Quest to retrieve 50-year-old UK space debris

Erin Clark
July 9, 2021

Prospero’s mission was to study the space environment

Edinburgh-based rocket company Skyrora is issuing a challenge to find a way to retrieve the Prospero satellite.

The object was the first and only UK spacecraft to be launched on a British rocket, from Australia in 1971.

It’s defunct now, obviously, but is still circling the globe on an elliptical orbit some 1,000km up.

Skyrora, who will soon start sending up rockets from Scotland, regards the satellite as an important piece of UK space heritage.

The company has already recovered part of the Black Arrow vehicle that placed Prospero in orbit.

This fell back to Australia in the course of the mission where it languished for decades in the Outback until the firm had it shipped home and put on display.

Now, Skyrora is looking for ideas as to how best to approach and grab hold of the 66kg satellite, whose original mission was to investigate the space environment.

Skyrora had the part of the launch rocket that fell back to Earth returned to the UK

It might not be possible to bring it all the way home through the atmosphere intact. This would be very difficult. For starters, it would need protection from the heat of re-entry, but, at the very least, just de-orbiting what is now a piece of junk would be a statement of Britain’s commitment to the sustainable use of space.

Orbits above the Earth are becoming cluttered with old hardware, which risks colliding with, and destroying, those operationally useful spacecraft that provide us with important services such as Earth observation, meteorology, and telecommunications.

“This is a challenge to ourselves, to the space industry in the UK,” said Alan Thompson, Skyrora’s head of government affairs.

“Ultimately, we’d love to recover Prospero and bring it all the way down, but we recognise that would be very difficult.

“The point here, though, is to accentuate industry principles of responsibility and sustainability,” he told BBC News.

The company held a reception on Wednesday evening to discuss ideas. This took place at the inaugural UK Space-Comm Expo, which is being staged this week at the Farnborough International Exhibition & Conference Centre in Hampshire.

Prospero and its launch rocket, Black Arrow, represented something of a false dawn for Britain’s space efforts. Even as the lipstick-shaped rocket climbed skyward, the government had already decided to cancel the technology development programme.

The UK remains the only country to have developed a successful launch capability and then abandon it.

Half a century on, an indigenous capacity is being revived in the form of Skyrora, Orbex and a handful of other start-ups who wish to launch from the UK proper – not this time from Australia.

Regulations are in the process of being signed off by government with the intention that operating licences will be open for application later this year.

Skyrora is determined to pursue its activities in as green a way as possible.

Black Arrow was known as the lipstick rocket – for obvious reasons


Although burning a carbon-based fuel, kerosene, in its rockets, this will be made from recycled plastic. It also wants the top section, or third stage, of its orbital vehicle to not only place satellites in orbit, but be capable of removing redundant spacecraft as well.

It’s been busy testing a “space tug” that would do just this kind of work.

“The challenge of removing space debris and either knocking it into the atmosphere so that it burns up, or bringing it back to Earth, is one of the most important and topical challenges in space,” commented Lord Willetts, the former UK space minister.

“It would be great if British enterprise and British entrepreneurship played a role in tackling this challenge.”

In order to retrieve Prospero, you’d first have to locate it. Although the satellite is no longer communicating with Earth (last contact was in 2004), its orbit is known, says Ralph Dinsley from space surveillance experts Northern Space & Security Ltd.

“It’s in an elliptical orbit around the Earth, coming as close as about 522km and going out as far as about 1,300km,” he said.

“Not only is Prospero up there, but part of the rocket body that put it there is up there as well.

“Finding Prospero is all about applying inspiration to what we need to do for the future. There’s a lot of discussion about active debris removal, a lot of discussion about the threat of the space junk apocalypse. Wouldn’t be great if the UK actually took responsibility for some of that junk?”

Prospero - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospero

Prospero is a fictional character and the protagonist of William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, whose usurping brother, Antonio, had put him (with his three-year-old daughter, Miranda) to sea on a "rotten carcass" of a boat to die, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda had survived and found exile on a small island. He has learned sorcery fr…

Scientists Have Created a New Bendy And Flexible Form of Ice

MICHELLE STARR

9 JULY 2021

Water ice isn't exactly known for its flexibility. In fact, it's quite the opposite: rigid and brittle, easily fracturing and snapping. It's why avalanches and sea ice fragmentation occur.

