climate footprint that the president of the United States has the most responsibility and control over.” climate footprint and it’s the piece of the U.S. climate footprint comes from carbon emissions, from oil, gas, and coal extracted from federal lands and federal waters. “ There is no there is no way that the United States can meet its climate obligations and goals with this kind of business-as-usual fossil-fuel development,” says Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice. A few weeks after that, it announced plans to auction off 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for drilling.
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Two days after the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report in August describing the climate crisis as “a code red for humanity,” language Biden parroted this week in California, his administration called on OPEC to ramp up its oil production. In July, the Associated Press reported that the Interior Department had issued 2,100 new oil and gas permits since Biden took office, setting a pace that would exceed even Trump. This spring alone, the administration defended Trump-approved oil-and-gas lease grants in Wyoming and a Trump-approved drilling project in Alaska, while passing up an opportunity to block the Dakota Access Pipeline. What’s more concerning to advocates is what the Biden administration has done to perpetuate America’s reliance on fossil fuels. “He came out really strong with his executive orders back in January, but it seems like he lost a lot of that momentum, especially when working with this bipartisan group of senators on the infrastructure package,” says Ellen Sciales, a spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement.Ĭongress was always going to be the biggest obstacle to the kind of transformational change needed to combat the climate crisis. Rolling Stone ‘s Andy Kroll reported recently that Biden is finally coming around to the idea of pushing those centrists for filibuster reform, but the delays have frustrated activists. He’s now pushing a new partisan plan that includes key climate provisions, but those could also be pared back in order to secure the votes needed from all 50 Senate Democrats, including the centrists. The bipartisan infrastructure bill was stripped of many of the clean energy initiatives included in the initial package, after Biden deferred to conservatives and centrist Democrats like Manchin rather than pushing for filibuster reform. This sense of urgency has since been belied by many of the administration’s actions. “Folks, we’re in a crisis,” he said at the time. He laid out an ambitious “whole of government” approach to combating the crisis that would be facilitated by an all-star climate team he announced before he took office. He directed the Department of the Interior to pause new oil and gas leases on public land. The day he was inaugurated, he signed executive orders setting ambitious energy goals, rejoined the Paris Agreement, and canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. He campaigned on a $2 trillion jobs-centric climate package. “He can use his powers to stop supercharging the climate crisis with drilling, fracking, and disastrous projects like Line 3, or he can just keep repeating talking points, approving fossil fuel development, and listening to Joe Manchin, which makes him nothing more than a disaster tourist.”īiden’s reticence to say no to fossil fuels is especially disappointing given his early focus on combating the climate crisis. “We’re simply out of time,” says Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity.