One man and one moment do not define the arc of our possibility.

In politics, when hypocrisy pretends to stand on principle, people pay the price. That is exactly what happened yesterday when Senator Manchin tanked eighteen months of serious, good-faith work on addressing the climate crisis, and the needs of American households. In addition to forsaking millions of struggling West Virginians, Senator Manchin seems intent on taking the entire nation and planet down, too. It is an outcome that is shocking for its cynicism, and for the staggering and self-inflicted price we will pay for generations to come.

The justification is either craven or misinformed. Manchin advances the false idea that inaction on climate will stem inflation, amazingly suggesting that we must “avoid taking steps that add fuel to the inflation fire.”

But of course, it is exactly fossil fuel that is adding to the inflation fire. The inflation crisis battering American households is a perfect storm: the result of a runaway climate crisis exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine. Fossil fuels are a macro driver of inflation, which means that beyond direct energy and gas price increases, they are driving up the price of everything around us. What has been exposed by the war is the fragility of our fossil fuel supply chain, and the volatility we will live with so long as we resign ourselves to powering our lives with hydrocarbons.

According to the latest Consumer Price Index, while food and shelter are up 5 and 12 percent, gasoline is up 60 percent, and gas for our homes is up 38 percent. For Americans who use oil to heat their homes, the price has increased by a staggering 99 percent. Since Putin’s illegal invasion began, nearly half of overall inflation is directly attributable to skyrocketing fossil fuel prices.

For the 15 million households below the federal poverty line who already spend more than 17 percent of their income on energy bills, these fluctuations can be devastating. A vast number of Americans live on the economic margins. Indeed, 49 percent of Americans could not cover a $400 emergency expense today. Every $100 increase in median rent in America results in a 9 percent increase in homelessness. When low-income families can no longer bear the burden of high energy bills, economic relief comes at the cost of physical safety. Without primary heating, families are exposed to unsafe cold or forced to choose between dangerous secondary heating sources: space heaters that cause fires or ovens and stoves that poison the air with carbon monoxide.

Americans do not have time for these cynical politics. We need relief, and rightly want our leaders in Washington to step up and act. The solution for our country and the planet is climate policy: to get off fossil fuels and to live in a world where we power our lives with plugs and not pipes.

What is so maddening and unacceptable about Manchin’s hypocrisy and Washington’s failure to deliver is that this solution is right there for the taking.

While gasoline hit a record $5 per gallon in June, driving an electric car costs the equivalent of just $1.06 per gallon today. If Congress had acted on the climate provisions a year ago, the average American household would have saved $970 in energy bills by installing electric heat pumps to heat their air and water. That number would have been $1,350 if they had also installed solar panels. If current prices hold over the next year, these savings will grow to $1,420 and $1,840, respectively.

These savings would help American households trying to make ends meet. But they also represent a more stable and prosperous future for us all. The savings from electrification are also not one-off – every year that we use these efficient, electric machines, we save money. And renewable energy generation, whether from the panels on our roofs or the grid, locks in low energy prices for decades and stimulates local economies. It also localizes supply, insulating communities and families from the political and profiteering whims of tyrants and global oil and gas corporations.

This future is right there for us. It is one that America should be leading and that our families and communities should be benefiting from. Electric machines are the only way to zero out these emissions and give us a shot at staying inside of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming. And they are precisely the way to deal with the inflationary pressures we are facing.

Americans deserve a politics of abundance and shared benefit. Of optimism and hope. They deserve policymakers who are committed to getting things done and making life better. The failure to pass the climate provisions is the opposite of all of that. But one man and one moment do not define the arc of our possibility. And when the answer is so clear, the outcome cannot be withheld. We will make sure of that.