It's also why new research is so fascinating. Scientists have just grown microfibers of water ice that can bend in a loop – breaking the previous maximum strain by a significant percentage and opening up new opportunities for the exploration of ice physics.

Ice doesn't always behave the way we expect, and its elasticity – or rather, lack thereof – is a perfect example. Theoretically, it should have a maximum elastic strain of around 15 percent. In the real world, the maximum elastic strain ever measured was less than 0.3 percent. The reason for this discrepancy is that ice crystals have structural imperfections that drive up their brittleness.

So a team of researchers led by nanoscientist Peizhen Xu of Zhejiang University in China sought to create ice with as few structural imperfections as possible.

The experiment consisted of a tungsten needle in an ultracold chamber, sitting at around minus 50 degrees Celsius, much colder than has been previously attempted. Water vapor was released into the chamber, and an electric field was applied. This attracted water molecules to the tip of the needle, where they crystallized, forming a microfiber with a maximum width of around 10 micrometers,  smaller than the width of a human hair.

The next step was to lower the temperature to between minus 70 and minus150 degrees Celsius. Under these low temperatures, the researchers tried bending the ice fibers.

At minus 150 degrees Celsius, they found that a microfiber 4.4 micrometers across was able to bend into a nearly circular shape, with a radius of 20 micrometers. This suggests a maximum elastic strain of 10.9 percent – much closer to the theoretical limit than previous attempts.

Even better, when the researchers released the ice, it sprang back into its previous shape.

Although ice might look the same to us, its crystalline structure can vary quite a bit. Each configuration of molecules in an ice crystal is known as a phase, and there are quite a number of these phases. Transitions between phases can occur under a variety of conditions that have to do with pressure and temperature.

With their bendy ice, the team noted such a phase transition, from a form of ice known as ice Ih, the hexagonal crystal form of ordinary ice such as is found in nature, to the rhombohedral form ice II, which is formed by compressing ice Ih. This transition occurred during sharp bends of the ice microfiber at temperatures lower than minus 70 degrees Celsius and was also reversible.

This, the researchers noted, could offer a new way to study phase transitions in ice.

Finally, the team tried using their near-perfect ice as a waveguide for light, attaching an optical light to one end of the microfiber. Multiple wavelengths were transmitted as effectively as state-of-the-art on-chip waveguides such as silicon nitride and silica, suggesting that ice microfibers could be used as flexible waveguides for optical wavelengths at low temperatures.

"We could imagine the use of IMFs as low-temperature sensors to study, for example, molecular adsorption on ice, environmental changes, structural variation, and surface deformation of ice," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"In short, the elastic ice microfibers demonstrated here may offer an alternative platform for exploring ice physics and open previously unexplored opportunities for ice-related technology in various disciplines."

Very freaking cool.

The research has been published in Science.

BEWARE OF CULTURAL MARXISM

Blackburn: 'Taylor Swift would be the first victim' of socialism, Marxism

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said during an interview published this week that Taylor Swift, who came out against her ahead of the 2018 midterms, and other performers would be “the first victim” of a socialist or Marxist government.

“When I’m talking to my friends who are musicians and entertainers, I say, ‘If — if we have a socialistic government, if we have Marxism, you are going to be the first ones who will be caught off because the state would have to approve your music,’ ” Blackburn told Breitbart News.

“And, you know, Taylor Swift, came after me and my 2018 campaign, but Taylor Swift would be the first victim of that because when you look at Marxist, socialist societies, they do not allow women to dress, or sing, or be on stage, or to entertain,” she continued, adding that such governments “don't allow protection of private intellectual property rights.”

It was unclear to which societies the Tennessee Republican was referring.

“I know the left is all out now and trying to change country music and make it woke,” she added.

In 2018, Swift, a Tennessee native who noted at the time that she had "been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions," came out against Blackburn and other Republicans ahead of that year's elections.

“As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me,” Swift wrote on Instagram.

In her "Miss Americana" Netflix documentary in 2020, Swift was again critical of the senator's policies, calling her "Trump in a wig."

The Hill has reached out to Universal Music Group, which owns the record label Swift is currently signed with, Republic Records, for comment.

