No matter how hard President Biden, other Democrats, or lobbyists try, Senator Joe Manchin. (D-WV) has been an unmovable object when it comes to President Biden’s “Green New Deal”.
Featuring the same misguided energy policies that have resulted in what Britain’s Global Warming Policy Foundation rightly calls “Europe’s worst energy cost and security crisis since the Second World War,” he refuses to budge.
Seeing full well the level of waste that comes with this kind of a deal, he has dug in his heels and refused to go along with the party line. Never mind what the left side of the press has had to say, he is proud of sticking to his guns, and so are the people of West Virginia. They see how much he wants to do right by the people of his state, to represent them as their voice in DC, and most seem to embrace him for this level of dedication to the state.
Taking this kind of platform to stand against DC is not just a win for WV, but it’s also a massive win for rural America across the US.
Unfortunately for him, so many in the mainstream media believe he is doing nothing but destroying the climate by refusing to hop on board. They somehow tend to forget that the conservatives don’t want this to pass either as a rule. Manchin is taking the hits in stride though. These same policies would have us facing an energy crisis similar to Europe’s crisis.
As a Nation, we are not ready for such a jump into green incentives, laws, and ideals. The country doesn’t have a wide enough charging network, the electric vehicles don’t charge fast enough to make long-distance trips worthwhile in many instances. The idea of convenience and time far outpaces the concerns of green enthusiasts.
For people making the family summer trip from NY to Disney in Orlando, FL they only want to stop for gas and the bathroom. They don’t want to spend 20-30 minutes at a charging station, or overnight if it’s not a supercharger. The concern about finding a motel in the random spot where their car dies because the range runs short of the supercharger, or even finding a place to trickle charge can be a hassle in and of itself.
Then there is the cost to taxpayers. In Europe, their subsidies for these green energy programs have led to nothing but problems. From being too reliant on energy production that requires specific weather (high winds or bright sunny days), not enough money spent on hydrocarbon generation, and relying way too much on imported energy, to the closure of coal and nuclear power plants.
Steps like those have left people across the European Union fed up, overheating, and unable to deal with the costs of the energy options available to them. For their leadership, this is going to take a massive apology and admission that they were wrong to take such drastic steps so quickly and to eliminate other options. Should Biden’s Green New Deal ever get through, we are headed to the same place.
People like Sen Manchin see the writing on the wall. They see what has happened in Europe and they are determined to stick up for the rest of us and ensure we have the energy availability and reliability that we as Americans need. Between tax credits, poorly developed networks, and the idea of eliminating the traditional and reliable methods as backups, there is no silver lining to this package.
Emmet Penney, the editor of the newsletter Grid Brief, summed everything up in one beautiful statement in an interview with The Hill. “If you have all the big climate NGOs, the Democratic Party, and the entire Washington green lobby on your side and you can’t get your climate bill past one dude from West Virginia, you deserve to lose.”
