Joe Biden, touted as the US’s first climate president, is presiding over the quiet weakening of his two most significant plans to slash planet-heating emissions, suggesting that tackling the climate crisis will take a back seat in a febrile election year.
During his state of the union speech on Thursday, Biden insisted that his administration is “making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it,”, before reeling off a list of climate-friendly policies and accomplishments. “I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world,” the US president added.
However, last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it would delay a regulation that would reduce emissions from existing gas power plants, most likely until after November’s presidential election. The delay comes as the administration waters down requirements that limit pollution from cars, slowing the country’s adoption of electric vehicles.
Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics: he stood up to the oil industry Bill McKibben
The backtracking could jeopardize Biden’s goal of cutting US emissions in half this decade, which scientists say is imperative to averting disastrous effects from global heating, and shows the competing pressures upon a president looking to hold together a wobbly coalition including climate activists, labor unions and centrist swing state voters before a likely showdown with Donald Trump later this year.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
During his state of the union speech on Thursday, Biden insisted that his administration is “making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it,”, before reeling off a list of climate-friendly policies and accomplishments.
The backtracking could jeopardize Biden’s goal of cutting US emissions in half this decade, which scientists say is imperative to averting disastrous effects from global heating, and shows the competing pressures upon a president looking to hold together a wobbly coalition including climate activists, labor unions and centrist swing state voters before a likely showdown with Donald Trump later this year.
Power plants are responsible for around a quarter of the US’s total carbon emissions, and a previous attempt by Barack Obama’s administration to curb their planet-heating pollution was effectively killed off by the supreme court.
Nearly one in 10 cars sold in the US last year was electric, going some way to fulfilling a Biden administration goal to transform the types of vehicles Americans drive so emissions from transportation, the largest source of carbon pollution in the US, can come down quickly.
In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, the 85-mile heavily polluted stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, communities were “devastated” in January when the EPA dropped its civil rights probe into permitting practices, before backing down from environmental justice cases across the country.
“Far more resources have opened up through the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] but communities have to jump through so many hoops that it’s not making an impact,” said Eloise Reid, the manager of the Louisiana Against False Solutions Coalition.
The original article contains 1,458 words, the summary contains 258 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!