KOO KOO KAUKUS
Cawthorn: Biden door-to-door vaccine strategy could be used to 'take' guns, Bibles

BY CELINE CASTRONUOVO - 07/09/21

GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn (N.C.) on Friday argued against President Biden’s proposed "door-to-door" pro-COVID-19 vaccine campaign, claiming the same methods could be used to “take” people's guns and Bibles.

Cawthorn made the assertion in a Friday interview with conservative news outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas.

“Now, they’re starting to talk about going door to door to be able to take vaccines to the people,” he said, referencing remarks Biden gave from the White House this week.

“Think about the mechanisms they would have to build to be able to actually execute that massive of a thing,” Cawthorn continued. “And then think about what those mechanisms could be used for. They could then go door to door and take your guns. They could go door to door and take your Bibles.”

Biden on Tuesday called on local communities to ramp up the pace of coronavirus vaccinations, explaining, “We need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood and oftentimes door to door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus.”

While White House press secretary Jen Psaki clarified this week that they were encouraging volunteers at the local level, rather than federal employees, to go door to door promoting vaccines, Republican leaders in several states have pushed back on the suggestion.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) wrote in a letter to the state’s Board of Health and Environmental Control on Friday requesting that it “issue direction to agency leadership and to state and local healthcare organizations prohibiting the use of the Biden Administration’s 'targeted' 'door to door' tactics in the State’s ongoing vaccination efforts.”

The governor argued in the letter that “enticing, coercing, intimidating, mandating, or pressuring” citizens to get vaccinated would undermine trust in the government.

Jeffrey Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, on Thursday condemned misinformation on the administration’s vaccine distribution effort, calling it a "disservice to the country and to the doctors, the faith leaders, community leaders and others who are working to get people vaccinated, save lives and help end this pandemic."

Freedom Caucus chair attacks Biden actions on vaccines
BY JUSTINE COLEMAN - 07/09/21 03:39 PM EDT 1,065

Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) is attacking President Biden’s plans to conduct door-to-door outreach to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations, calling the effort “deeply disturbing.”

Biggs and 31 other GOP House members confronted the administration on what he called a serious privacy violation in a letter sent to the president on Friday.

“There is no scenario where the federal government should be actively entering communities and traveling door-to-door to pressure Americans to receive a vaccine,” the letter reads.


The lawmakers asked officials to respond by July 23 to questions on whether the outreach is constitutional and if the government has created a database or has access to other databases to track those who have or haven’t received the shots.

Biden officials have repeatedly said the federal government does not intend to track vaccination status or institute vaccine passports.

Criticism on the administration’s plans for door-to-door campaign supporting vaccinations has ramped up since Biden mentioned the effort earlier this week as a way to boost lagging vaccination rates, along with general community-level outreach.

In a separate statement, Biggs requested that the administration put more focus on dealing with the border crisis, inflation and “the crime wave” in cities “instead of meddling in private medical decisions.”

“The door-to-door spying on Americans is one more example of the burgeoning surveillance state by the national government,” he said.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, both Republicans, have also condemned the door-to-door vaccination push, with Parson saying he doesn’t want the government to “compel” vaccinations.

Lisa Cox, a spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, told The Kansas City Star that the state has not conducted door-to-door vaccine promotion “but that’s not to say it hasn’t been utilized at the local level.”

“As with many issues through the pandemic, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that will work for every single community,” Cox said.

McMaster also joined in the disapproval, requesting Friday that health officials ban “targeted" door-to-door campaigns.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki countered McMaster’s remarks during a Friday press briefing, saying that the campaign has involved grassroots volunteers and clergy going door-to-door, not federal employees, since April.

“The failure to provide accurate public health information including the efficacy of vaccines and the accessibility of them to people across the country including in South Carolina is literally killing people, so maybe they should consider that,” Psaki said.

Coronavirus task force member Jeff Zients also accused critics of the door-to-door plan of “feeding misinformation and trying to mischaracterize this type of ‘trusted messenger work.”

Earlier this year, Missouri agreed to a $55 million grant from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to increase vaccination rates, which included funding for door-to-door outreach as well as teaming up with community leaders, according to The Star.

Let's fully fund international family planning on World Population Day

BY MARIAN STARKEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 07/11/21

Today is World Population Day — a day first observed in 1989, when there were slightly more than 5 billion people on earth.

