Thread by @SeanCasten

If you care about the planet. If you care about US leadership. If you care about our children. If you care about affordable energy. If you care about our democracy. Then it's time to mobilize. So, so much is at stake. Thread: nytimes.com/2021/10/15/cli…

1/ The CEPP is the most impactful part of the Build Back Better Act from a climate perspective. It puts our electric sector on a path to zero emissions. To take it out is to decide that climate change isn't a problem.

2/ It's also MASSIVE for job creation. Meeting those goals require the construction of ~1000 GW of new power generation in the next decade. That is as much as we already have. Millions of good jobs and economic growth. To take out the CEPP is to give labor the middle finger.

3/ The total Build Back Better bill reduces US CO2 emissions by 35 - 45%. More than half of that is in the CEPP. As @michaelemann keeps telling us, once we stop emitting CO2, the temperature stops rising. I don't want my daughters to live in an oven. Do you?

4/ And all that new generation that gets built in the CEPP? It's really, really cheap! That's why the fossil energy industry is so scared. Because they know that fossil-fueled generation will never be able to compete with renewables.

5/ No one who owns a solar panel wastes a moment wondering if tomorrow's power price will be high enough to turn their generator. EVERY coal, oil, gas plant operator does that math every hour. More zero-marginal cost energy = the economic death of the fossil sector.

6/ That's a bad thing for the minority of Americans who work in that industry, and we've worked hard in the Build Back Better bill to provide a just transition for those folks. But it's a good thing for the 100% of Americans who want to pay less for energy.

7/ But let's say for the moment you are a tinfoil-hat wearing, science denying, fossil-fuel engorged moron. You still should want the CEPP for the future of our democracy. Because you know what China is telling the rest of the world right now? That democracy doesn't work.

8/ Their argument is that in an ever-more complicated, rapidly changing world where the line between local action and global impact is ever thinner, autocracy is the only way. Democracy is too slow, too messy, too prone to capture by the uneducated rabble.

9/ And the US response to climate change makes that argument for them. China can tell poor, low elevation countries that their way is the way forward. "Just look at how our top-down mandates have transformed our country. Look at how we don't waste time debating science."

10/ The US counter to that, which has (mostly) prevailed is that only in a democracy can all the interests and equities be heard. It is, per Churchill, perhaps the worst form of government "but for all the alternatives". Look at how we weather crises and always emerge stronger.

11/ But for climate. We are the country, after all that refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because we knew it wouldn't pass the Senate. We are the country that then pulled out of even participating in those hearings under GW Bush. The one that pulled out of Paris under Trump.

12/ We are the one that went to Madrid at COP-25 (including yours truly) to send a message that "We're still in", letting the world know that once we kicked the tinfoil hat-wearing, science-denying seditionist out of the White House we'd be back at the table. And here we are.

13/ We will soon be in Glasgow at COP-26. The world knows the stakes. They see our west on fire. They see bigger fires in Australia. Even bigger ones in Siberia. Soot settling on the Arctic. Multiple countries within decades of being underwater.

14/ On one side will be economically powerful, anti-democratic voices saying "ours is the way". And on the other side will be the US. Pass the CEPP and we are showing how democracy works. Gets it right. Understand the science. But doesn't sacrifice human rights in the process.

15/ Don't pass the CEPP and we are the country saying "well, let me explain to you the complexities of the US Senate." Trust me, they understand them well. Because they've heard that same damned story for 40 years. They are looking for leadership. If we don't provide, who will?

16/ One last note. This started with a NYT post about a certain Senator from WV. And yes, he is the proximate issue. But do not lose sight of the fact that as we sit here today, 52% of the US Senate doesn't give a rat's ass (as a wise man once said).

https://twitter.com/SiegelScribe/status/1449070443084881932?s=20

17/ The overwhelming majority of the American people understand the stakes and want climate action. A majoritarian democracy would give them what they want. The problem is the US Senate. It is, by design anti-democratic.

18/ It was designed by our founders to appease those states who feared that a truly representative democracy would give too many rights to black people. That is why today we give equal weight to a Senator from Wyoming (pop: 578,000) and one from California (pop: 39.5 million)

19/ We aren't going to change that today. But do not lose faith in the American people, nor in a functioning democracy. It is the way forward. It is the only way forward.

20/ But we're going to need a whole lot of those good American people making a whole lot of noise in the really near term if we're going to prove that.

So... Are you in? /fin