The Mendacious Megalomaniac Manchin Is Lying: It’s All About Killing Climate Change Legislation

Sen. Joe Manchin went on Fox News Sunday to announce that he would be a “no” vote on the Build Back Better budget reconciliation bill. ‘This is a no’: Joe Manchin goes on Fox News to officially kill Biden’s legislative agenda: Manchin blamed his decision to vote against the Biden agenda on rising inflation and the Covid-19 Omicron variant.

Some members of the news media fell for this bullshit excuse, as exemplified by this lazy New York Times reporting today: The Path Ahead for Biden: Overcome Manchin’s Inflation Fears.

NO, NO, NO! Do not fall for this banana in your tailpipe! As I have explained, Joe Manchin doesn’t know squat about economics. I doubt that he can even explain inflation, other than anecdotally complain about what he has to pay for gas to fill up his Mazarati Levante (with a $79,400 MSRP).

On Monday, Manchin provided a different excuse for what he did:  his fee-fees were hurt that he was being singled out for the Senate not meeting its self-imposed deadline to get Build Back Better done before Christmas.  As White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at her press conference on Monday, this was a factual statement: Manchin has been saying he wants to “pause” negotiations on the bill since the framework was agreed to in September. He is behaving like a child throwing a temper tantrum because this prima donna diva wants to always be the center of media attention. A Bland White House Email Could’ve Killed Joe Biden’s Agenda (excerpt):

On Monday morning while talking to West Virginia radio host Hoppy Kercheval, he hinted at another reason talks broke down.

After Herchevel pressed him, Manchin added, “It’s not the president, it’s his staff. And they drove some things and they put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable.”

Attention turned to the Thursday update. On its face, it seems straightforward and it made no waves at the time. “Senator Manchin has reiterated his support for Build Back Better funding at the level of the framework plan I announced in September. I believe that we will bridge our differences and advance the Build Back Better plan, even in the face of fierce Republican opposition,” it reads.

Steve Clemons, a friend of Manchin’s, wrote in the Hill Monday that the statement was interpreted by Manchin as singling out and blaming him for negotiations being delayed into next year. Politico reported that Manchin asked, in advance, not to be solely named in the statement and then snapped at White House staff when he was.

So Manchin’s announcement that he is “no” vote on the Biden agenda was not about rising inflation and the Covid-19 Omicron variant, as he told Fox News.

And it is also not about his fee-fees being hurt by this memo (as Manchin himself has frequently said that he shrugs off this kind of stuff as part of life in Washington).

No, the real reason is what I have said it is all along: This wealthy hillbilly coal baron from West Virginia was always a “no” vote against the Build Back Better bill because of its provisions to deal with climate change and to begin the conversion to clean energy. This wealthy hillbilly coal baron is acting out of self-interest to preserve the source of his family’s wealth, plain and simple.

As another New York Times report accurately reports, Behind Manchin’s Opposition, a Long History of Fighting Climate Measures (excerpt):

Senator Joe Manchin III on Monday cited a litany of issues that drove him to oppose President Biden’s $2 trillion Build Back Better bill, from Democrats’ refusal to attach work requirements to social benefits to their failure to raise tax rates on the rich. But left almost unsaid was the issue that has always propelled his political career as a Democratic maverick: climate change.

The version of the bill that passed the House last month devoted $555 billion to shifting the nation to renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar power, and away from fossil fuels like West Virginia coal. Mr. Manchin, who defied gale-force political headwinds in 2010 by running for the Senate on his opposition to President Barack Obama’s climate change legislation, killed a provision in Build Back Better that would have imposed stiff penalties on electric utilities that continued to burn coal and natural gas.

But even with the stick dropped from the House’s bill, West Virginia’s coal interests were working hard to kill off the measure’s carrot, a package of tax credits to make clean energy more financially competitive, and, by extension, struggling coal even less so. Their lobbyists talked frequently to Mr. Manchin.

* * *

West Virginia coal and gas, and policies designed to stop their burning, have always had a special place in Mr. Manchin’s politics. A Manchin family-owned business has made a small fortune selling waste coal from abandoned mines to a heavily polluting power plant in the state. The blind trust in which Mr. Manchin’s interests lie held between $500,000 and $1 million last year, according to his most recent disclosure form. The company, Enersystems, valued at between $1 million and $5 million, delivered the senator $492,000 in dividends, interest and business income in 2020, the May disclosure states.

He received more campaign donations from the oil, coal and gas industries than any other senator in the current election cycle.

[T]hough Mr. Manchin has always said his share of the coal brokerage is hidden in a blind trust, any general threat to coal power would impact that business. (See, Manchin cites a blind trust to justify climate votes. But much income from his family’s coal company isn’t covered. “Contrary to his public statements, documents filed by the senator show the blind trust is much too small to account for all his reported earnings from the coal company, as of his latest financial disclosure report, which covers 2020 and was filed in May.”)

[B]ehind the scenes, coal interests were hard at work making the case against the clean energy provisions, and specifically the approximately $320 billion in tax incentives for producers and buyers of wind, solar and nuclear power.

