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.
What exactly counts as “moderate” in the present day US political landscape?
“Destroy only half of the planet, take away only half of women’s rights and genocide only half of palestinians. But we can compromise if the right doesn’t want that”
If the right won’t meet us halfway maybe they’d go for something more like three fifths as a compromise
It’s pretty much a Republican in any other country
sure?
There are many countries way to the right of the US
Real moderates are mostly just low information voters who don’t spend much time thinking about politics to develop an ideology or world view.
The generally accepted political narrative is that these sorts of voters mostly just care about the economy.
Lots of people call themselves moderates but consistently vote Democrat or Republican and just differ from their party on a couple issues.
*Edited my language to be a little fairer about that second group