President Biden will move to a closed coal-fired power plant on Wednesday, which is now part of an offshore wind farm in Massachusetts.
The White House confirms to Biden that Mr. Biden will not declare a national climate emergency. This would have allowed him to shut down new federal oil drilling and strengthen wind, solar and other clean energy projects.
The president is under great pressure to take decisive action. His administration has spent the past year and a half trying to pass a strong climate change bill, but last week it received support from Senator Joe Manchin, a Democratic vote in an evenly divided Senate. I saw the bill collapse because it wasn’t there.
The setback followed a June Supreme Court ruling that severely restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
On Wednesday, officials will visit the former Brayton Point power plant in Somerset, Massachusetts. The power plant was the last coal-fired power plant in the state by the time it was closed in 2017. The plant is transforming into an offshore wind farm that manufactures submarine transmission cables. These lines bring the electricity generated by wind turbines currently under construction in the Atlantic Ocean to the New England power grid.
“A climate emergency will not happen tomorrow, but we still have it on the table.” White House spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “Everything is on the table. No decision will be made this week.”
Biden’s move is due to more than 100 million Americans receiving heat recommendations or warnings on Tuesday, from Texas to most of Kentucky. In some states and cities, temperatures were expected to reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit and about 43 degrees Celsius. In some areas of the East Coast, including Boston, heat recommendations and emergencies were also implemented or planned.
In Europe, heat smashed temperature records across the continent, urging British authorities to declare the first ever “red” warning of extreme heat in Britain. The heat caused wildfires in Spain, France, Portugal and Greece. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pleaded with countries on Monday to act in the face of what he called a global “climate emergency.”
Democratic lawmakers have called on Mr. Biden to act swiftly to reduce the pollution caused by the United States, which has historically added more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than any other country. ..
Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat in Oregon, said: But he said, “this frees the president from waiting for parliamentary action.”
Biden said he was enthusiastic about making an aggressive announcement, worried by some Democrats’ criticism that his response to the Supreme Court’s recent abortion ruling was slow and lukewarm. , Two officials who demanded that they remain anonymous, said. Has the authority to discuss internal deliberations.
Biden administration’s environmental agenda
President Biden is pushing for stronger regulation, but faces a narrow path to achieving his goals in the fight against global warming.
At the same time, some of the president’s advisers cautioned against Manchin in the hope that he would continue to agree to tax credits and other measures for wind and solar providers. Said.
Markley has accused the Biden administration of “walking on eggshells” around Manchin for the past year.
He and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat of Road Island, said Mr. Byden evoked a climate emergency in the country and other series of moves such as regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, caused by fossils. Taxes on fuel projects that state that a dollar estimate of climate damage should be formally established, and imports from countries that lack aggressive climate policies.
“There are many other regulations they can enforce,” Whitehouse said.
Climate advocates said Mr Biden needed to show that he could take positive steps to stop the increase in emissions.
“There is a total lack of climate leadership in this country,” said Jean Sue, senior lawyer and director of the Biodiversity Center of Energy’s Energy Justice Program. “It’s time to take it seriously. This is the clear call we need from the leadership of this country.”
Even before Manchin unplugged climate law, the White House was working on administrative steps to combat global warming. .. Biden has pledged to other parts of the world.
Within the next few months, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue stricter regulations to control methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that leaks from oil and gas wells.
Next year, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation will introduce new rules aimed at rapidly expanding the sales of electric vehicles to automobile companies.
The EPA is also planning new regulations that will force utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions slightly, which may introduce technology to capture and isolate carbon dioxide pollution. Early technologies are not yet commercially viable.
Authorities are also planning stricter restrictions on other pollution produced by power plants that do not affect global warming, such as mercury, smog and soot. Controlling these pollutants has the side benefit of having utilities clean up or shut down the dirtiest facilities such as coal-fired power plants that produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Michael Walla, a climate policy expert at Stanford University, said:
At the same time, the Democratic Party has not given up all hopes of enacting some form of climate change or clean energy policy in this year’s parliament. This may be the last opportunity for Republicans to gain control of one or both parliaments in the November midterm elections.
Manchin said last week he couldn’t support the climate law, which provides a $ 300 billion tax deduction for wind, solar and electric vehicles, but later suggested in a radio interview that he might reconsider it in the fall. These statements were made a year after Mr Manchin repeatedly proposed to the Democrats to support their policies, but only withdrew. However, some Democrats believe that a modest extension of existing clean energy tax incentives may be incorporated into tax packages that are expected to pass with bipartisan support at the end of the year. ..
Invoking a national emergency unleashes many tools. Mr. Byden will revive the oil export ban lifted in 2015, stop offshore oil and gas drilling, and limit both US fossil fuel exports and billions of dollars in fossil investment. I can. Overseas fuel project. He will also fund the Federal Emergency Administration to build renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy, marsh the domestic private industry and produce more renewable energy and transportation technologies. You can also instruct.
The president and government already have the authority to carry out most of these actions, but experts say that the climate emergency declaration streamlines Mr. Biden’s ability to quickly enact all these policies at once. Said.
and Survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication Fifty-eight percent of Americans surveyed this year said they would support the US president, who would declare global warming a national emergency if Congress did not act.
New York senator Chuck Schumer, a Democratic majority leader, urged Mr Biden to declare a national climate emergency just a week after his presidency.Last year, Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Earl Blumenauer Introducing a bill It instructed the president to declare a national climate emergency
The National Emergency Law, enacted almost 50 years ago, requires the president to formally declare a national emergency in order to exercise special emergency powers, and certain procedures in exercising such powers. I imposed the above procedure. The idea was to enable the president to respond quickly to urgent, often unpredictable crises.
Since then, all presidents have declared at least one national emergency during their term. 41 is still valid today. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law. President Biden extended the national emergency on Covid-19 in February and enacted a law in March when Russia banned oil imports.
Some scholars have warned that the National Emergency Declaration is counterproductive and constitutes a detrimental overshoot of executive branch.
Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Freedom and National Security Program, said, “Emergency powers, no matter how serious, are not intended to address long-standing problems and are certainly long-term. It is not intended to provide a unique solution. “
Oil industry leaders have already opposed the possibility of Mr Biden exercising new power.
“A unilateral declaration of a climate emergency does not reduce emissions by a molecule,” said Anne Bradbury, chairman of the US Exploration and Production Council, which represents independent oil and gas producers, in a statement. I am. “The only way to significantly reduce emissions is to work on a lasting climate policy with all stakeholders, including the US oil and gas industry,” she said.
Emily Cochrane Contribution report.