Power-Sharing Deal Reached
The Senate is split 50-50 and that means Vice President Kamala Harris will get to cast any tie-breaking votes.
But first things first. Deals had to be made about committee leadership and about filibuster rules.
Today two Democrat Senators broke the log jam and a power-sharing deal was reached.
The deal will use the same or similar deal that happened in 2001, the last time there was a Senate tie.
Each party will have an equal number of committee seats, but the Democrats will control committee chairmanships and thus the agenda.
In 2001 it was Republicans who controlled the agenda.
Deadlock Broken
The main dispute holding things up involved the filibuster rule.
Republicans were fearful that Democrats would change the rules requiring 60% approval to advance legislation rather than simple majority.
When Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona reaffirmed their longstanding support for the filibuster, the deal was reached.
Climate Change to the Forefront
Following the Power-Sharing-Arrangement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (who just replaced Mitch McConnell) set the tone.
In remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, Mr. Schumer said Democrats are “ready to hit the ground running” on President Biden’s agenda.
“Senate Democrats are not going to waste any time taking on the biggest challenges facing our country and our planet,” Mr. Schumer said, adding that he’s already instructed the incoming Democratic chairs of relevant committees to begin holding hearings on major climate legislation.
“It’s long past time for the Senate to take a leading role in combating the existential threat of our time: climate,” Mr. Schumer said. “As we all know, climate change touches virtually every aspect of our economy and involves virtually every aspect of public policy. So as the Biden administration prepares a whole government approach to combating climate change, the Democratic majority will pursue a whole-of-Senate approach as well.”
Ready to Roll?
Not so fast. Democrat Senator Joe Manchin is from West Virginia, the second leading coal-producing state.
He is also a fiscal hawk and from the state that produced the a 68.6% vote for Trump.
Wasted Priorities
Climate change will be interesting to watch. President Trump wasted two full years attempting to un-do Obamacare.
He failed. He had a chance to build a wall and failed. Instead he could have made a big difference on bankruptcy reform, right-to-work legislation and many other things.
Existential Threat?
Will Biden fall into the same trap wasting years on climate change?
In this case, perhaps the best we can hope for is Biden wasting two years getting nothing done.
It will be interesting to watch.
John Kerry’s Straw Man Climate Arguments
John Kerry is Biden’s climate czar.
He blamed 4 hurricanes on climate change as if throwing any amount of money at the alleged problem would have stopped the hurricanes.
For discussion, please see Kerry’s Straw Man Argument for Wasting Money on Climate Change
Where is the CO2 coming from?
CO2 Stats
- Please note that the US reduced its carbon footprint from 6.13 billion tons in 2007 to 5.28 billion tons in 2019.
- Meanwhile, China increased its footprint from 6.86 billion tons in 2019 to 10.17 billion tons in 2019.
- In the same timeframe, global output rose from 31.29 billion tons to 36.44 billion tons.
- In 2007, the US accounted for 19.6% of the total global carbon footprint.
- In 2019, the US accounted for only 14.5% of the total global footprint.
The above stats are from Our World CO2 Emissions.
The US could eliminate its entire carbon footprint tomorrow and it would not even matter (except of course, the entire global economy would crash).
How Much Money is Needed?
Kerry did not say how much money he needed, only that we have to make up for the last four years. Lovely.
The implied assumption is we will quickly stop hurricanes by throwing money at the problem.
We better hurry too, because we lost four years. What a hoot.
AOC’s Green New Deal Pricetag
US CO2 emissions are only 14.5% of the total global footprint and that is down from 19.6% in 2007.
With that in mind, please recall AOC’s Green New Deal Pricetag of $51 to $93 Trillion vs. Cost of Doing Nothing
GM to Phase Out Gas-Powered Vehicles by 2035, Carbon Neutral by 2040
One day after Kerry’s ridiculous rant, I noted GM to Phase Out Gas-Powered Vehicles by 2035, Carbon Neutral by 2040.
Assuming one believes CO2 is a problem, this is the way problems are solved.
GM is not doing this to save the world, it is doing this because market forces mandate a change.
Similarly, solar power will come into play as storage technology improves.
The free market, not populist ideas will solve real world problems.
Meanwhile, I am sick of this populist nonsense that climate change is the “existential threat of our time.”
Such language is always wrong.
Government to the Rescue Sarcasm
Mish
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A reminder that one can support climate change regulations and still be a Republican
Nice Chart Mish, just shows we should be hammering communist China for all their pollution instead of rewarding them like Biden is doing.
”He had a chance to build a wall and failed.” Come on Mish come out of hiding go down to Yuma and other areas you can see he built hundreds of miles of his wall. I’ve seen over 400 miles of our border and yes have seen Trumps wall. Stop lying! Some that was replaced you could walk over and I have in many areas. The hate you have for Trump makes you look foolish. And it does work, just ask the many border patrol agents like I have. SMH
If you want to decrease fossil fuel usage, you crash the economy. We use something like 500k less barrels of oil a day. Has nothing to do with expensive Tesla’s. Since the USG and others have crashed the world economy, we can call this a wrap. I do not see Greta Thunberg talking so much. Well done!
