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WASHINGTON — Senator Joe Manchin III’s party’s announcement that he cannot support the $2.2 trillion Return for Better bill has dramatically lowered expectations for climate action, which scientists say the United States must take to prevent the most devastating effects of global warming.

Manchin, who first voiced his opposition in an interview with Fox News Sunday, issued a follow-up statement targeting the climate and clean energy provisions in the bill, “putting the reliability of our power grid at risk and our dependence on foreign supply chains.”

As the swaying Democratic vote in an evenly divided Senate where all Republicans are against the law, Mr. Manchin is in a unique position to decide whether the bill can pass.

The news of his opposition alarmed environmentalists. “I don’t think we’ll be able to deal with the climate crisis at scale until we pass this law,” said Leah Stokes, professor of environmental policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who advises Senate Democrats.

While the administration can use executive actions and regulations without legislation, experts say it will be nearly impossible to meet President Biden’s goal of aggressively reducing pollution produced by the United States, the country that historically pumped the planet’s most warming gases into the world. atmosphere. Environmentalists said this would have dire risks to the planet.

Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley said on Twitter that failing to pass the law “would be a climate catastrophe”.

Mr. Biden and other world leaders, curbing greenhouse gas emissions Enough to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to temperatures before the Industrial Revolution. This is the threshold that scientists warn that the planet will turn into an irreversible future filled with frequent deadly heat waves, droughts, wildfires and storms, rising sea levels, food shortages and mass migration. The planet has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius.

As vital as the social programs in the Build Back Better bill are, the climate crisis is an existential threat that requires urgent action, said Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international relations at Princeton University. “We can’t change the fundamental physics of the problem,” he said. “So there’s a special urgency to it – we can’t miss it.”

The bill, rejected by Mr Manchin, would have made the largest expenditure in the country’s history to address the warming planet. About $555 billion of the $2.2 trillion bill is aimed at moving the American economy from 150 years of fossil fuel dependency to clean energy sources.

The bill relies heavily on incentives for industries, utilities, and consumers to switch from burning oil, gas, and coal to wind, solar, and other forms of energy that don’t release carbon dioxide for energy and transportation, rather than penalizing polluters. It is the most abundant of the greenhouse gases that warm the world.

The Build Back Better bill would put the United States at roughly half of Mr Biden’s goal of reducing emissions to roughly half of 2005 levels by the end of this decade. according to this Rhodium Group is an unbiased analytics firm.

It will provide approximately $320 billion in tax incentives for wind, solar and nuclear power producers and buyers. Electric vehicle buyers will receive tax credits of up to $12,500. It included $6 billion to make buildings more energy efficient, and another roughly $6 billion to replace gas-fired furnaces and appliances with electric versions. It has provided billions of dollars for the research and development of new technologies to capture carbon dioxide in the air.

This Version of the law passed by parliament It will expand existing tax credits and cover 30 percent of costs to lower homeowners’ costs to install solar panels, geothermal pumps and small wind turbines.

For months Mr. Manchin, who personal interests From investments in a family coal brokerage he founded, he opposed several provisions of the bill that advocates said were vital to reducing the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Mr. Manchin rejected Part of the bill that will become the single most effective tool to cut greenhouse gases is a clean electricity program that will reward power plants that switch from burning fossil fuels to solar, wind and other clean sources, and punish those that don’t. He contested a provision that would impose a fee on emissions of methane, a powerful planet-warming pollutant that seeps from oil and gas wells. He also opposed the provision that would provide tax relief to consumers who buy electric vehicles produced by union labor.

Room rejected a judgment this could prohibit future oil and gas drilling on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oregon Democrat Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee and wrote much of the clean energy tax stimulus package, noted that it has been backed by major electricity utilities. “This is our last chance to avert the most devastating effects of the climate crisis, and failure is not an option,” Mr Wyden said on Sunday.

Climate activists, particularly from groups led by youth who campaigned for Mr Biden during his presidential nomination, said on Sunday they were outraged and blaming the President and Democratic leadership at least as much as Mr Manchin.

“Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have failed us,” said Paul Campion, 24, who went on a hunger strike outside the White House in November to get the spending package to pass.

“They had Senator Manchin set the terms of the bill and ultimately derail it,” Mr. Campion said. He added that failing to pass the climate law “will have enormous consequences for the Democrats next year, when their tripartite governments have nothing to show for it.”

Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a climate advocacy group, accused Mr. Biden of not fighting further for climate provisions, for which he campaigned. “It’s frustrating to see the ways he doesn’t come out and fight for his agenda in any way he can,” Ms Prakash said.

With the prospect of Democrats losing control of the House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections, hopes for climate action are quickly fading, he said. “From now on, the political map looks more competitive and less promising,” he said. “This is our moment and they are ruining it.”

It may be possible to salvage key elements of the climate package, said Christy Goldfuss, senior vice president of energy and environmental policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. He said that while the $2.2 trillion version that passes the House is unlikely to move forward, some aspect or another version of the bill could still pass.

“Build Better is not dead. “We’ve been on the Manchin roller coaster for a long time and we see her sharing her feelings in public,” he said. “What’s incredibly important right now is that Biden and Manchin start debating what’s acceptable.”

Others were less sure that there was additional room for compromise. “Climate provisions are both historic and urgent and necessary and already a compromise,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs at the Conservative Voters Union. “There really isn’t much more to give there.”