I guarantee you the progressive Democratic politicians have climate change as a high priority—and "Democrats more broadly", depending on how you define it, don't have anything remotely resembling a coherent agenda.

The progressives don't get to make laws all on their own.

Even a single lost Democratic vote on a bill means it doesn't make it past the Senate, and Senators Manchin and Sinema have both made it abundantly clear that they have no interest in fighting back against the Republican obstructionism to advance a positive agenda for the country. I'm frankly surprised that anything got passed at all, given their resistance in the past few months.

I'm not sure I agree entirely with your characterization, but the salient bit that we seem to agree on is that Democrats profess a belief in the existential threat of climate change and still aren't organized to combat it. That seems like a bigger problem than Republican obstructionism (what is there to obstruct if Dems don't even have a coherent, remotely realistic plan)?

While progressives are aligned on the Green New Deal, that's little more than a slogan (no draft legislation or anything). To the extent that it's fleshed out (e.g., AOC's Green New Deal resolution), it seems to mean "decarbonize energy sector by 2030 + fix racial injustice + implement European social democracy + universal healthcare + affordable housing + stronger union protections + etc". Basically the "Green New Deal" isn't a plan to fix the climate, it's a progressive trojan horse. This doesn't seem like real concern about climate change to me.

To be clear, the point isn't "progressives are the worst", it's that no faction or party is doing a great job here, but we're too preoccupied with figuring out who is the worst to actually move forward.

EDIT: Added the last two paragraphs, apologies for any confusion caused.

From my perspective, the bigger problem by far is that everyone to the right of our skewed American political center (this includes some Democrats, particularly those I named) do not believe that it is critical to take any action at all on climate change. The more people agree "yes, we need to solve problem X", the more likely it is that we (collectively) can get something passed to start moving toward change, even if we don't entirely agree on the severity of the problem or the precise methods needed to combat it.

Or, to put it another way: If the Republicans weren't being obstructionist, the Democrats wouldn't need a strategy to overcome them. They'd be able to put their energy toward coming up with actual policy solutions.

Finally, it is my understanding (though I don't have the link handy right now) that the Biden campaign put out a fairly clear set of legislative goals to push for in order to combat climate change. So while it's certainly true that "Democrats", broadly, don't all agree on what to do, a) that's essentially a tautology (not just of Democrats, though they tend to be less likely to fall in line with a centralized message and agenda than Republicans), and b) that's not at all the same thing as saying "Congressional Democrats and the White House have advanced no clear legislative goals toward combating climate change."

> From my perspective, the bigger problem by far is that everyone to the right of our skewed American political center (this includes some Democrats, particularly those I named) do not believe that it is critical to take any action at all on climate change.

I would rather have the 50% who believe climate change is an existential threat behave accordingly rather than have 80% pay empty lip service and rally around token legislation or trojan horses (reconciliation bill, green new deal, etc).

> Or, to put it another way: If the Republicans weren't being obstructionist, the Democrats wouldn't need a strategy to overcome them. They'd be able to put their energy toward coming up with actual policy solutions.

Republican obstructionism is a real thing, but the idea that Republicans are obstructing Democrats from crafting a reasonable agenda is patently absurd, especially when carbon pricing has been the obvious solution for more than a decade, and it even enjoys some Republican support. But Democrats can't be bothered to make it part of their own agenda because of Republican obstructionism? Come on.

> Biden put out a fairly clear set of legislative goals to push for in order to combat climate change

What are these goals? Are they serious? Or are they some variation on the budget reconciliation bill (i.e., largely symbolic gestures that are bundled haphazardly into a bunch of other spending)?