There are now 7.8 billion of us, on a planet that many already deemed overpopulated half a century ago when we were at a mere 3.5 billion. Our rate of growth is slowing, but the world is still growing by over 80 million people a year. A number that large can be hard to truly conceptualize, so think about it like this: We are adding the equivalent of another New York City every 38 days. A new Los Angeles every 18 days. This massive growth isn’t concentrated within one urban beltway, but it’s not spread out evenly across the globe either — more than a third of population growth in the last year occurred in sub-Saharan Africa alone. And nearly all (99 percent) of the population growth between 2020 and 2021 happened in less developed countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America where infrastructure, institutions and local environments are already often strained.

So, at the same time that some people in high-income countries are warning of a looming worker shortage and an impending population collapse (U.S. birth rates are continuing to fall to record lows each year, with the trend being most pronounced among teens and women in their early 20s), many low- and middle-income countries are trying to figure out how they can improve life for their current populations and for the people who will be born in the coming years and decades. All of these people will need food, fresh water, housing, health care, education and employment. They’ll also need local environments that provide them with clean air to breathe, safe water to drink, lumber to build with and burn as fuel, and healthy soil for growing crops and vegetation for grazing livestock. And they’ll need the ability to adapt to a changing climate. All of these needs are more challenging to meet in the context of rapid population growth.

There are an estimated 218 million women in developing regions who want to prevent pregnancy but have an unmet need for contraception. The global pandemic has almost certainly made this worse. The UN estimates that COVID-19 has interrupted access to family planning for 20 million people in the Americas alone.

The world’s failure to address this unmet need has enormous costs to women, to families, to communities, and to the entire world. This failure makes it harder to reduce maternal and child mortality. It makes it harder to reduce poverty and increase educational and economic opportunities. It makes it harder to ensure that everyone everywhere has the food they need to thrive. It makes it harder to get clean water and sanitation services to all. It makes future pandemics of zoonotic viruses more likely. And it makes it harder to mitigate the damage we’re doing to our climate and to adapt to the new world we live in.

It is long past time for the United States to step up and lead the world in making universal access to family planning and comprehensive reproductive health care a global priority. All it takes is political will and, frankly, a modest investment in these programs around the world.

Five years after the first World Population Day, the nations of the world met in Cairo, Egypt, to pledge real action to address the challenges posed by rapid population growth. Wealthy countries and less developed ones alike promised to make the needed investments in family planning programs, girls’ education and maternal health. The United States didn’t only join in, we led the way. Yet, in the years following that historic meeting, we have failed to follow through sufficiently, although President Biden is making positive efforts.

The United States enjoys its position as the world leader. Let’s encourage our elected representatives in government to be leaders in the investment in international family planning. Make no mistake: Family planning is an investment. Every dollar spent on international family planning saves three dollars in pregnancy-related and newborn care. Let’s show other donor countries that we can prioritize reproductive health and population stabilization by delivering on the promises we made in Cairo. Doing so will improve security, stability and survival, especially among the world’s most marginalized populations. On this World Population Day, let’s commit to making life better for the 218 million women with an unmet need for family planning, for their children, and for their communities and countries. Let’s fully fund international family planning.

Marian Starkey is the vice president for communications at Population Connection, a non-profit organization that raises awareness of population challenges and improving global access to family planning and reproductive health care.

Sanders on Richardson Olympic suspension: 'Speaks to the problems' of the 'war on drugs'

BY JORDAN WILLIAMS - 07/10/21 


Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) weighed in Sha’Carri Richardson’s Olympic suspension, saying that it “speaks to the problems” associated with the “war on drugs.”

Richardson accepted a one-month suspension that began June 28 after testing positive for THC, the chemical found in marijuana, following the Olympic qualifiers in Eugene, Ore., on June 19.

Richardson was left off the Olympic team, with USA Track and Field saying Tuesday that it would be “detrimental to the integrity of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials” to amend its policies weeks away from competition.

Sanders criticized the suspension in an interview with columnist Maureen Dowd published in The New York Times.

“I think it speaks to the problems of the so-called war on drugs,” he told Dowd. “So I have a problem with that.”

Richardson’s suspension has received widespread criticism, with some arguing that the anti-marijuana policy is reflective of harmful drug policies that impact people of color, specifically in the United States.

