No More Dithering - President Biden Needs to Declare a Climate Emergency NOW

If we do nothing, sure, the earth will be fine, eventually. It just won't include us anymore. It is we who have everything to lose.

Photo by Peter Burdon on Unsplash

One year ago, President Joe Biden delivered an address on the climate crisis in which many anticipated he would declare a climate emergency.

Much to the chagrin of those hoping for it, he did not.

https://twitter.com/ChrisMegerian/status/1549428745836134404

Hawaii is crawling out from the deadliest wildfires in United States history in more than a century. 

California is currently confronting the first tropical storm in 84 years.

Phoenix, Arizona is looking at a future where it could become America’s first unlivable city.

Heat domes are causing pavement to become so scorching that when people pass out (which they are doing more frequently), they are being hospitalized with second- and third-degree burns.

Months ago the entire east coast of the United States was blanketed in a thick hazy smoke from wildfires raging across Canada that are anticipated to continue into fall.

According to a paper published earlier this month in Lancet Planetary Health, there are “significant correlations” between tiny solid dust, dirt, and soot or liquid particles in the air and antibiotic resistance.

The past eight years have been the hottest on record.

Last month was the hottest ever in recorded human history, producing 21 of 30 days with the highest recorded temperatures, breaking more than 3,200 global daily temperature records. At least 26 cities broke or tied previous daily records three or more times. 

The United Nations estimates climate-related deaths will surpass cancer deaths in our children’s lifetimes.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are at 421.61 parts per million (ppm). The last time there was that much CO2 in the atmosphere, human beings didn’t exist yet and palm trees grew in the South Pole.

As each year gets hotter and weather crises become more destructive, the urgency for an official climate emergency declaration becomes more dire.

With El Niño pressing a summer heatwave all across the northern hemisphere, this year is predicted to be the worst so far.

And yet, fossil fuel corporations are raking in the most profit they have ever in their long, sordid history.

If ever there was a time for the president of the United States to issue an executive order declaring a climate emergency, it is now.

Doing so is not simply a rhetorical flourish to mollify the voices crying out for urgent climate action. The actions necessary that Congress is unable to take include:

• Banning fossil fuel exports;

• Banning new federal fossil fuel leasing on public lands and waters (including refusing to issue any new permits in the next five year offshore plan);

• Banning new fracking permits;

• Establishing a plan to phase out fossil fuel production.

• Reallocating hundreds of billions of dollars under the Defense Production Act (DPA) toward the deployment of green energy;

• Capping domestic fossil fuel emissions;

• Ending crude oil, coal, and refined fossil fuel exports;

• Unlocking further use of the to spur clean energy development.

While the most pro-environment president we have ever had, Biden has overseen some disappointing decisions, such as approving the Willow Project in Alaska. Congress has green-lit the Mountain Valley Pipeline through West Virginia into Virginia.

What can we simple folk do?

First, we can call our members of Congress at 202–224–3121 and urge them to exhort the Biden administration to declare a climate an emergency under the National Emergencies Act.

We must also call our two senators to do the same.

Next, sign The Daily Kos campaign action petition to President Biden, and share it on your preferred social media platforms, tagging your lawmakers.

If you are a writer and interested in using your rhetorical prowess to go a step beyond, consider writing a letter to the editor (LTE) of your local newspaper, specifically calling on your elected officials by name to more vociferously recognize the existential threat climate change holds for us and future generations. Their staff notice, and they often use constituents’ LTE to gauge public opinion on the most important issues facing average Americans.

If we do nothing, sure, the earth will be fine, eventually.

It just won’t include us anymore.

It is we who have everything to lose.