Source: Opinion | We’re in a Fossil Fuel War. Biden Should Say So. – The New York Times
Now the problem of climate change has been all but overshadowed by the war. Some Democrats seem to have forgotten the planet altogether — Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, wants to give every car owner in his state up to $800 in rebates to offset the high price of gas. This could have been a moment for moral clarity on the dangers of fossil fuels — but so far, Democrats have fumbled that message.
“This narrative has not been out there — that this war is why we need to get off of fossil fuels,” said Leah Stokes, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies environmental politics. “More groups need to be connecting the dots, making the case that true energy independence is about running on sunshine, because sunshine is free and abundant and cannot be controlled by dictators.”
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Stokes points out that such a message is likely to resonate with people. A study she and a co-author published online in 2017 examined the political factors that led to clean energy policies. “What we found was, overwhelmingly, these policies were passed during energy crises,” she told me. It’s when energy is expensive or hard to get that Americans begin to realize that they ought to look for some new way.
The good news is that Democrats have that new way all lined up. Build Back Better, the massive social and environmental policy bill that fell apart in the Senate late last year, includes a litany of excellent ideas to address the current crisis. That effort is not totally dead; Democrats are still negotiating with Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator holding up the bill, and they could still rally and pass some parts of it.
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