Marijuana has been legalized or decriminalized in several states, including Oregon, where Richardson used the drug.


Reps. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), had similar criticisms about the decision to suspend Richardson and asked the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to reconsider.

“We are also concerned that the continued prohibition of marijuana while your organizations allow recreational use of alcohol and other drugs reflects anti-drug laws and policies that have historically targeted Black and Brown communities while largely condoning drug use in white communities,” the lawmakers said.

“Anti-marijuana laws have a particularly ugly history of systemic racism,” they added.

US, Russia cooperation extends access to key Syrian humanitarian crossing

BY LAURA KELLY - 07/09/21 

© Getty Images

The U.S. on Friday welcomed the unanimous decision by the members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to keep open a key humanitarian border crossing for Syria, in a vote that was viewed as a possible veto risk for Russia.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the decision to extend the U.N. mandate for the Bab al-Hawa crossing between Turkey and Syria “will literally save lives.”

“Thanks to this resolution, millions of Syrians can breathe a sigh of relief tonight, knowing that vital humanitarian aid will continue to flow into Idlib through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing after tomorrow,” she said in remarks to the Security Council.


“And parents can sleep tonight knowing that for the next 12 months their children will be fed. The humanitarian agreement we’ve reached here will literally save lives. So, today’s vote is an important moment.”

The move marks a rare area of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia amid a host of fraught tensions, the latest point of conflict between Washington and Moscow related to ongoing criminal ransomware attacks targeting the U.S. and originating from Russia.

President Biden spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier on Friday, raising the risk of a response against Moscow over the attacks, including recently against the software company Kaseya.

But the two leaders “commended” their joint work to extend the border crossing’s mandate, according to a readout of the call released by the White House, building upon direct consultations between the two leaders during their summit in Geneva in June.

Samantha Power, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), thanked Biden for “prioritizing” diplomacy with Putin in the interest of humanitarian assistance.

“#UNSC unanimously renews cross-border humanitarian assistance in #Syria for another year. This means that each month, food & other assistance from @USAID and [the State Department] can keep reaching millions of Syrians,” Power tweeted.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, welcomed the extension of the border crossing's mandate but raised the risk of Russia and China trying to obstruct future humanitarian efforts.

"The UNSC must find a durable solution to protect cross-border aid on which millions of Syrians depend," Risch tweeted.

An estimated 1,000 trucks a month deliver necessary humanitarian aid to roughly 1.4 million Syrians through the Bab al-Hawa crossing, which runs between Turkey and Syria. The mandate to continue running the crossing was expected to end July 10, but will now extend for another 12 months.

It is the last international border crossing and is administered by the United Nations, following the closure of two other crossings in Security Council votes, where Russia and China used their veto power last year to reject their reauthorization.

The Assad regime controls the majority of Syria amid 11 years of devastating civil war, and an estimated 13.4 million people across Syria are in need of humanitarian and protection assistance, according to the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.

Russia had earlier spoken out against the necessity of Bab al-Hawa, instead arguing in favor of delivering humanitarian assistance through Damascus and under the control of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Supporters of the Bab al-Hawa crossing worried that Assad would hold hostage humanitarian assistance for the country's northwest in an effort to root out rebels who maintain control over pockets of territory.

The U.S. and other permanent members of the Security Council, such as the United Kingdom, rejected concentrating humanitarian assistance in Damascus and emphasized keeping open Bab al-Hawa.

Thomas-Greenfield traveled to the border crossing in June, imploring for its mandate to be renewed.

LGBT rights push falls short in Michigan

BY SARAH POLUS - 07/09/21 

© Getty Images

The Michigan elections bureau on Friday announced that a ballot drive effort to protect LGBT people from discrimination has failed.

The Associated Press reported that Fair and Equal Michigan failed to collect enough valid signatures to force action on a bill aimed to prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations.

Advocates collected nearly 299,000 signatures, falling short of the roughly 340,000 needed.

Some signatures were ruled ineligible after the elections bureau found them to be linked to people who weren't registered voters. The bureau also detected other issues, including ones associated with addresses or dates, according to the AP.

"The Bureau of Elections threw out thousands of signatures that are valid and we will fight for every valid signature so no voters are disenfranchised," Josh Hovey, a spokesman for Fair and Equal Michigan, told the news outlet.

