Infrastructure vote could happen tomorrow – National & International News – MON 9Aug2021

Infrastructure vote could happen tomorrow. Hospitals see more kids with COVID. UN releases “code red” climate report. 

NATIONAL NEWS

Senate could vote on infrastructure tomorrow

After a rare weekend session, Republican and Democratic senators negotiating the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill say it could come up for a final vote as early as Tuesday. As of Saturday, bipartisan support for the bill remain strong, with 18 GOP senators voting to end debate and advance the bill towards a vote.

Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to hold a vote on the bipartisan bill, which he expects to pass. Immediately after, he will move to open debate on the $3.5 trillion budget, which Democrats plan to pass without GOP support through reconciliation.

Not home yet

However, some Republican senator have voiced doubts over the bill’s pay-fors. Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), one of the bill’s bipartisan negotiators, voted against ending debate on the bill on Saturday and says he intends to vote against it. Young is concerned that the bill isn’t full paid for, as is Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN). The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office bolstered these fears with a recent estimate that the bill as written would ad $256 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade.

GOP Senators favor making up the shortfall with already appropriated but unspent COVID relief funds. Democrats have rejected this idea, since the pandemic is by no means over and those funds may yet be needed.

Republicans are also unhappy about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to pass the infrastructure bill unless the $3.5 trillion “human” infrastructure budget also passes. Some GOPers have equated support for the smaller bill with support for the larger bill, and have vowed to vote against both.

Senators in both parties are anxious to see the bill’s amendments. As of last week, nearly 300 amendments have been proposed. At present, it’s not clear how many or which of those made it into the final bill.

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Hospitals see uptick in kids with COVID

The US is now averaging 100,000 COVID infections a day. Hospitals in states that are seeing the largest volume of cases are also reporting an increase in child patients with COVID. And this is before schools in many of these states reopen, most without mask mandates.

For the moment, doctors say the main culprit is household spread. Both vaccinated and unvaccinated adults are at risk of passing the infection on to children who are still too young to be vaccinated. But the danger is greater in households where adults are unvaccinated, as they are also unlikely to mask, maintain social distance or encourage other sanitary practices that became routine last year.

Moreover, doctors have noted an unseasonable wave of non-COVID respiratory illnesses among children, normally only seen during the winter. These include severe colds, croup, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. These combined with the anticipated rise in juvenile COVID cases has health experts worried.

Since March and July this year, at least 81 US children have died of COVID, according to the CDC. Already overstretched doctors and nurses anticipate that the situation will only get worse once schools are again in session. 

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

UN releases “code red” climate report

As climate modeling advances and humanity experiences more of the ongoing effects of climate change, scientists are able to produce more and more accurate predictions about the earth’s climate future. The latest science in a new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is devastating. Scientists say the extreme weather, heatwaves, floods, wildfires and hurricanes are only going to become more severe over the next decade. This comes after another report last week indicating that Atlantic currents that drive our global weather patterns are on the verge of collapse.

This report also marks the first time the IPCC explicitly ties climate change to human activity. The new report says “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, oceans and land”. However, IPCC scientists say there is still time to fend off some of the most dire effects of climate change, if the world acts fast. That is, faster than the limits set in the Paris Climate Accords, or in domestic policies in many countries who are the world’s largest carbon polluters. To avert total catastrophe, the US, China and India in particular have to take urgent and drastic steps to cut emissions.  

All not lost

While the situation is dire, scientists offer some room for hope. That is, if we can cut global emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, humanity could potentially stabilize and possibly reverse the global rise in temperatures. However, as of now, even with various climate initiatives in place, total emissions are still rising year on year rather than slowing down.

Experts agree that getting China on board is key. China has already experienced historically disastrous floods two years in a row, and Premier Xi Jinping has vowed to make the country carbon neutral by 2060. This is too late by most estimates, and it’s unclear how China will meet this goal. China’s growth-driven economy and reliance on coal is still producing a tremendous annual rise in emissions.

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