If we have an existential threat to our lives the last people I would call are politicians. AOC is a bartender who steals the tip jar…and she wants to save the planet
The story of coal fired power plants in China is very complicated….but the plants themselves are state the art as far as emissions. When the PRC loosened the purse strings, lots of local and regional authorities rushed to build the plants while they still could…..so now they have more than they need…typical Chinese malinvestment.
In general, China seems committed to reducing emissions….it’s perceived as a major problem by the public there because air quality has been so low for so long.
Kerry doesn’t matter because he is just the grandpa version of Greta. His role is to shake hands and have his picture taken. I am waiting to see which specific policies will be put into place by Congress before deciding whether they are good or not.
The John Kerry huricane comment is a straw man. He’s not saying that an individual hurricane is tied to climate change but that climate change makes more hurricanes likely with increased frequency. This is not heresy.
As far as coal an west verginia those jobs are gone. the economics in favor of coal are gone. The answer is producing alternate jobs for those employed in the coal industry such as capping wells, installing solar and wind as well as getting involved in methane recapture. Those involved in mining coal have serious health risks. Of course they’ rather do something else. But they can’t feel like they are being phased out of a prouctive livlihood either.
And this ide that China is a worse offender than the U.S. is just whataboutism. Saying the U.S. shouldn’t do better because China is worse is a rather bad argument. We both need to do better and has been noticed by your other readers on a per capita basis the U.S. is a far worse offender. On a per capita basis U.S. is 4th behind Saudi Arabia , Kazikstan and Australia. I suspect that Saudi Arabia’s emissions are indirectly the result of energy sold to the U.S.
“As far as coal an west verginia those jobs are gone. the economics in favor of coal are gone. The answer is producing alternate jobs for those employed in the coal industry ….”
This frustrates me to no end, in 2015 Hilary blew it by villainizing the coal without a solution.
We have to see things from the eyes of coal miners or area’s that derive sustenance from mining – those people vote too.
EDit – “… villainizing the coal INDUSTRY without a solution
the solution is easy. tranition the jobs. it make no sense supporting an industry that comes with huge costs to the environment. arguably we’d be better off simply paying them unemployment. biden wants them to work capping oil wells and installing solar and wind. that sounds like a vague blue print. lets get it done
“The John Kerry huricane comment is a straw man. He’s not saying that an individual hurricane is tied to climate change but that climate change makes more hurricanes likely with increased frequency. This is not heresy.”
We had a new record 12 years without a major hurricane hitting the U.S. The intensity and number of tornadoes dropped off as well.
El Nino/La Nina are cycles.
The best solution to global warming is converting to regenerative farming this wll not only will solve the global warming problem but will also provide much healthier food and increase farm income. Please watch the videos, you could help save the earth. If you don’t watch the videos please don’t bother to comment as you really won’t have any idea what your commenting on.
Thanks.
The first link below is to one of Gabe Browns talks, he is a speaker at many soil health conferences. He has developed the/a regenerative approach to farming his 5000 acres in Bismark North Dakota. He uses no fertilizer, pesticides or fungicides and gets above average yields.
The second video is by Dr. David C Johnson of the New Mexico State University. He presents the scientific basis for much of what Gabe Brown has done.
This is a real solution to global warming that would increase from income, increase crop yields and provide much more nutritional food. However, as it would eliminate the chemical fertilizer and pesticide agro-industrial complex, don’t expect it to happen any time soon.
Gabe Brown: Keys To Building a Healthy Soil
Static Pile Fungal Compost Presentation
Maybe you could look into this Mish and do a post on it. Would eliminate the need for Kerry to spend all those billions!
“If you don’t watch the videos please don’t bother to comment as you really won’t have any idea what your commenting on”
Each video is an hour long.
As much as I’d like to agree or comment, I’m disqualified, I just don’t have two hours.
Consider a home produce garden and/or chickens, if you don’t have them yet. It requires more than two hours, but the benefits to you are tangible and direct. The Earth similarly benefits.
I was more pointing out that his prerequisite to watch two hours of video to comment was a bit steep.
In my opinion, agriculture should be our primary concern, in as little as a decade it will become obvious, just a few degree change will dramatically alter weather patterns.
Climate change is irreversible, though CO reduction is necessary, we’ve already released many millions of years of stored CO, it’ll take many millions of years for plant life to reabsorb it….atop that, we have methane hydrate melting from melting permafrost & ocean floors.
I’m looking into companies specializing in vertical/indoor farming for potential long term bets.
The pot farmers are the proof of concept…I’d look for more opportunities in cannabis too, now that Trump is out. Growing cannabis is harder because its even more regulated than food…..but it has a higher return. No joke intended.
Some indoor food companies pivoted to cannabis… but I haven’t been keeping up with cannabis lately. I once traded the Canadians, and did pretty well.
I’m in favor of permaculture solutions to farming and I understand how it can impact climate….I didn’t watch those videos but I know something about it…..I have a permaculture design certificate…and I’m interested in farming, although I never managed to make money at it.