The Board of State Canvassers is scheduled to meet Tuesday to consider a recommendation against certifying the ballot initiative.

If the initiative were certified, it would be put before state lawmakers. Similar pro-LGBT measures have been long stalled in the Republican-led legislature, the AP reported.

If passed, the measure would be Michigan's first LGBT rights law, Fair and Equal Michigan said.

Leaving climate provisions out of infrastructure package is bad policy — and bad politics

BY MARCELA MULHOLLAND AND DANIELLE DEISEROTH, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS — 07/09/21 

© Getty Images


The bipartisan infrastructure package that the White House endorsed last week looked markedly different from the ambitious climate agenda President Biden touted on the campaign trail. Key provisions that progressives lauded Biden for including in his campaign platform and the American Jobs Plan, including investments to spur clean energy development, create a Civilian Climate Corps, and address systemic environmental injustices, were all noticeably absent from the deal that emerged from weeks of bipartisan negotiations behind closed doors. If the White House fails to include these critical investments in a reconciliation package, this would not only be bad policy, but also bad politics.

We work at Data for Progress, a progressive polling firm and think-tank, where we run polling and message testing on the top political and policy questions of the day. Our latest polling with Climate Power finds that the climate provisions in the American Jobs Plan (AJP) actually make the American Jobs Plan more popular — even among independents and Republicans.

We asked voters several questions about the American Jobs Plan, first framing the package as “President Biden's proposal to invest in America's workforce and infrastructure” and then asking voters whether or not they supported the bill. Initially, without any additional information, voters supported the American Jobs Plan by a 23-percentage-point margin (57 percent support, 34 percent oppose). Next, we again asked voters again whether they supported or opposed the American Jobs Plan, but this time included descriptions of the key climate and clean energy components of the bill, including replacing all lead pipes, investing in American energy innovation, and building new renewable energy projects. When provided with these details, support among all voters increased to a 35-point margin (65 percent support, 30 percent oppose). Notably, there were significant increases in support among Independents and Republicans.


Lastly, we asked voters about the ongoing bipartisan negotiations that lawmakers in Congress are having about the infrastructure package. We found that two-thirds of voters (66 percent) agree that it is “Very” or “Somewhat” important to keep investments that will create clean energy jobs in the final version of the American Jobs Plan that passes in Congress.

These findings make it abundantly clear that voters support an infrastructure package that includes ambitious investments to tackle the climate crisis rather than one that does not include investments that meet the moment. This is likely because bipartisan majorities of voters believe that the climate provisions in the American Jobs Plan will positively impact their communities.

Democrats would be wise to heed these findings and adapt their public messaging accordingly. While Democrats are pursuing the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure deal, they should make their votes contingent on passing an ambitious reconciliation package that includes the popular climate provisions that were stripped from the bipartisan deal. Some elected officials are already leading the way by pledging to vote no on an infrastructure package that doesn't include climate as part of the “No Climate, No Deal” campaign led by Evergreen Action and the Sunrise Movement.

These elected officials and groups understand that the climate crisis is the most pressing infrastructure challenge our nation faces. As such, an infrastructure package that doesn’t center climate, isn’t much of an infrastructure package at all. But even if you ignore this (which you shouldn’t) and look strictly at the politics and polling, it’s clear that passing a climate-focused infrastructure package is the only electorally viable path forward for Democrats. Democrats are heading into 2022 with history stacked against them — over the last decade the party in power has only come out on top in the midterms two times — so they should be firing on all cylinders to make the case to voters that Democrats deliver results that will positively and directly impact voters’ lives.

Rather than shying away from a fight, Democrats should confidently lean into the climate components of an infrastructure package. These components are popular and voters believe they will positively impact their communities — exactly what Democrats should be doing to ensure continued electoral success. If Democrats want to stand a chance in 2022 and beyond, they must stop accepting the demands of Republican leaders gathered behind closed doors and instead listen to the millions of voters across America who elected President Biden and support an ambitious, climate-focused infrastructure package. This is our chance to deliver a once-in-a-lifetime investment in our economy and communities. The political risk Democrats face is not in going too big on climate — it’s in going too small. Voters agree.

Marcela Mulholland is the Political Director at Data for Progress. Danielle Deiseroth is a Senior Climate Analyst at Data for Progress.