The long game on infrastructure
A critical moment for America and the climate is even more important than you might think
America and the world have reached a moment where previously unthinkable changes in our economy, public policy and lives have become necessary.
Without immediate and dramatic cuts in carbon pollution, we will find ourselves in a dangerous and increasingly uninhabitable world. Plastic trash in the ocean and the destruction of ecosystems from the Amazon to the Arctic are proof that our current patterns of production and consumption are incompatible with a healthy planet.
And our ecological dashboard isn’t the only one with flashing red warning lights: rising tides of drug abuse and depression, and growing societal distrust, anger, disconnection and paranoia show that all of our society’s material wealth isn’t bringing happiness.
Across society, things seem no longer to “work” the way they once did. But we’re still relying on the traditional answers: “stimulate” the economy, gradually reduce pollution while keeping the economy chugging along as before, treat the symptoms of our societal ills as opposed to the underlying diseases.
Those old answers fail to meet the moment.
Seen through the lens of our social and environmental woes, the budget reconciliation proposal now taking shape in Congress is both bold and ambitious and, at the same time, barely a down payment on the transformations required of America in the 21st century.
But in evaluating the package, we need to look beyond both the policy initiatives and the price tag. Political leaders must consider how the debate over reconciliation positions the nation for the even bigger and more challenging decisions and changes we’ll need to make in the years and decades to come.
The $3.5 trillion reconciliation framework proposed by the Democrats would make important progress toward a more sustainable country. It would create incentives to phase out fossil fuels in electricity generation, create a new Civilian Conservation Corps, expand protection of natural areas, and incentivize the retrofitting of our buildings to improve efficiency and run on cleaner sources of energy.
And it would begin to shift resources to deep human needs that an economy as wealthy as ours should have met long ago: providing critical support to caregiving of children and the elderly, and investing in early childhood and higher education.
But no single bill passed in Congress can effect the momentous change required in the 21st century. To do that, we need to not only shift the policy, but also help to shift the politics, so that the next bill, and the ones we’ll need in the future, can be bigger, bolder and even more ambitious.
And that’s where things get really challenging. To shift the politics, we need to build a societal consensus around our nation’s current realities and pressing priorities — one that spans regions, parties and generations.
The question we face is not just whether a reconciliation plan delivers the goods in the here and now, but also whether it helps to promote our ability as a nation to grapple with our future. If an ambitious bill won today makes it more difficult to build an enduring electoral coalition capable of further action, if it deepens the polarization of right and left, if it serves to further erode our trust in society and one another, even a milestone policy victory could quickly turn into a pyrrhic one.
Much remains to be determined about the shape of the ultimate reconciliation package. But its drafters — along with all of us — need to keep our eyes on the real prize. Not the passage of a bill with certain policy prescriptions or the largest number of zeros at the end, but the transformation of our national dialogue to one that will allow for further progress in the future.
Achieving that larger goal is not just about what’s in the package but also about how the ends of the legislation are achieved: Can it attract broad support among the American people (even if not the politicians)? Will it be paid for in ways that are responsible and avoid saddling future generations with debt or committing them to continuing the same patterns of unsustainable economic growth that are fueling the climate crisis and our other economic and social predicaments?
In a world of minute-by-minute news cycles and daily analysis of every word from the mouth of Sen. Joe Manchin, it is easy to lose sight of the long game. But in the end, it’s the only one that matters.