Our overpopulated planet has been irreversibly fcked up, climate change will only speed up this unenviable situation with even more pandemics and/or plagues as a consequence ….ALL we can do is wearing masks, having useless jabs ….and playing the stock markets, creating financial delusion for suckers within the context of a global, totalitarian, technocratic socialist regime ….
The best way to avoid hurricane & flooding damage is better land use. Stop building in flood zones with federally subsidized homeowners insurance! Stop paving over swamps!
$93 trillion, is that all? That will be the Fed Reserve balance sheet in about two years. We can do this.
“I don’t have time to watch the video. “
Good Lord
The full complete video is 1 minute 48 seconds
Kerry Video
A short one and complete
Look for my subtitle “Cheaper to Deal With It Now”
No need to waste time trying to pass a climate change agenda. If it doesn’t happen immediately just declare an emergency and take all the money you need for windmills from the dod or ice.
Another scam for the politicians and their benefactors to enrich themselves. Let me know when any of these bi-coastal hoodlums is so scared of their seaside mansions getting swept into the ocean that they move to flyover.
There’s a few things that need to be in their discussion on climate change. The Dryas period from a few thousand years ago which has gone away via natural forces, and snowball earth when the entire globe was covered in ice which also dissipated on its own. Something you will never hear Gore or Kerry bring up.
A bit of science/history on Snowball earth and ice ages. The major natural sources for CO2 are volcanoes and the major sinks are plants and rock weathering. During the ice ages both major sinks were greatly reduced but volcanoes were not affected so there was a buildup of CO2 in the air which after time warmed the earth to a point where the ice age ended. Some critics question this explanation because most of the CO2 increase came after the ice age ended but this was simply because the ice ages killed a massive amount of vegetation which decomposed as the ice melted and it took a long time for vegetation to spread over the barren land.
Expect this to be called a ‘War on Climate Change’ just like the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. That means it will never end because it can never be won (that’s by design) because the goalposts will always be moving and we’ll have to constantly be vigilant – LOL.
It reminds me of the scam that ‘rainmakers’ would do in the old West. When a town was in a drought, a rainmaker would appear and tell the people he could make it rain if they gave him money to pray to the gods/perform a dance etc. After they gave him money, if it rained, he’d claim it was due to the money and his prayers/dance and would move on to the next town. If it didn’t rain, he’d tell them the gods were more displeased than he realized and they needed to double down on the money and belief and prayers. That would get repeated until it rained or the townspeople realized he was a charlatan.
It’s the perfect Gov’t boondoggle of cash.
You are describing what our political leaders do today.
The sun is 30 percent hotter now than when the dinosaurs ruled. This is the way of all nuclear furnaces as they get hotter and hotter as they age, due to burning heavier elements. The dinos had a cooler sun but a lot of CO2 to keep them warm.
Actually, it’s 40% hotter than it was at Earth’s inception, 4.6 billion years ago.
The rest is “kinda” true, higher CO levels kept the planet warm despite less heat billion of years ago, this is known because liquid water was present, not ice.
Switching to alts/renewables, to me, means money going to U.S. installers and services for solar panels, wind turbines, fracking, electric grid & infrastructure instead of OPEC countries.
Ironically, the US will likely be buying MORE oil from OPEC countries not less. That’s because the Democrats want a massive cutback on Fracking and other ways the US gets oil. To replace the oil we aren’t getting at home, we will have to import from elsewhere.
Currently the US only imports 1.5 million barrels a day from OPEC (from ~20 million in demand)
The money on turbines and solar panels will mostly be spent in China or elsewhere that makes the panels. The installers are about the only jobs that will happen and it will take years for that to occur (imagine how many environmental studies will have to be completed to cover many square miles with solar panels on an industrial scale (home use is already occurring now on it’s own)
While I believe CO is the cause of climate change, I also believe we’re too late – we’ve already returned countless millions of years worth of stored CO into the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect is residual, slow acting.
Plants/trees/plankton will take the same millions of years to remove it.
Which means we should also be focusing on the most imminent problem, agriculture.
“He blamed 4 hurricanes on climate change…”
But no mention of a new record 12 straight years without a major hurricane hitting the U.S. during “climate change.” Inconvenient facts get ignored in favor of alarmist propaganda.
Shouldn’t we only have to make up for 3 of the last 4 years? CO2 emissions surely were reduced significantly everywhere in the world in 2020. So 25% off already!
Fuck climate change. I mean, it is still critical and important, but too politically loaded a term.
Focus on: clean air, clean water, clean land. You solve the climate change problem with the language baggage. You also force the G卐Pers into the position of favoring dirty air.
Meanwhile, I am sick of this populist nonsense that climate change is the “existential threat of our time.”
Boy, that statement says it all, I totally agree. Read somewhere that building electric cars produces more co2 than cars running on petrol…
Yes, there is climate change, but who knows what the cause is? The earth has been around a long time, longer than humans, I am thinking climate change is a normal for planet earth…