PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • November 16, 2021
At the 26th UN Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP 26) 200 of the world’s governments gathered for a global summit. In the face of a huge problem, their response looked small. Coal will not be “phased out,” but “phased down.” There are still no ways to enforce the promises made by the governments and it won’t be enough to prevent warming by the end of the century to exceed the threshold for devastating effects. But, the governments have gone farther than they ever had before. The next arena in this fight is Washington D.C., where President Biden’s climate and social spending package, Build Back Better, would spend $550 billion over the next decade, mostly in the form of incentives to transition from fossil fuel to renewable power. It would be the biggest such investment in history.