this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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The reality is that the Democrats are investing huge amounts in green energy
370 billion, mostly for tax credits that are actively being abused by bad actors, all that don't address the actual problems. Every house could have solar panels and every car could be an EV and it simply would not be enough to get anywherr near carbon neutrality, much less the needed carbon negative to avoid 2c by 2030.
The reality is China proved it was possible to lower emissions by actual green investment, building more green energy production last year than the total green energy capacity of the US. They've hit peak emissions while the US hasn't. This isn't meant as a China good thing, to preempt that nonsensical reply, but merely as a direct example of what the US could do given they have similar (though slightly lower) GDP. At this point in time China produces more green energy than the US produces total.
The US could do similar, but the Democrats couldn’t on account of all legislation in the last decade needing Republican approval to not get filibustered, and Republicans hating the idea of any subsidy that interferes with the “free market” outside of oil subsidies.
While the US government could absolutely be doing more in theory, in practice I think the climate legislation the Democrats have managed to get past Republican obstruction has been very impressive.
Dems have actively chosen to keep the filibuster despite having multiple opportunities to remove it as a rule.
Multiple opportunities, in the last few decades? To my knowledge the only point they had the votes to was that one three month period where they got the ACA though, before that was in the 70s when party line votes were pretty rare.
It's a simple majority vote on the start of a session, Dems have had a simple majority plenty of times
A simple majority vote via the nuclear option could be undone just as quickly once things shifted, and from my understanding would never be an option in future if done once. To actually officially change the rules and eliminate the filibuster in a way that isn’t just procedural a two thirds majority is required.