Republican Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana is taking exception to climate envoy John Kerry’s claim that the White House can lean on executive orders to achieve the Biden administration’s aggressive new target of cutting U.S. greenhouse emissions in half by 2030.
“This is one of the most financially impactful decisions of any administration in recent history, and they are bragging we will do this unilaterally without Congress,” Graves told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “That is a dictatorship.”
BIDEN CAN FULFILL ‘A LOT’ OF CLIMATE PLEDGE THROUGH EXECUTIVE ORDERS, KERRY SAYS
Graves, the top Republican on the House Select Committee on Climate Crisis, recently introduced legislation with other GOP leaders that would force the Biden administration to report to Congress before it submitted to the United Nations a new U.S. target to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement. But the bill stands no chance of making it through the Democratic Congress.
President Joe Biden, marking a two-day climate summit of global leaders this week, announced and submitted to the U.N. a U.S. commitment to cut its economy-wide emissions 50% to 52% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.
The nonbinding pledge, one of the most aggressive in the world, would require fundamentally transforming America’s fossil fuel-based economy and could particularly challenge an oil and gas-producing state such as Louisiana.
Owing to that challenge, the administration is not yet providing a detailed road map for how it plans to reduce emissions from each economic sector to achieve its goal.
Graves called that decision “deceptive and dishonest.”
“It’s like somebody going out there and saying, ‘I am going to buy a house without any indication of whether I have a job, assets, or any income,’” Graves said. “That’s a pretty bold statement of faith you are asking us to operate on.”
Graves’s bill would force Biden to provide a plan to Congress for the U.S. to meet its new emissions target, including the types of new regulations or legislation it would take to achieve it.
“The main thrust of our bill is giving transparency to the American public about how will it hit the targets and allocate the pain to the energy economy,” Graves said.
Kerry’s comments notwithstanding, other Biden administration officials have acknowledged the need for help from Congress to reach the new climate target.
To make his goal achievable, Biden would almost certainly need Congress to pass, in some form, his $2.3 trillion infrastructure and climate spending proposal, which would extend and expand tax subsidies for clean energy technologies, provide rebates for consumers to buy electric vehicles, and mandate utilities use entirely carbon-free electricity by 2035.
But because the administration doesn’t know whether it can count on cooperation from Congress, it has claimed “multiple pathways” to reach its goal, including by using executive actions to impose stricter pollution controls over the auto and power sectors.
Graves and other House Republican leaders broadcast a climate forum of their own this week to counter Biden’s summit by promoting tax subsidies and government spending to boost development of clean energy technologies such as carbon capture and small nuclear reactors.
However, the Republican agenda does not include a specific mandate or target to cut emissions. Graves defended that decision by arguing the U.S. should extract a stronger commitment from China, the world’s largest emitter, before making its own target.
President Xi Jinping did not announce any new climate targets during his remarks at Biden’s summit and still expects China’s emissions to keep rising this decade.
Xi did, for the first time, say China would phase down its coal use later this decade, a step Graves welcomed.
China’s coal consumption will reach a new record this year, the International Energy Agency projected this week, and the country alone will drive more than 50% of global coal growth in 2021.
“Obviously, any progress is a step in the right direction,” Graves said. “I would like to see more. We have seen from China for decades now that they will make commitments and then refuse to allow for proper verification or fulfill them.”
Despite his concerns about the U.S. taking on a bigger burden than China, Graves said he “absolutely” could foresee a path to make “aggressive” reductions of the type targeted by Biden.
It’s hard to see how that would happen, though, without reductions in fossil fuel use, which Republican policies don’t strive for.
Graves noted the U.S. has led the world in emissions reductions since 2005, mostly because of natural gas and renewables replacing more expensive, and dirtier, coal in the electricity sector.
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But to meet Biden’s target, the pace of emissions cuts will need to increase substantially and reach into other sectors where emissions have increased or remained steady, such as transportation, heavy manufacturing, and buildings. U.S. emissions are expected to jump this year as the economy recovers after a record fall during the pandemic.
