It was deja vu for climate hawks who watched a similar climate bill fail during the Obama administration in 2010, after which then-President Barack Obama had to rely on executive action. Biden entered the Oval Office promising the boldest climate action of any president before him. But Manchin, who is heavily invested in the coal industry, has long been a skeptic of clean energy. When he was running for Congress in 2010, Manchin cut a campaign ad featuring himself shooting a rifle at the Democrats’ climate change bill. Manchin dealt the agenda his final blow this week, denying Democrats the chance to pass climate legislation for at least several years. “He killed this and he has to own it,” John Podesta, Obama’s climate adviser and founder of the Center for American Progress, told CNN. Now Biden and Democrats “have to explain why — in a context where Democrats had at least nominal control of the White House, the House and the Senate — they couldn’t get the job done,” Podesta said. CNN spoke to 11 lawmakers, congressional officials and outside climate advocates who said they blame Manchin, a number many sources describe as difficult to track down, often finding new excuses to delay action. A spokesman for Manchin declined to comment for this story. Although Manchin insisted Friday he was still open to a climate deal in September, sources inside and outside the Senate told CNN they were deeply wary after months of shifting goalposts.
“It’s a load of bullshit,” an exasperated senior Democratic adviser told CNN, adding that Manchin “doesn’t want to be held accountable.” Others lamented that even as the administration appeared to focus on climate early in Biden’s tenure, the outcome in Congress was eerily like Obama’s.
“When you have an ally in the White House, these issues become more painful when we give them away,” House Natural Resources Chairman Raul Grijalva told CNN. “Climate change was a priority, but inevitably when we get to that negotiating point, environmental issues, the climate crisis, frontline communities and indigenous issues come back, they become part of trade. “This is a pattern that continues every time.”

“They will never say what they want”

Days before Manchin torpedoed the climate measures, Democrats felt confident they could hammer out a deal that would raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest earners, lower prescription drug costs and address energy costs and the growing threat of climate change.
As negotiations peaked midweek, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made some deep concessions to try to woo Manchin, offering to significantly reshape the bill to fit Manchin’s wish list, according to a Democratic source who briefed on negotiations — channeling tax reform; strike tax credits for electric vehicles; adding additional measures to encourage more oil and gas drilling. Schumer made “concessions upon concessions to at least get the best we could get,” Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith told CNN. “For Senator Manchin to walk away from this good faith negotiation was amazing to me.” Manchin’s approach in the latest talks was reminiscent of the failed Build Back Better negotiations in December, as well as earlier negotiations over the older clean-electricity standard Democrats ultimately killed from previous versions of the bill. Two sources involved in those earlier negotiations with Manchin said the West Virginia senator and his staff often proved impossible to track down. Instead of saying what Manchin wanted out of a deal, Manchin’s team instead often criticized what the other side was offering, the sources said. “It’s like a word salad because they don’t like it,” a source said. “They will never say what they want; they will attack what you have. [Manchin] he so desperately doesn’t want to seem like he’s on the hook — because he wants to get away. It’s just so slippery.” One Democratic senator told CNN there is a common thread in the failed negotiations — they often involve energy issues, and Manchin has made it clear that investments in clean energy must be accompanied by more oil and gas drilling. “I think it’s particularly a problem in the energy negotiations,” the Democratic senator said, adding that Manchin chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Executive action phone call

Biden, who has pledged to halve the country’s global warming emissions as part of rejoining the Paris Agreement, vowed on Friday to take action even without congressional support. “If the Senate does not act to address the climate crisis and strengthen the domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to respond right now,” Biden said in a statement. Biden did not detail what kinds of climate action he would take, but climate advocates told CNN that the administration would have to enact a combination of tough rules to cut emissions from power plants, vehicles and the oil and gas industry. . Advocates are expected to put even more pressure on the U.S. Interior Department to halt oil and gas leasing on federal lands, which has become a politically charged flashpoint between Republicans and Manchin. With Manchin’s vote now out of reach, supporters told CNN now is the time to call for executive action and federal regulation up to 100. “There is no excuse now,” Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, told CNN. “What I’m looking for is a coordinated broad-based agency response at the executive level that uses every tool and agency at their disposal to address the climate crisis.” John Larsen, a climate expert and fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Rhodium Group, said Biden still has time to break away from Obama’s climate legacy by continuing to increase clean energy and cut fossil fuels. “Never [the 2010 bill] There was no climate discussion or action after that until after the 2012 election,” Larsen said. “If you repeat that bit of history again, we’ll be five years away from 2030.” More immediately, Podesta told CNN, the failure of climate legislation in Congress will hurt Biden and the United States at the next round of international climate talks in November in Egypt. “I think it weakens the U.S.,” Podesta said. “I think that [US Climate Envoy] John Kerry has done an amazing job, but at the end of the day you have to show that you can keep your commitments and that’s where one’s strength comes from.”