A weekly reckoning with life in a warming world—and the fight to save it |
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President Biden gives a thumbs-up as he heads onto Air Force One. Abir Sultan/Pool/Getty |
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Yesterday, after multiple outlets reported that President Biden was mulling issuing a formal emergency declaration on climate change, the president appeared at a Massachusetts power plant, called the climate crisis “an emergency,” and pledged to treat it as such—without actually declaring an emergency. You’d be forgiven for thinking the whole thing was performance art. An emergency declaration would have allowed the administration to take broader executive action to lower emissions, after Senator Joe Manchin definitively blocked climate legislation last week. Manchin’s decision—following over a year of alleged negotiations—dealt an almost incomprehensible blow to anyone interested in life on planet Earth in 2050, let alone 2070 or 2080. In killing the modest proposals on offer in the Build Back Better plan, the West Virginia coal baron has probably single-handedly put the United States on course for terrifying levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the near term. Declaring an emergency, some suggested, could reverse part of this damage. It would have meant Biden could have reinstated the crude oil export ban, suspended offshore drilling leases, curbed fossil fuel exports and investment, and funneled huge amounts of money into renewable energy, as the Center for Biological Diversity outlined in a lengthy report on the legal implications of declaring a climate emergency. Biden didn’t do that. But as Kate Aronoff writes today at The New Republic, an emergency declaration was always a questionable Hail Mary. As she writes: |
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An emergency declaration expands the permission slip of things that Biden is able to do. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll do them. So far, the emergency stops the White House has been willing to pull have been geared toward making gas cheaper: a historic sale from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, approvals for a slate of new fossil fuel infrastructure, waiving a ban on ethanol use in the summer, fist-bumping Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Earth’s atmosphere is ambivalent about whether an emergency is declared. What matters is the emissions produced. An emergency move to keep gas cheap, that is, could easily undermine one to save the planet. |
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The lack of this declaration doesn’t mean executive action is cut off, either, Kate notes. “Climate advocates have spent years drafting plans for how the White House could slash emissions without Congress. Now they’ll have to fight for them, whether Biden declares a climate emergency or not.”
This is grim stuff, so before leaving you with our weekly roundup, let me follow the advice Eleanor Cummins gave media outlets in another piece published this morning. Publications should start listing opportunities for action, or maybe even a climate change hotline, at the bottom of stories to help fight despair and anxiety, Eleanor wrote. As it happens, TNR published a guide to collective climate action by Emma Marris just a few days ago. “For me, collective action has worked better than therapy to address my anxiety and red-hot anger over climate change,” Emma wrote. Check out her rundown of climate groups.
—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor |
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On Wednesday evening, Massachusetts legislators announced they’d completed a climate bill to boost solar and offshore wind investment, speed the adoption of electric vehicles, and even pave the way for fossil fuel hookups to be banned in new buildings. The legislature is predicted to vote on the bill Thursday. |
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Some of America’s fastest-growing cities are the ones quickly becoming “unlivable” thanks to climate change. Read The Guardian’s piece on this. |
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That’s the number of calls to the city of London’s fire service on Tuesday during record-breaking heat. London Mayor Sadiq Khan called it “the busiest day for the fire service in London since the Second World War,” when actual bombs were being dropped nightly. |
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Elsewhere in the Ecosystem |
Robinson Meyer takes a look at the mind-bendingly destructive decision by Senator Joe Manchin to tank climate policy last week. “I’m finding very little to sugarcoat,” he writes. As one of his seven takeaways from the news, he points out that Manchin’s actions will reverberate across the climate left, which will find it difficult to trust centrists ever again: |
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Every so often, a certain stripe of pundit wonders why the climate movement can’t strike a more agreeable tone. Why are activists against all fossil fuels, in all situations, when natural gas is geopolitically important and much less carbon-intensive than coal? Why do they focus on sacrifice, on the potential catastrophe of climate change, rather than the prosperous energy abundance that renewables could unlock? I have engaged in some of this myself, and it’s not always so cut and dried: Sketching a big, beautiful low-carbon future was exactly what the Green New Deal was supposed to do, at least at first. Well, this is why. This farce of a legislative process is why. In order for climate advocates to work productively with the moderates who still manage much of the energy system, they must feel that some iota of trust exists among them. They must share some vision of national prosperity, outside of their respective issues, on which they can work together. When Manchin walked away from talks that he had dutifully participated in for more than a year, he seemed to confirm activists’ fears that he wasn’t acting in good faith. For the movement, the takeaway is that energy issues remain zero-sum: Either you win or I do. |
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—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor |
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What Subscribers Are Reading |
After a 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel out of state for an abortion made the news, the right have spent their time denying and deflecting the story. |
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Joe Manchin’s ability to sink climate legislation is getting less attention than the January 6 hearings. But it’s just as dire a sign for democracy. |
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