Joe Biden is reportedly presiding over the quiet weakening of his two most significant plans to slash planet-heating emissions, suggesting that tackling the climate crisis will take a back seat in a febrile election year.
During his state of the union speech on Thursday, Biden insisted that his administration is “making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it,”, before reeling off a list of climate-friendly policies and accomplishments.
“I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world,” Biden, who is touted as the US’s first climate president said.
However, last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it would delay a regulation that would reduce emissions from existing gas power plants, most likely until after November’s presidential election. The delay comes as the administration waters down requirements that limit pollution from cars, slowing the country’s adoption of electric vehicles.
The backtracking could jeopardize Biden’s goal of cutting US emissions in half this decade, which scientists say is imperative to averting disastrous effects from global heating, and shows the competing pressures upon a president looking to hold together a wobbly coalition including climate activists, labor unions and centrist swing state voters before a likely showdown with Donald Trump later this year.
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Biden is said to be faced by a cohort of younger, progressive voters who have denounced him for the ongoing leasing of oil and gas drilling on public lands, as well as a large slice of the electorate who have barely heard of Biden’s landmark climate bill and are more worried about inflation and the costs of a green transition. The EPA still has to complete a slew of climate-related rules in time to avoid them being easily overturned by an unfriendly Congress or supreme court, adding to the pressure.
“They are really walking a tightrope,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former climate adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House, now an environmental policy expert at American University. “Biden has to retain the full-throated support of younger voters but he also has to speak to moderates in swing states who are focused on consumer issues. It’s a real balance.”
The realpolitik of this calculus means that the US has decelerated on climate action, amid record-breaking global temperatures will soon breach internationally agreed-upon thresholds and a looming election with Trump, who has vowed to dismantle all of Biden’s climate policies.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
