It’s Earth Day, April 22, 2024, and fortunately for the last three years the United States has finally taken the threat of climate change seriously. Bill Clinton, with Vice-President Al Gore – a climate-change activist, tried to address the issue but was stymied by a Republican Congress during his last six years. Barack Obama actually made some progress in his sorely limited stimulus bill his first two years, but he, too, was ultimately stopped for the next six years for the same reason. Joe Biden in his first two years has made a huge difference, but it’ll take a while before everything will kick into action.
Even now, with the nation getting back on track, there is a deep frustration with The System. Why? The System has been blatantly unfair. The U.S. has experienced 40 years of procrastination. From 1981 through 2021, we’ve pretended to be deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid about our primary needs. We have not spent the money to deal with our absolute essentials in infrastructure, climate change, and manufacturing and jobs. The emphasis has been on making the rich richer at the expense of everyone else, resulting in our crumbling roads and bridges, worsening global warming, and widening income inequality. George W. Bush even bragged about his base being the “haves and have mores.” Donald Trump told his fellow plutocrats that his huge tax cut – his only legislative accomplishment – had just made them all wealthier.
The Biden-Harris administration has made climate change central to just about everything. If we don’t save the planet, then nothing else matters. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill will expand internet access to rural areas so that it won’t be necessary to drive several miles to hookup to the internet. Electric automobile charging stations will be expanded nationwide so that electric vehicles will be able to compete with and eventually replace fossil-fuel guzzlers that add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. It will provide funds to build highways and bridges that will withstand the ever-increasing changes in our climate. A few Republicans did support this bill. Embarrassingly, not one of my Arkansas congressmen voted for it. Fortunately, not one of them – as far as I know – has tried to keep the money from being spent in Arkansas. You can imagine the number of jobs this bill will create.
The Inflation Reduction Act, while ineptly but accurately named, is primarily a climate-change bill. Sadly, again, my Arkansas congressmen joined all other Republicans in the House and Senate in opposing this vital bill. I think they all deserve dishonorable mention: Senators John Boozman and Tom Cotton; Representatives Rick Crawford, French Hill, Steve Womack, and mine -I apologize- Bruce Westerman. Think of all the jobs being created by the expansion of the solar and wind power industries and what they will do to replace the fossil fuels that are destroying the planet.
As a retired schoolteacher, I never thought I could afford to do my part in saving the planet by installing solar panels on my roof. However, Chandler Follett, a young man representing Freedom Forever, came to my door and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Thanks to the subsidies provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, Freedom Forever installed my solar panels at no cost to me in return for monthly payments of $133.25 for 25 years – translated: for the rest of my life. In 2022, my average monthly bill to Entergy, my power provider in south Arkansas, was $170. In 2023, it was $190. And every year is getting hotter. Now, my lower monthly payments for electricity will go to Mosaic, the company that finances the solar panels and the installations by Forever Freedom, by way of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Also, one of the many good things the Biden-Harris administration has done has been to put the Environmental Protection Administration back in business. Donald Trump set the environment back at least 12 years. He placed Scott Pruitt, a devout opponent of the EPA, in charge of running it. So, the agency became dormant in trying to protect the environment for 4 years and became reactionary in undoing virtually everything the Obama-Biden administration accomplished in the previous 8 years. Biden has had to undo Trump’s damage and introduce advanced protections at the same time.
Lisa Friedman, a climate-change reporter for The New York Times, on April 19 provided a nice summary of recent environment actions of the Biden-Harris administration:
“Over the past several weeks, the administration has announced strict new emissions limits for automobiles; raised the cost to drill and mine on public lands while making it easier to conserve those public lands; and issued a host of regulations to restrict toxic chemicals in the air and drinking water. Mr. Biden has also expanded the boundaries of several national monuments.”
Similarly to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt before him, Joe Biden is far from perfect, but, as they were, he has definitely been outstanding. Yes, he approved the Willow Project, an $8 billion oil drilling operation in Alaska, but he also prevented a 211-mile road through Alaska’s Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve: A mining company wanted access so as to mine for copper.
Yes, Biden is trying to ween us from fossil fuels, but under his leadership, the USA is the number-one producer of oil and the number-one exporter of liquefied natural gas. That does not mean we can’t also aspire to be number one in solar and wind energy to incrementally remove fossil fuels from polluting the atmosphere with climate-changing gases. It is important for voters to look at the big picture and not just one or two individual grievances.
In a democracy, politics is the art of compromise. Those who oppose democracy today are considering fascism as an alternative and a return to what they believe were “the good old days.” Many are frustrated to learn that Biden is not perfect, so even though he has done and is doing so much good for the country, they are considering either not voting or voting for a third party candidate in protest. The future of our republic – and our planet – depends on the voters in November 2024.
A version of this essay was published on April 21, 2024, in south Arkansas’s El Dorado News-Times.
High Noon 
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