President Joe Biden ran on a promise to tackle the global climate crisis.
Instead, its legislative ambitions have been squashed by Congress, the Supreme Court has dealt a hammer blow to the federal government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases, and the Ukraine crisis has been a boon to fossil fuels.
As the Democrat is poised to announce a raft of new executive measures, including additional funding to protect communities from extreme heat and boost wind generation, here’s a rundown of his tenure to date.
– What’s at stake –
Shortly after taking office, Biden announced that he was targeting a 50-52 percent reduction in aggregate net greenhouse gas pollution from the US economy by 2030 from 2005 levels, before reaching net zero in 2050, as part of the Paris Agreement goals.
“Biden has said he thinks climate change is the existential problem of our time,” and has been more emphatic than any of his predecessors, including Barack Obama, Progressive Policy Institute’s Paul Bledsoe told AFP.
The President has identified the issue as key to the United States’ economic and national security, as well as public safety — and now more than ever, climate scientists are sounding the alarm.
“I think more and more people are realizing that we’re going through something that could ultimately lead to us losing everything about livability and everything we value in life,” climate scientist Peter Kalmus told AFP.
Europe’s punishing heatwave serves as a timely reminder that warming will not be a problem unique to the Global South, but instead threatens civilization as we know it, he added.
– Congress, Supreme Court and Ukraine –
The key legislative pillar of Biden’s agenda should have been the Build Back Better Act, which would have injected $550 billion into the clean energy and climate companies – much of it from tax credits and incentives.
That effort now lies in shambles after Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, a fossil-fuel advocate who wields outsize power in the evenly divided Senate, resigned last week from the bill he had promised to support.
In late June, the super-majority Conservative Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Environmental Protection Agency could not impose sweeping greenhouse gas limits, such as greenhouse gas emissions, without congressional approval. B. Cap-and-Trade programs.
“So we’re on two strikes,” said Bledsoe, who served as climate advisor to former President Bill Clinton.
Additionally, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the oil industry has been pushing for more drilling, portraying the problem as energy security.
A recent analysis by the Institute for Energy Research says that Biden’s administration accelerated the pace of drilling permits on public lands beginning in March “to ease political pressures that are mounting with pump prices.”
Biden had vowed to end new drilling on public lands, but his “pause” was overturned in 2021 by a Trump-appointed judge.
On the other hand, there have been some partial gains: the government has enacted stricter emissions standards for vehicles and tougher regulations on emissions of highly polluting methane, Bledsoe said.
The bipartisan infrastructure law, passed last November, also included some climate provisions, including $7.5 billion for a nationwide network of electric vehicle chargers and investments in carbon capture and hydrogen technologies.
– What’s next? –
But without the big ticket items, the United States falls far short of its goals.
The Rhodium Group, an independent research firm, notes that “As of June 2022, the US is on track to reduce emissions by 24 to 35 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, barring additional policy action.”
The White House hasn’t ruled out declaring a “climate emergency,” which would give Biden additional political powers, but in the face of a hostile judiciary, that would likely be legally challenged.
Bledsoe said that to achieve real change, Biden should instead push for broad public support.
“Democrats should make popular clean energy tax breaks for consumers a key voting issue to win seats in Congress and pass the bill in January 2023.”
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