US Senate vote advances fight against climate change

FOR anyone worried about the devastating impact of greenhouse gas emissions on a warming planet, the news coming out of Washington and elsewhere in recent months has been depressing.

More specifically, the rising inflation, igniting a major rise in the price of gas, exacerbated by Western economic sanctions on Russia, a major oil producing country, have put pressure on the American president and other world leaders to take action to increase the production and supply of oil, and in the process, set back the global effort to deal with the climate crisis. Moreover, even before the war in Ukraine, President Joe Biden’s ambitious climate legislation has been stuck in Congress in the face of opposition from Republicans and two Democrat senators. The conventional wisdom has been that the White House’s proposals were dead on arrival.

So last week’s unexpected passage in the Senate of a US$370 billion bill designed to move the United States away from fossil fuels and toward solar, wind, and other renewable energy comes as a major piece of good news. Indeed, Americans and the rest of the international community who want to see their leaders take action to combat the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- the result of burning oil, gas and coal -- and avert a planetary catastrophe, have cause for cheering.