Yet even so, the Democrats still have plenty of punch. In fact, not since the 1920s have Republicans had so many seats. In addition, Republicans control 33 governorships and 66 of 99 state legislative chambers. Most obviously, the GOP possesses the White House, and it also controls both chambers of Congress-although its margin in the Senate is narrow. Today, of course, the Republicans have most of the formal political power in the country. This is one of the most urgent threats of our time, and we have no choice but to rise and meet it.Īnd the 2016 Democratic platform was just as emphatic: “Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time.” Sea levels are rising, ice caps are melting, storms, wildfires and extreme weather are wreaking havoc. In the meantime, Hillary Clinton embraced the Paris agreement. to reduce its GHG emissions by 26–28 percent below the 2005 level by 2025 (although, since the Obama administration never sought a ratifying vote in the Senate, the legal status of the accord is unclear). In 2015, Barack Obama agreed to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the so-called Paris Agreement, thus committing the U.S. And we will end the war on coal and the war on miners.” Trump carried Pennsylvania.įor their part, the Democrats have been just as entrenched. ĭuring last fall’s campaign, Trump told an audience of energy executives in Pittsburgh, “The shale energy revolution will unleash massive wealth for America. The Republican Party as a whole hasn’t been much kinder the 2016 platform pledged that the GOP would “forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide” and “oppose any carbon tax.” It further promised to cancel the Obama administration’s 2015 anti-greenhouse gas (GHG) initiative, the so-called Clean Power Plan. Back in 2012, Donald Trump tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” He has also referred to climate change as a “con” and derided regulatory agreements as “a bad deal.” Our own history tells us that we’ve had plenty of those-and now we need another one. That is, it will take the technological equivalent of a deus ex machina. So what to do? The solution will likely involve something altogether new. That is, the coming political collision could cripple economic growth, jeopardize national security-and still not address the climate issue. So which side will win? Which side will lose? If present trends continue, it’s possible that they both could lose. On the other side are the Democrats, who do worry about climate change. On one side are the Republicans, who mostly seem unworried about climate change-or perhaps downright hostile to the very concept. On the subject of global warming, or climate change, we seem destined to find out. What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

One last favor deus ex