Democrats have had a week to digest the demise of their climate bill. They're facing the prospect of yet another decade of congressional inaction at a time when consequences of global warming are growing more acute and the world is scrambling to meet its goals for cutting carbon emissions by 2030. To be sure, Democrats are trying to revive talks with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) after he said he could not support the clean energy tax provisions of their party-line spending bill while inflation is at 9.1 percent. President Joe Biden has also taken the first in a series of climate executive actions. But Republicans are projected to take over at least one chamber of Congress in the midterms, and if history is any indication, it could be years before Democrats have another chance at large-scale climate legislation. It's a crushing thought for lawmakers who stuck around or came back to Capitol Hill in the years since the 2010 failure of their cap-and-trade plan — the last major congressional climate bill. "Why are we sitting here right now, with all the facts on the ground, in this position? It's because of the power of the money in our political system," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) told reporters this week. "So am I concerned that it will be a decade before we have a climate majority? I am damn concerned about that." The multidecade effort It's especially frustrating for Democrats because the politics of climate change are a lot different now than they were in 2010. The cap-and-trade bill, known as Waxman-Markey, terrified moderates. Forty-four Democrats voted against it when the measure passed the House in 2009. Come the 2010 midterms, Democrats lost a net 63 seats, a massive defeat that was blamed in part on the Waxman-Markey vote. In contrast, House Democrats were remarkably unified on the climate provisions of the "Build Back Better Act," the original version of Biden's mega social spending bill that passed the House last year. "It's really taken us two decades to finally come to the right set of policies, and the Biden administration deserves great credit for that," said Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute and a fixture in Washington energy and climate policy circles. "And yet, we just didn't have quite the majorities to make it happen." Unlike 12 years ago, a prevalent fear among Democrats is that younger voters will punish them if they don't deliver on their climate promises. "Our biggest category of swing voters at this point that we should be worried about is our base — our young people, our folks of color," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) told reporters yesterday. "They're not going to swing and vote for Republicans, but they will swing right out to the couch."
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