President Biden Must Issue an Executive Order Declaring a Climate Emergency
President Biden Must Issue an Executive Order Declaring a Climate Emergency
It's past time for President Biden to follow the United Kingdom and Canada's lead and declare a climate emergency.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden is expected to deliver an address on the climate crisis in which it is predicted he will declare a climate emergency.
This comes at the peak of summer when unprecedented global temperatures are souring.
But once again, “Democratic” West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin is channeling his inner republican.
Earlier this week, Manchin cited “historically high inflation” as his reason for opposing climate proposals for renewable energy and electric vehicles in Democratic legislation, claiming he needed to see July’s inflation data before deciding how to go forward.
He argues the $300 billion bill to offer tax credits and other support to clean energy would mean higher costs for Americans.
Last fall, before obstructing the Clean Electricity Performance Program, a major initiative of the reconciliation bill, Manchin demonstrated his fealty to the fossil fuel industry by accepting $405,210 from it — $77,000 from company PACs and more than $330,000 from fossil fuel executives and employees.
Last year’s third-quarter filings alone show he raised $1.6 million, many from fossil fuel PACs.
As Jake Johnson reports in Common Dreams, “He has received more money from the oil and gas industry than any other member of Congress this election cycle.”
Clearly Manchin is more concerned with rising prices than rising temperatures.
Therefore, it is past time for President Biden to follow the United Kingdom and Canada’s lead and declare a climate emergency.
But what would that entail?
According to a press release from Fossil Free Media:
“By declaring a climate emergency, President Biden could unlock a series of executive authorities that could have a major impact on driving down emissions and protecting communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and climate disasters. These 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)
Unlock further use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to spur clean energy development, and more.”
He can do this without congressional approval, which means he can ignore Joe Manchin’s temper tantrums.
In April, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres darkly pronounced, “I have seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this… atlas of human suffering” after reading an International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warning of “widespread and pervasive” impacts on all living things from frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods.
The journal Nature warns wild climate change-fueled animal migrations risk introducing more novel viruses into the human population, like the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
One in five reptile species face extinction as we continue destroying ecosystems.
Recent studies published in a special issue of the journal Paediatric [sic] and Perinatal Epidemiology find a rapidly warming environment is associated with poor health in fetuses, babies, and infants.
Last August, the IPCC released a report warning Earth faces uncontrollable global warming unless nations take drastic measures to eliminate greenhouse gases, “unequivocally” blaming humans for the crisis.
It concludes that, based on carbon emissions presently in the atmosphere, average global temperatures will likely rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius -2.7 degrees Fahrenheit-above pre-industrial levels by 2040.
However, according to a recent World Meteorological Association (WMO) “Decadal Climate Update,” we may not even have until then.
Five years may be all we have left before crossing the long-dreaded 1.5-degree Celsius cap set for post-Industrial Revolution global warming delineated in the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.
As the U.S. continues to fall behind on its emissions targets, there is literally no time left to dither.
Sen. Manchin knows it isn’t about “historically high inflation”.
It’s about how much money the fossil fuel industry, particularly the dying West Virginia coal magnates, can shovel at him.