The infrastructure bills working their way through Congress are balancing on a very, very thin Democratic majority and two of the Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have become roadblocks for these bills. This could be a power play, designed to get concessions on other issues important to these two. It could be they are following the demands of the constituents (i.e. large, corporate campaign donors), such as West Virginia’s coal industry. I think it’s telling that the one thing Manchin has stated he’s absolutely against is any of the infrastructure items that pertain to slowing or halting climate change. The almost even split of the parties and the reluctance for either side to compromise has given these two incredible leverage and they’re using that leverage, even if it undermines their party’s stated goals. This would not be such a big deal, if any Republicans would reach across the aisle to support the needs of our nation over the needs of their party (or large donors).
My question is, when even the U.S. military has proclaimed climate change to be a national security threat, why have no conservative legislators come out in favor of the bill’s climate change initiatives? These incentives include policies designed to drive adoption of zero emission vehicles, like tax credits and money for installing DC fast charging facilities. The usual response is that they’re worried that the increased spending will cause inflation or that they’re worried about debt. Oddly, this is never a concern when we go to war. We just spent trillions of dollars in Afghanistan, trying to implement democracy in a fractured nation with no tradition of democracy. Our roads and bridges are crumbling and are unsafe. We have become like property owners who perform very little maintenance on their property and, as a result, are watching that property slowly fall apart. Making the necessary repairs is an investment in our country and necessary to enhance the operation of our businesses. It’ll be hard for Amazon to deliver packages to everyone, if roads become impassable or bridge crossing too dangerous to attempt. Fortunately, these traditional infrastructure items are so popular with the public, that they’ll probably get funding.
The problem is we haven’t maintained our investment in America in decades. It became fashionable to think that private industry would do a better job than the government. During those decades, the definition of infrastructure has been changing and some of us have yet to catch up to this change. To compete in the global economy, we have to have an educated workforce. This education should be a mix of college and trade schools as we need both white- and blue-collar workers. We have learned over the past year and a half that education, as well as business meetings, sometimes have to be handled virtually, so our Internet infrastructure has become as important to our global competitiveness as safe roads. However, our Internet performance is well below many of our global competitors while our cost for service is higher. We also discovered that businesses are driven primarily by stockholders short-term goals and quarterly profits and sometimes skip or delay maintenance because that activity costs money, reducing profits. This became apparent, when Texas went through blackouts caused by failing to winterize our electricity generation facilities. Conservatives immediately tried to blame the rise of renewable energy but it was quickly pointed out that we had fewer generating outages in the renewable energy plants than we did with those generating from fossil fuel sources. Over the years, we have experienced a huge influx of women into the workforce, making child daycare access an important key to women working outside the home. We have also forgotten that, in World War II, the last time our country was attacked at home by a nation-state, that the strength of our manufacturing base was what tipped the balance of power to our benefit. We need a strong transportation manufacturing base, because in times of war, we need to transport things. We could keep our automotive, aircraft and shipbuilding and public transportation industries strong, if we just opened our eyes and saw where those industries are moving, namely to electric powertrains and supported the change rather than attempt to hinder it. The change to electric transport is inevitable and we can either lead the way and build the next engine to power our economy of cede that position to China, Japan, South Korea and Europe. So where are the conservatives that want a strong, competitive nation?
Since “conservative” and “conservation” share the same root word, the first national park was created under the Lincoln (i.e. Republican) presidency and the National Forest Service was created under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (again, Republican), you’d think the party of Lincoln would want us to take the initiative to preserve our natural world and spend on preventing the worst effects of climate change.
You’d think that the party that always supports building our military capabilities would want to avert the national security problems that will come from climate change and the loss of our manufacturing capabilities.
You’d think that those, who claim to worry about job losses in the fossil fuel industries, would see the opportunity for strong employment that would arise from efforts to repair traditional infrastructure. The development of new industries, like utility-level energy storage and electric transportation could do the same. The adoption of EVs has the potential to create whole new industries we haven’t even imagined yet, just as the development of aircraft and the Internet did in the last century. But unfortunately, our country has become so divided that we can’t even work together for our own mutual benefit or to prepare our country for the new world opening before us.
Those of us that see the coming changes owe it to ourselves and our descendants to vote for representatives that want to take America into the 21st century as a leader and not as a follower.
