Changing climate politics
The push for climate action even by congressional moderates would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when former President Barack Obama tried and failed to enact climate legislation. That measure withered in the Senate after Democrats could not summon enough votes from their own party to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
“It’s so, so different now,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, who served in the Senate when Mr. Obama’s climate bill died.
Ms. Stabenow, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, said that during the Obama administration, she could not get political support for a climate bill from farmers.
“That’s completely changed today,” she said. “Today, we have every major agricultural group, and food companies, and researchers supporting a climate bill. What I’m hearing now from farmers is, yes, you’re absolutely right, the climate crisis is real. But we need help on what to do about it.”
Like many in her party, Ms. Stabenow attributes the new urgency in climate politics to the rise of extreme and deadly weather.
The past two years have only underscored that case: there were 22 climate disasters that cost at least $1 billion each in the United States in 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/climate/climate-change-framework-bill.html
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