US President Joe Biden does not skimp on drastic words when it comes to the climate crisis. “Climate change is the existential threat to humanity,” he warned a few days ago. When the US was hit by storms, floods and forest fires in the summer, Biden spoke of the “red alert” and of a “turning point” at which action must be taken. Just before the World Climate Conference in Glasgow, which begins at the end of the month, Biden’s most ambitious climate protection plans are now threatened with failure – because an individual torpedoed them – and that of a party colleague of all people: Senator Joe Manchin.
Der Querulant
The 74-year-old Democrat is so conservative that he often comes across as a Republican who accidentally ended up in the wrong party. The balance of power in the Senate is so tight that Biden’s 50 Democrats have to vote in unison in the Congress Chamber in order to push through a project. Senator Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona is always one of the potential deviants. The most notorious troublemaker is undoubtedly Manchin.
From coal area
His role as tipping the scales makes the West Virginia senator one of the most powerful politicians in Washington today. Manchin is still largely unknown internationally. The fact that the name of his relatively small and underdeveloped state is more recognizable abroad than his own is probably due to the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. West Virginia is the second largest coal producer in the United States, but only 1.8 million of the approximately 330 million Americans live there. Less than 20,000 people in the state work in mining.
“Joe Manchin has just cooked the planet”
Manchin’s blockade could have consequences for the world’s population. “He plans to destroy Biden’s climate plan and with it the chances for rapid global progress,” wrote environmental activist Bill McKibben recently on Twitter. “This is high on the list of the most momentous measures ever taken by a single Senator; the effects of this vain man can be seen in the geological records. “Poppier, but no less dramatic, the magazine” Rolling Stone “formulates it:” Joe Manchin has just cooked the planet “, it said there – and that is not figurative Meaning.
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