The Climate Crisis and the New President
One of the first climate disasters of the year has struck. This time, across the central and southern parts of the United States.
The State of Texas was especially impacted. When it collapsed under the stress of freezing temperatures, several high-ranking officials from the state attacked the Green New Deal, a framework for just climate action. These officials blatantly disregarded Texas’ deregulated electricity system, decades of poor planning, the state’s allegiance to fossil fuels, and what ultimately unleashed the Arctic’s air upon the United States: climate change.
Some have argue that the storm highlights the inadequacies of Biden’s climate strategy, which they say leaves out resilience. Although the new president’s plan to fight climate change is weak in some areas, they are rectifiable. Meanwhile, its strengths would provide immediate and long-term security for those impacted by the recent climate disaster.
President Biden announced his array of executive orders aimed at tackling the ongoing climate crisis on January 27th. Already, the president has begun the process of rejoining the Paris Agreement and has ordered an immediate review of all harmful rollbacks of standards meant to protect our air, water, and communities. The Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change that was adopted by most nations in 2015, commits signatories to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
For the past four years, climate denial has been the policy of the United States. Thanks to the climate advocacy taken up by youth-led groups like the Sunrise Movement, the new administration now seeks to correct what is wrong and strengthen what is right.
To tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad, the new president has directed his Administration to center the climate crisis in U.S. foreign policy and national security considerations; take a whole-of-government approach to the climate crisis; leverage the federal government’s footprint and buying power; rebuild our infrastructure for a sustainable economy; advance conservation and resilience; revitalize energy communities; and simultaneously secure environmental justice and spur economic opportunity.
One of the order’s most striking measures, as part of the strategy to leverage the federal government’s footprint and buying power, directs the Secretary of the Interior to set a moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and offshore waters. If the goal of the measure is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced on public lands and offshore waters, the measure is profoundly weak. First, because it omits new coal leases; second, because it fails to create a restrictive supply-side policy.
In 2016, a report commissioned by the Obama Administration recorded estimates of fossil fuel-associated greenhouse gas emissions for the public lands and offshore waters of the United States for 2005–14. The United States Geological Survey (USGS), the agency behind the report, measured GHG emissions from the extraction of fossil fuels, as well as the end-use combustion of fossil fuels, sourced from public lands and offshore waters. The report shows that, on average, roughly one-quarter of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions originate from public lands and waters, thanks to oil, gas, but especially coal. Coal accounted for nearly 60 percent of that sum.
The omission is especially arresting, in light of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on coal. Last year, the share of energy generated from coal declined more than any other power source. The drop had a significant impact on global carbon emissions and pollution linked to coal burning.
Global wind and solar, meanwhile, increased their power capacities, including their share of global energy consumption. But while the pandemic has decreased global emissions — a confirmation of the outsized impact human life is having on the planet — the world remains on track to warm the planet by more than 3 degrees Celsius.
This is why, at the outset of the pandemic, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres advised countries to adopt green stimulus packages. Part of that advice included suspending coal financing and coal development.
At the time, Guterres said: “Coal has no place in COVID-19 recovery plans.” Biden seems to have partially accepted the Secretary-General’s guidance. His executive order specifically targets coal financing. Yet, without a moratorium on new coal leases, the new president evades the urgent need to stop coal development altogether. To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, more than 80 percent of the world’s proven coal reserves must never be burned. The United States owns the largest cache of proven coal reserves in the world. Thus, if the country pledged to stop developing coal, the nation would be that much closer to achieving a net-zero economy by 2050, one of the President Biden's main climate goals.
However, stopping coal development would still ignore emissions released as a result of current leases in addition to downstream uses, such as those released by burning coal for electricity and using gasoline for cars. In fact, this is why some lawmakers have supported a restrictive supply-side policy to zero out all emissions from public lands and offshore waters. By increasing the royalties on fossil fuels produced on public lands, the American Public Lands and Waters Climate Solution Act would zero out emissions on public lands by 2040. Crucially, as a restrictive supply-side policy, the measure targets producers, as opposed to consumers. Although Biden’s order stipulates the Secretary of the Interior will consider a restrictive supply-side policy, in reality it is imperative the Secretary establish one immediately.
To be sure, the legal and political outlook seems unfavorable to a coal moratorium and a restrictive supply-side policy. For one, the current ban is already receiving pushback from oil and gas companies. They point to the fact that in 2020 tax revenues from fossil fuel leasing amounted to nearly $8.1 million, supporting federal, state, local, and tribal governments alike. Their argument is that the development of fossil fuels, which is responsible for climate change, is indispensable for the security of the United States. This paradoxical line of thinking has been led by the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil and gas trade association in the country, one of many energy-related entities which has known about the harmful effects of increased carbon emissions for decades. Yes, at the end of the twentieth century, when they had ample time to pivot away from fossil fuels, the API fought against the established science of climate change. Their current distress over the potential impact of Biden’s measure is as deceitful as their history, for we know that the security of the United States depends on climate action.
Of course, the fossil fuel industry is not bound by any one party. True, they find expression through Republicans like Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who received $1,617,500 from an oil executive last year and predictably vowed to fight Biden’s executive orders on climate change. But they also find expression through Democratic congress members like Henry Cuellar of Laredo, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher of Houston, Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen, and Marc Veasey of Fort Worth. On the day Biden announced his oil and gas moratorium, they collectively sent a letter to the new president, urging him to rescind his already weak oil and gas moratorium.
Contrary to what the president’s critics say, Biden’s executive order has the potential to give the American people a new deal, for it recognizes the need to create millions of good jobs, especially for communities wittingly or unwittingly tied to fossil fuels. To empower workers, the new president seeks to put a new generation of Americans to work, so that they may become engaged in conservation, reforestation, resilience, and more.
Were lawmakers more inclined to support him, Americans would have the opportunity to secure their livelihoods through the creation of a national, resilient, and decarbonized grid. To revitalize energy communities, the order highlights the need for coal, oil, and gas communities to use their expertise to spur a clean energy revolution. In addition, the order calls for a Civilian Climate Corps, a modern version of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. Like Roosevelt’s initiative, the new president’s Corps would give young people the opportunity to secure their personal and familial well-being, not to mention the well-being of what Lincoln once called “the fairest portion of the earth.” Finally, to secure environmental justice and spur economic opportunity, the order requests for injustices in housing, transportation, water and wastewater infrastructure, and health care, to be addressed. In terms of housing, this might look like public housing restoration, energy upgrades, anti-eviction support, and more.
A resolution by Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts would help establish such programs by creating a federal job guarantee. In effect, the program would recognize the right to work, fulfill a central demand of the civil rights movement, and free Americans by giving them say in the direction and sustainability of their country.
Indeed, beyond securing immediate relief to communities now in pain, a new deal, of which the new president is already building, would secure the longevity of the United States in the long-term.
