One thing you have to give Joe Manchin. His sense of timing is exquisite.

For his op-ed in The Wall Street Journal warning that the $3.5 trillion physical and human infrastructure package is too costly, he picked a day when nature provided the best, irrefutable rejoinder.

With fires, droughts, water shortages, and heat waves devastating much of the American West, and hurricanes and floods wrecking the cities of the South and the Northeast, we are going to need public investments that make $3.5 trillion look like chump change if America is to be habitable at all.

That means everything from a very different water strategy for the West, to hardened electric grids everywhere, to flood barriers and water diversion systems for thousands of cities and towns. It means a redoubling of investments in a post-carbon economy so that climate change doesn’t worsen beyond what’s already inevitable.

As AOC astutely pointed out yesterday, "One piece of data I’m seeing: the subway stations + other infrastructure rebuilt post-Hurricane Sandy for climate resilience *worked.* It was areas that *didn’t* get investment that suffered. We shouldn’t wait for climate disaster to rebuild & prepare—that’s what GND is about."

Manchin also expressed alarm about inflation. Wait until droughts, floods, heat waves, and parched crops start raising food prices. That’s all the more reason for serious investment in sustainable agriculture.

It happens that a lot of the social investments in the reconciliation package, such as enhanced child care and health care outlays, and free community college, save working families a lot of money. If Manchin is worried about price pressures, he should support those investments.

These worsening catastrophic events hit red states and blue states alike. I suspect that Republican governors, senators, and representatives will soon be begging for more federal investment in public infrastructure.

Manchin wrote, "Ignoring the fiscal consequences of our policy choices will create a disastrous future for the next generation of Americans." He got one word wrong. Ignoring the climate consequences of our policy choices will destroy life for future Americans.