Lost amid all the attention to the partisan stalemate over raising the country’s debt limit is the frenzy of much of the Republicans’ bargaining power: Much of the savings they demand in exchange for a higher debt ceiling would come from of killing the pioneering clean energy initiatives. President Biden reached just nine months ago, and those have already sparked a gold rush of job-creating investment.

The inattention to this issue since House Republicans narrowly passed their debt limit bill last month suggests how accustomed we have become to climate change denial by the Republican Parties.

That’s bad enough. But in this case, the party is going beyond denial and actually trying to thwart actions to reduce global warming in the United States. In addition, in addition to wiping out Biden’s clean energy tax incentives for businesses and individuals, the Republicans want to soften tax breaks for fossil fuel production.

Future generations will be amazed at the head-in-the-sand position of the Republicans, assuming the world remains habitable for future generations.

Even as White House negotiators and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy continued talks to reach a debt deal on Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization announced that the Earth was likely to cross a critical warming threshold within the next five years, at least temporarily. the hottest period in recorded history. The threshold a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures is the tipping point for causing polar ice melt, flooded coastlines, ecosystem destruction, food shortages, disease, infectious and deadly weather extremes far beyond

what is already happening. other

just a month before McCarthy introduced the Republicans’ retrograde law, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that our warming world is at a critical juncture in history.

You wouldn’t know by the practice, baby, practice attitude of one of our two major political parties.

The hundreds of billions of dollars in tax incentives and clean energy loans that Biden signed into law as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act easily amount to the country’s largest investment to date against climate change, and one of its largest incentives. of industrial policy since the New Agreement.

The popularity of the tax credits for things like the purchase of electric vehicles, wind and solar energy projects, the development of sustainable jet fuel, Battery production and carbon capture have already driven so much demand and investment that government and private sector analysts have had to raise projections of the cost of the measures. Still, a Brookings Institution analysis found that the Treasury’s higher costs would be offset by the value of the social benefits of reduced emissions.

And without those carrots for industries and consumers, the United States will not be able to meet its international commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to levels that have at least contributed to 2005 levels. Even with the stimulus, the nation will case short. More corrective action is needed, not less.

The good news is that Republicans will almost certainly have to back down from repeating the Biden clean energy package, at least for now. Both sides must compromise to raise the country’s debt ceiling so that the Treasury can continue to borrow to pay the bills of past presidents and congresses, or else they will share the blame as early as June for a default that will shake the economy. As concerned as some Democrats may be about what Biden is agreeing to, he will not give up on his climate agenda. It’s one of his signature accomplishments, and a particularly popular one among younger voters the Democrats covet.

Congressional Republicans, heedless of the planet and young voters,

will certainly continue to try to mitigate the president’s climate change programs. Led by Donald Trump, the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominations are already calling for energy platforms limited to fossil fuel development, period.

The party’s promotion of oil, gas, and coal, and its hostility to addressing climate change, is so ideologically ingrained that Republicans oppose the Biden incentives as “corporate welfare,” even though most of the new factories, projects, and jobs that the producing tax credits are in red states and congressional districts. In April, McCarthy crowed that the House debt limit bill, by reiterating clean energy appropriations, would end green corporate giveaways that distorted the market and squandered taxpayers’ money. Ever the hypocrite, he proposed expanding the wealth of the oil and gas producers that oil and gas producers have enjoyed for decades.

Take note: The debt cap confrontation that flares up this week isn’t just a budget thorny one problem for the green eyeshadow crowd. The future of renewable energy in the US is at stake, and with it the future of the planet.

@jackiekcalmes