This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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Joe Biden is in no position to lecture the world on climate change

By:   []

Date: 2021-11

“Nothing would fundamentally change,” Joe Biden reassured donors at a fundraising event at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan in June 2019, amid the backdrop of his presidential primary bid. So far he has kept his word.

It has now been nearly a year since Biden entered the White House. During his first week in office, he rejoined the Paris Agreement, vowed to stop oil and gas drilling on public lands, and committed to passing a historic infrastructure package that would create millions of well-paid union jobs.

It was no Green New Deal, but the US administration appeared to have at least listened to the Left’s demands. Sunrise Movement climate activists, Bernie Sanders and other progressive groups were reportedly given a seat at the table to negotiate the administration’s agenda. Biden established new climate offices – an international one led by the former secretary of state, John Kerry, and a domestic one led by Gina McCarthy. In April, he even hosted world leaders to announce a new US target to reduce emissions by 50-52% from 2005 levels by 2030.

And soon, Biden will head to the UN climate change conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, with nearly his entire cabinet in tow, to lecture the world on the need to transition to green energy as soon as possible to limit global warming to 1.5℃.

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However, he’ll likely arrive without anything to show.

He is departing from a city lined with climate activists demanding that the administration revoke the permit for Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, which will transport oil from Canada to the US, and declare a climate emergency (which he has the authority to do without congressional approval). And he leaves a congress whittling down his signature legislation ahead of an impending 31 October deadline set by house speaker Nancy Pelosi. (The White House denied this deadline on Tuesday.)

“Biden is going into COP26 still without any climate laws on the book,” Kate Aronoff, climate reporter at The New Republic and author of ‘Overheated’, told me last week.

“There was a lot of hopeful rhetoric at the start of the administration, and it’s true that the Biden White House has some of the most ambitious climate pledges and commitments of any Democratic administration to date, but there’s still nothing there.”

So what is Biden’s climate legacy thus far – and what can he unilaterally do? I’ve been speaking to experts over the past week and have found a deep frustration at not just the lack of congressional action or political will, but at a failure by Biden to directly confront the US’s deeply entrenched fossil fuel industry.
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