every American can do more to affect climate change than the BBB simply by changing our eating habits by consuming less meat and switching to vegetarian alternatives.
Industrial farming for meat production accounts for 14% of greenhouse gas emissions, despoils the immediate environment of these factory farms, and encourages the destruction of fragile rain forests for the raising of cattle.
Bernie Sanders blasted Sen. Manchin for his position on the BBB, but we never have heard Sen. Sanders tell his constituents to eat less meat and dairy — because of course, he’s from Vermont, which has a lot of dairy farmers — and Bernie himself loves his red meat.
We disagree 100% with Joe Manchin for his rejection of the BBB, but at least we know where he stands.
On the other hand, the self-described environmentalists are both politically inept and morally hypocritical.