When media reports about the White House considering having President Biden declare a “climate emergency” rose in the summer of 2022, White House officials claimed the administration has always treated the climate as an emergency, citing the just-passed Inflation Reduction Act as proof.
Apparently, the celebratory novelty of the IRA has worn thin, and that narrative is no longer enough to placate the climate alarmist billionaires who fund much of the President’s campaign for re-election. As is always the case with the climate lobby, no amount of subsidy money is ever enough, and one tranche of billions in federal rents only gives rise to demands for more.
Bloomberg reported recently that according to unnamed sources, Biden’s advisors are again debating whether to press the “emergency” button as campaign season heats up and the President’s approval ratings continue to sag. When asked to comment on the rumors, spokesperson Angelo Hernandez repeated the 2022 narrative, saying:
“President Biden has treated the climate crisis as an emergency since day one and will continue to build a clean energy future that lowers utility bills, creates good-paying union jobs, makes our economy the envy of the world and prioritizes communities that for too long have been left behind.”
But whoever runs the X account for the far-left activist group called The Sunrise Movement gave the game away, tweeting, “The pressure is working. Let’s keep it up,” in response to the Bloomberg report.
The declaration of a climate emergency would enable the President, whose administration has already been lurching well into authoritarian territory with its heavy-handed regulation and a record number of executive orders, to seize even more powers to further impede a domestic oil and gas industry that has proven amazingly resilient. Among potential actions the White House could take under such an “emergency”, Bloomberg’s sources cite things like imposing limits to oil and LNG exports, suspending offshore drilling, and throttling the industry’s ability to transport its products via pipelines and trains.
“By now, we have gotten used to incredibly damaging and stupid decisions from the Biden administration, but the idea of declaring a ‘climate emergency’ is in a class by itself,” Tom Pyle, President of the Washington DC think tank Institute for Energy Research told me. “As with the freeze on new LNG permits, the only emergency President Biden is seeking to address with this latest threat is his slippage in the polls among young voters.”
Todd Staples, President of the Texas Oil & Gas Association in Austin, said, “Every action to suppress domestic production hurts every consumer in America and undermines our global credibility. The world’s population is growing. The demand for energy is going to grow exponentially. We need more oil, not less. We need more gas, more hydrogen, more biofuels. We need to unleash the American ingenuity that built this wonderful economy.”
What always seems to be missed among the activist community in debates like this one is that the Earth only has one atmosphere and the USA does not control what happens to it. A move to use brute, authoritarian government force to hamstring the domestic oil and gas industry would do nothing to reduce emissions on a global scale. In fact, it would likely do the opposite as billions of dollars in capital investment flow away from the U.S. to projects in other parts of the world. As Staples reminded me, America’s industry has actually reduced its methane and CO2 emissions even as it has set new records for production and exports of both oil and natural gas.
Pyle also points to the myriad negative impacts on ordinary Americans that would flow from using wartime executive powers to damage this critical industry.
“Further disrupting energy markets by slowing or stopping the flow of exports would inject even more inflation into the economy and raise prices on gasoline, groceries, airline tickets, rent, utility bills, and just about everything else in the already stretched monthly budgets of American families,” he says. “The use of a wartime executive power to bolster his standing with a loud but vocal cadre of green activists at the expense of the economy and the oil and natural gas industry would be a new low.”
Indeed, it seems that everyone involved agrees that taking such an action would, like his extra-constitutional student loan forgiveness, be little more than a cynical ploy to win votes from a specific subset of the US population. Aru Shiney-Ajay, the Sunrise Movement’s executive director, confirms that when she says, “If Biden wants to win the youth vote, he needs to take forceful action on climate change.”
We need to remember that Biden does not control the climate, nor even the human response to the climate. Despite swingeing measures on emissions by the USA and some of its allies (especially the UK), the human race used more fossil fuels in 2023 than in any year before. Biden cannot control humanity’s emissions: all he can do is weaken America.
A “climate emergency” might be good politics for the White House, but it’s a truly lousy – and dangerous – way to run a country.
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