Sky News, one of the major sponsors of the COP26 summit, is frantic that President Joe Biden’s failure to get his legislative package passed with all of its clean energy provisions included, will not only be a great embarrassment, “but threatens the credibility of America and therefore the success of COP26.” The British news agency zeroed in on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVA) for “blocking the progress” of the multi-trillion-dollar spending package by refusing to accept its decarbonization provisions. In fact, The Hill reported, today Manchin flatly rejected any idea of including a carbon tax in the legislative package, saying it was not under discussion, and “not on the board right now.” Last month, Manchin had warned that “any kind of a tax would be passed onto the people,” but that hasn’t stopped the Democrats from trying to include it now, especially after Manchin opposed including the Clean Electricity Performance Program in the spending package. But it won’t fly.
Sky News is distraught that the clean-energy provisions will likely be dropped from Biden’s proposed legislation. “Many have reacted with dismay at the idea that America, reinvented post-Donald Trump as a climate change warrior with the moral authority to marshal international consensus, should fail at such a crucial moment. The clean energy aspect of the spending bill is not the only U.S. climate change legislation in the works, but it is by far the most important.” Should Manchin succeed in blocking the key parts of the bill, Sky News warns, “his actions will have far reaching consequences.... A domestic political failure like this will put a huge dent in America’s moral authority just as it needs it most.” And, lamenting that such a thing as sovereign government exists, it concludes that “Senator Manchin and his supporters are representatives of an inconvenient truth, that U.S. domestic politics dances to its own tune, sometimes at the expense of global progress.”
