Democrats have a rare opportunity to address the cost-of-living crisis that will likely determine next week's midterm elections — and they don't need to win to seize it. The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 can pass during the lame-duck session before the new Congress arrives, and it should. Yes, the legislation will make gas pipelines easier to build. But rejecting it on those grounds would be a catastrophic mistake that sacrifices climate progress on the altar of ideological purity.
The climate hawks opposing BAAJA worry about what they call its 'historic environmental protection rollbacks.' Jeremy Symons, president of the Center for Energy and Environmental Analysis, told me the bill is 'not the permitting deal that we were promised.' These concerns deserve respect. Yet they miss the fundamental arithmetic of decarbonization. To reach a carbon-free electric grid by 2035, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the U.S. will need to generate roughly 2,000 gigawatts of wind and solar energy — compared to the roughly 396 gigawatts we generate today. Princeton's 2021 Net Zero America estimate found we'll need wind and solar developments spanning nearly 600,000 square kilometers of land, roughly the size of California and Washington state combined. We will also need to build between 1,400 and 10,000 miles of high-capacity transmission lines annually; in 2024, America built just 888 miles.
This infrastructure explosion cannot happen under our current permitting regime. The National Environmental Policy Act, while well-intentioned, has been weaponized into a tool of obstruction. Environmental impact statements have ballooned from roughly 10 pages in the early 1970s to 661 pages on average by the 2010s. As of 2024, the median federal EIS takes more than two years to complete. A Stanford study examining 355 major infrastructure projects found that 28 percent facing an EIS ended up in litigation before construction — and the median NEPA lawsuit takes 19 months to resolve.
Jane Flegal, a senior fellow at the center-left Searchlight Institute, has it right: 'A system that makes it easier for everyone to build should advantage the nonincumbent.' Fossil fuels are the incumbent technology. Streamlined permitting will unlock solar and wind deployment far more quickly than it will lock in new gas plants. Yes, BAAJA will make pipelines easier to build — but it will make everything easier to build, including the renewable infrastructure America desperately needs.
The climate movement faces a choice: perfect opposition or practical progress. BAAJA may contain flaws worth fixing before passage, but its fundamental architecture serves decarbonization. Democrats should push for this bill's imminent passage. Making energy more affordable for voters while simultaneously accelerating the infrastructure buildout that climate science demands is not a compromise — it is the path forward.