Wednesday evening, Senator Joe Manchin announced that after new negotiations with Senator Chuck Schumer and his staff, he had agreed to include hundreds of billions of dollars for climate and energy programs and tax increases in a package to subsidise health care and lower the cost of prescription drugs, less than two weeks after abruptly upending hopes for such an agreement this summer. The package would set aside $369 billion for climate and energy proposals, the most ambitious climate action ever taken by Congress, and raise an estimated $451 billion in new tax revenue over a decade. The package includes $60b to address the burden of pollution on poor people, $30b for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, $27b for green banks, $20b to cut agriculture emissions, $10b for new clean tech facilities, $500m for heat pumps and more. It's unclear what made Manchin change his mind and I will quote Bill Mc Kibben on this "This is a win engineered by everyone who ever wrote a letter to the editor, carried a sign at a march, went to jail blocking a pipeline, voted to divest a university endowment, sent ten dollars to a climate group, made their book club read a climate book" [...] "Now it’s time to make that same zeitgeist weigh on the financial industry, the other source of ultimate power in our society. It’s time for bank CEOs to feel what Manchin finally felt—the little shudder of worry at the idea that their names will be forever linked with the ravaging of a planet. Together we can do it. Together we’ve done this." Read Bill Mc Kibben's article: https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/zeitgeist-matters Picture: The staff members who were arrested for peacefully protesting to keep the negotiations going. They also deserve climate love 💚 (https://twitter.com/ariakov/status/1552403414306508801) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/us/politics/manchin-climate-tax-bill.html