President Joe Biden promised the most ambitious green agenda ever, ending fossil fuels, pushing renewables, and forcing business to toe the line. As Earth Day 2022 arrives, the Washington Examiner offers alternative coverage in light of record energy prices and widespread criticism of the administration’s incoherent policy approach.
President Joe Biden campaigned and won on an aggressive climate agenda, winning support from the most committed liberal environmentalists.
On Earth Day in his second year in office, though, Biden is at risk of disappointing the green movement.
He’s pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half from 2005 levels by 2030 and to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and he’s laid out legislative and regulatory plans to reach those goals, entailing massive spending on clean energy and penalties for fossil fuels.
But he’s also struggled to follow through on legislation and has sided against environmentalist groups in pipeline disputes. And, most notably, he’s recently sought to boost oil and gas production in response to soaring prices.
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A year into his tenure, environmentalists fear disappointment.
Unrest over efforts to boost production
Facing energy costs soaring by a third over the past year and harsh public disapproval of his handling of inflation, Biden has been forced to promote domestic production of gas and oil.
While green groups acknowledge Biden has little control over the crisis in Europe that has driven up oil prices, some argue that doesn’t give him a pass to abandon his promise.
“Climate action was a pillar of President Biden’s campaign, and his promises on this existential issue were a major reason the public elected him,″ said Kyle Tisdel, the climate and energy program director at the Western Environmental Law Center. ”Achieving results on climate is not a matter of domestic politics — it’s life and death.”
Adding to the injury is the administration’s announcement last week that it will resume lease sales for oil and gas on federal land, which sparked immediate criticism from some green groups. The administration resumed the sales only because it was ordered to by a federal court and dramatically scaled back the scope of the sales as well as raised prices. But outside green groups said it could have done more to reduce fracking on federal lands, which Biden had promised as a candidate to end.
Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen said that while the group appreciates the Interior Department’s decision to reduce the acreage and its royalty reforms, the decision to make more federal lands available “is impossible to reconcile with the administration’s commitments to climate action.”
“The best available science already shows that we cannot continue leasing on our public lands and meet President Biden’s stated climate goals,” Dillen added.
“The Biden administration’s claim that it must hold these lease sales is pure fiction and a reckless failure of climate leadership,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s as if they’re ignoring the horror of firestorms, floods, and megadroughts and accepting climate catastrophes as business as usual.”
Dissatisfaction over pipelines
Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline early in his tenure, a high-profile move that pleased environmentalists and angered the oil industry and labor groups.
Since then, though, he has declined to stop fossil fuel infrastructure in several instances, frustrating his green allies.
Most notably, last spring he declined to shut down the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which carries oil from North Dakota to Illinois, while it completes an environmental review.
“It’s a shame to see the Biden administration throw away such a clear opportunity to stand up for indigenous rights and environmental justice,” Collin Rees, a senior campaigner with Oil Change U.S., told the Washington Examiner at the time. “Allowing DAPL’s continued operation maintains the Trump status quo.”
Impatience with legislation
The centerpiece of Biden’s green agenda was “Build Back Better,” the multitrillion-dollar reconciliation spending bill that was tanked last year by centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
That legislation contained some $555 billion in credits and incentives to boost clean energy and, in earlier versions, would have imposed a methane fee on oil and gas producers and implemented a clean electricity payment program that would have penalized carbon emissions from power plants.
But prospects for the bill now look slim. Manchin has indicated that he could support a smaller bill focused on the clean energy provisions, but the administration has struggled to build momentum for legislation along those lines.
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Environmental groups plan to mass in 40 separate cities on Saturday, including in front of the White House, to press Democrats and Biden to revive the climate and social spending legislation. Many have stressed that with midterm elections quickly approaching, the window for Democrats is closing.
“Without serious intervention — in the form of the reconciliation bill’s climate investments paired with ambitious executive action — Democrats will all but guarantee a dramatically warmer world, and escalating climate disaster for generations to come,” environmentalist group Evergreen Action said in a memo to Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer this week.
