If the world were really suffering a climate emergency, President Joe Biden would not have traveled thousands of miles to beg the Saudis to produce more oil just to drive down gas prices ahead of an election he fears his party is going to lose.
If Biden really thought there were a climate emergency, he would not be talking about bringing down the price of gas at all. Instead, he would be trying to make it higher on purpose to discourage people from driving so much.
If Democrats really believed in a climate emergency, they would not have hauled the nation’s oil and gas company executives in front of a House committee earlier this year to harangue them for not producing and making available for sale enough of their carbon-spewing product. If there were actually a climate emergency, Democrats would call for making use of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to wean the world off gas and diesel forever.
In short, the Democrats’ climate policy is an incoherent mess, the product of a clash between fanaticism, vulgar profiteering from green enterprises, and incessant political panic.
A Biden emergency declaration on climate would also be the height of hypocrisy since he would be drawing on the exact same legal authority, the National Emergencies Act of 1976, that then-President Donald Trump used to commandeer federal funds for his border wall. At the time, Democrats called Trump’s declaration “a reckless disregard for the separation of powers and [Trump’s] own responsibilities under our constitutional system.”
Democrats were right about Trump’s emergency declaration in 2019, and they would be right to apply that same language to any Biden emergency declaration on climate today, though we doubt they have the integrity to do so.
The NEA granted far too much authority to the executive branch with too little oversight. While a federal court did eventually block Trump’s emergency declaration, Congress should have been empowered to do so sooner. Under current law, both chambers of Congress must pass a joint resolution terminating a president’s emergency declaration. Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) Article One Act would flip that requirement, automatically terminating any presidential emergency declaration after 30 days unless both chambers of Congress passed a joint resolution affirming its continuation.
The actions Biden is reportedly considering under an emergency declaration would do nothing to stop climate change. U.S. emissions are already falling, while emissions from China, India, and Africa are steadily rising. Ending oil and gas drilling on public lands, halting oil exports, and forcing private businesses to buy electric cars, however, would raise already high energy prices and kill hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Abusing the NEA to enact policies Congress rejected was wrong when Trump did it, and it would be wrong for Biden to do it. Hopefully, Biden will not become the same threat to the Constitution his predecessor was.