Chris Hamilton, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said he had conveyed to Mr. Manchin that the clean energy tax credits would be a death knell for the state’s coal industry. Even though the clean electricity standard was stripped from the bill, Mr. Hamilton said the coal industry still saw the tax incentives as a threat to the state.

“The credits that were in the bill would have resulted in an almost total displacement of coal generation within a relatively short period of time,” Mr. Hamilton said. [Exactly! That is hwat they are designed to do.]

“Those provisions were more onerous and more likely to displace coal-fired generation than the clean energy standard,” he said.

The short-sighted selfish self-interest of this hillbilly coal baron to preserve the source of his family’s wealth and that of his coal baron friends is going to have catastrophic consequences for all of humankind in the near term. Climate change has destabilized the Earth’s poles, putting the rest of the planet in peril (excerpt):

Planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels and other human activities has already raised global temperatures more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). But the effects are particularly profound at the poles, where rising temperatures have seriously undermined regions once locked in ice.

In research presented this week at the world’s biggest earth science conference, Pettit showed that the Thwaites ice shelf could collapse within the next three to five years, unleashing a river of ice that could dramatically raise sea levels.

[If the entire glacier failed, it would raise sea levels by several feet. Island nations and coastal communities would be inundated.]

Aerial surveys document how warmer conditions have allowed beavers to invade the Arctic tundra, flooding the landscape with their dams. Large commercial ships are increasingly infiltrating formerly frozen areas, disturbing wildlife and generating disastrous amounts of trash. In many Alaska Native communities, climate impacts compounded the hardships of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to food shortages among people who have lived off this land for thousands of years.

“The very character of these places is changing,” said Twila Moon, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and co-editor of the Arctic Report Card, an annual assessment of the state of the top of the world. “We are seeing conditions unlike those ever seen before.”

The rapid transformation of the Arctic and Antarctic creates ripple effects all over the planet. Sea levels will rise, weather patterns will shift and ecosystems will be altered. Unless humanity acts swiftly to curb emissions, scientists say, the same forces that have destabilized the poles will wreak havoc on the rest of the globe.

[S]eparately on Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed a new temperature record for the Arctic: 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk on June 20, 2020.

These warm conditions are catastrophic for the sea ice that usually spans across the North Pole. This past summer saw the second-lowest extent of thick, old sea ice since tracking began in 1985. Large mammals like polar bears go hungry without this crucial platform from which to hunt. Marine life ranging from tiny plankton to giant whales are at risk.

“It’s an ecosystem collapse situation,” said Kaare Sikuaq Erickson, whose business Ikaagun Engagement facilitates cooperation between scientists and Alaska Native communities.

The consequences of this loss will be felt far beyond the Arctic. Sea ice has traditionally acted as Earth’s “air conditioner”; it reflects as much as two thirds of the light that hits it, sending huge amounts of solar radiation back into space.

By contrast, dark expanses of water absorb heat, and it is difficult for these areas to refreeze. Less sea ice means more open ocean, more heat absorption and more climate change.

“We have a narrow window of time to avoid very costly, deadly and irreversible climate impacts,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Rick Spinrad told reporters Tuesday.

Record highs have also sounded the death knell for ice on land. Three historic melting episodes struck Greenland in July and August, causing the island’s massive ice sheet to lose about 77 trillion pounds. On Aug. 14, for the first time in recorded history, rain fell at the ice sheet summit.

[S]ome 5 million people living in the Arctic’s permafrost regions are at risk from the changes happening at their shores and under their feet.

“It’s not just about polar bears, it’s about actual humans,” said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and another co-editor of the Arctic Report Card.

Joe Manchin’s response to this looming global catastrophe is “Meh, as long as I die with all of my toys, I win.” Grist reports, Coal isn’t dying yet. 2021 brought a record surge in use.

In 2021, global electricity generation from coal increased by nine percent, the highest in history, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency, or IEA. Most of that increase came from power plants in China and India, where the need for electricity jumped by nine and 12 percent, respectively. According to the IEA, Europe saw a 12 percent increase while the U.S. went up by 17 percent – despite nearly a decade of declines in coal power generation in both regions.

“Coal and emissions from coal are stubborn,” said IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol in a press call. “Without strong and immediate actions by governments to tackle coal emissions – in a way that is fair, affordable and secure for those affected – we will have little chance, if any at all, of limiting global warming.”

According to the IEA’s projections, as more economies recover from the pandemic, coal demand will increase, peaking in 2022 and staying elevated until at least 2024.

Joe Manchin is rolling in the “dough” on a dying planet that he is doing his part to destroy. The feckless news media needs to stop treating him as if he is some kind of hillbilly sage on the economy. Don’t fall for his “aw shucks, I’m just a simple country bumpkin” shtick. Manchin is a cold and calculating corporate businessman. He is a greedy old man from the carbon monopoly who does not care how many people die or whether he destroys the planet, just as long as his family’s source of wealth remains intact.

I know your kind. I see you, Joe Manchin.