It’s pretty much beyond doubt that U.S. infrastructure such as roads and bridges is collectively in need of a lot of work. The American Society of Civil Engineers has warned about that for years.
That’s why the $1.2 billion infrastructure, in congressional limbo as this went to press, is so important.
Equipment industry groups like the Associated Equipment Distributors and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers have been staunch supporters of the bill, which would include $110 billion for new spending on traditional infrastructure like roads and bridges. The package also includes hundreds of millions more dollars on upgrades to airports, seaports, electrical grids, water systems, public transit, railways, and rural broadband.
All of those things would benefit equipment industries, which would provide the machinery to build those projects. And those expenditures would also trickle down to the makers of service trucks and their accessories that maintain that equipment.
The infrastructure bill has passed the Senate. Unfortunately, as this went to press, the bill was still being held up on the House of Representatives by infighting among Democrats who control the House.
In a nutshell, as far as we can parse it, progressive Democrats are only willing to pass the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill if a separate, much more extensive $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill, the Build Back Better Act, also receives approval. The latter covers a wide range of social spending, such as for child care, paid leave, college education, affordable housing. It also has a clean-energy component that includes car- rots for utilities that switch from fossil fuels to clean energy and sticks for utilities that resist.
Both bills have President Joe Biden’s full support. However, moderate Democratic senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have called for paring down the social spending bill — thus the impasse.
According to the New York Times in mid-October, Democrats were poised to meet Manchin’s demands to drop the $3.5 trillion bill’s $150 billion clean energy program that would not only encourage utilities to switch to renewable energy sources but punish those that continue to use fossil fuels. That Manchin represents a state with a long and continuing legacy of coal mining no doubt has a lot to do with his position.
It’s regrettable, considering the vast majority of the world’s leading climate scientists have been saying with increasing urgency for decades that the world must drastically reduce its fossil consumption and soon. Otherwise, we can expect to see even worst conflagrations than the wildfires that scorched California this summer or that destroyed the town of Lytton, B.C., within days of recording Canada’s highest ever temperature.
(Yes, it’s bad science to cherry pick examples. And we should note that Antarctica recently experienced its second coldest year on record. The latter is an example of why it’s called climate “change.” It’s also worth noting some dissent among a small fraction of climate scientists. But about 95 percent are in agreement. If 19 out of 20 actuaries warned that your house in its current state was a fire trap, would you just do nothing?)
Now, it’s not fair or right that the citizens of West Virginia should have to bear the brunt of dealing with what is, after all, a global crisis. If Sen. Manchin can leverage that concern to have his fellow Democrats write into the $3.5 trillion bill specific prescriptions for helping West Virginia make the transition away from fossil fuels, then the U.S. government can begin taking the bold steps needed to make that transition happen more quickly.
The transition is happening already in many ways including the electrification of trucking, and the incremental rise in wind and solar energy and it has momentum. The challenge now is if the transition can happen fast enough to forestall the anticipated, costly effects of a warmer planet. In the final accounting, the $3.5 trillion or $350 million a year over a decade will no doubt sound like a bargain compared to what it would cost to keep rising seas from inundating Florida.
It won’t be the end of the world if that $3.5 trillion bill doesn’t pass. The world survived an asteroid strike 66 million years ago, after all. The more modest $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill contains some measures that will help address the climate crisis, such as $65 million to upgrade electrical systems. That’s better than nothing. It’s just not enough of what the world needs right now.
