(^36) The last word
The most powerful senator
Re
ute
rs
mulating in the atmosphere are nonnego-
tiable. Scientists say nations need to
dramatically cut emissions to avoid cata-
strophic warming that would come with
its own economic toll: devastating fires and
floods, water scarcity, displacement, disease,
and death. It remains to be seen whether
a moderate like Manchin can help bring
about the change the planet demands.
I
N A BITTERLY divided Washington, Joe
Manchin is a rare breed. A habitual
aisle crosser, he maintains strong
friendships with Republican colleagues
like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the
Energy Committee’s outgoing chair. He
attacked Barack Obama’s environmental
policies, and voted to confirm more of
Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointees than
any other Democrat.
He claims to hate everything about
Washington, sleeping on a houseboat
named Almost Heaven rather than get-
ting an apartment in the city. But in 2018,
when Manchin announced he was fed up
with the Senate, party leaders talked him
into running for another term, figuring he
was probably the only Democrat in West
Virginia who would win.
Manchin, 73, is a native son who made
good: Star student in the small mining town
of Farmington. Promising quarterback for
the West Virginia University Mountaineers
until a knee injury ended his career.
Successful businessman who oversaw a coal
brokerage before running for public office.
His political star rose even
as his state grew more
conservative. In 2004, the
same year West Virginia
voted for Republican
President George W. Bush
by a 13-point margin,
Manchin was hand-
ily elected governor. He
impressed constituents
by pushing through new
safety regulations in
24 hours after a mining
disaster killed 14 people.
“What’s in it for West
Virginia?” is Manchin’s
guiding principle, former
staffers say. The Paris
climate agreement wasn’t
good for the roughly
20,000 West Virginians
who work in coal, oil,
and gas, he said. He argued that Obama’s
Clean Power Plan would make electricity
for his constituents less affordable. Manchin
also maintains a vested interest in his state’s
fossil-fuel industry. His most recent finan-
cial disclosures show that he holds stocks
worth between $1 million and $5 million
in Enersystems, the coal brokerage firm he
used to run.
Fellow Democratic senators are under-
standing of his predicament. When
Manchin talks with Sen. Brian Schatz
(D-Hawaii), he draws an analogy between
tourism in Hawaii and coal in West
Virginia. “He said, ‘Well, what would hap-
pen if someone came into your state and
said your No. 1 industry is the problem?’”
according to Schatz.
That doesn’t mean liberals haven’t tried
to persuade him. In 2014, Manchin and
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) arranged
a cultural exchange. Manchin boarded
a trawler on the Rhode Island Sound so
fishermen could tell the coal state senator
about how climate change had affected
their livelihoods.
“I remember the captain of the trawler that
we went out on saying to us: ‘Senator, this
is not my father’s ocean any longer. Things
are getting weird out there,’” Whitehouse
said. In turn, Whitehouse, who like Schatz
is one of the most outspoken senators on
climate change, took a trip to coal country,
saying afterward that he had learned to see
miners as “energy veterans” who needed to
Sen. Joe Manchin is a moderate Democrat from coal country, said Sarah Kaplan and Dino Grandoni in
The Washington Post. He may decide the fate of the Biden administration’s ambitious climate plan.
Manchin: ‘Nobody in my state wants to drink dirty water, to breathe dirty air.’
H
E’S A COAL country
native, born
to a family of
mining-town mayors. As
West Virginia governor, he
sued the Environmental
Protection Agency. He has
scuttled efforts to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions,
criticized the Paris climate
agreement, and famously
shot a copy of a cap-and-
trade carbon proposal full
of lead.
Now the fate of the most
ambitious climate agenda
ever proposed by an
American president rests in
his hands.
Sen. Joe Manchin III, the
incoming chairman of the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, is a conservative Democrat
from one of the reddest states in the
country. In a Senate split 50-50, Manchin
is also a crucial swing vote on contentious
legislation, defining the limits of what
President Biden and the Democrats can
accomplish. Last week, he led a bipartisan,
bicameral group of lawmakers in talks
with the White House over its proposed
$1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.
But perhaps few of Biden’s priorities will be
as polarizing as the environment. The presi-
dent ran on a $2 trillion plan to transition
the U.S. economy toward renewable-energy
sources and cut the planet-warming pol-
lution that comes from oil, gas, and coal.
Biden has framed his proposal as a jobs
plan, but the fossil-fuel industry—including
coal companies—warns of fallout: lost jobs
and tax revenue and higher consumer costs.
Manchin has already said he doesn’t sup-
port eliminating the filibuster as a way to
enable Democrats to pass bills without
Republican votes. If Democrats are to fight
climate change, he wants them to do it the
old-fashioned way—his way. That means
deals forged through compromise, the gears
of government greased by long-standing
relationships and the occasional Mason jar
of moonshine served during negotiations.
“I want to work with them and hear all
different sides of it, from the environmental
to the industrial base,” Manchin said in a
recent interview.
But the physics of greenhouse gases accu-
antfer
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