The Proof Is In – Biden Is A Climate Fraud
No Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions In Biden’s “Build Back Better Framework”
Progressives Fold: What Happened To No Climate – No Deal?
Manchin, Sinema, And Corporate Power Hijack The Future
[Update: 3/14/23 – The evidence mounts: (Joshua Frank)
Yesterday, the Biden administration approved ConocoPhillip’s enormous $8 billion Willow oil project on federally-owned land in Alaska.
[Update: 4/17/22 – Biden and the Dems are toast in the mid-terms: (NY Times reports)
The Interior Department said in a statement that it planned next week to auction off leases to drill on 145,000 acres of public lands in nine states. They would be the first new fossil fuel leases to be offered on public lands since President Biden took office.
The move comes as President Biden seeks to show voters that he is working to increase the domestic oil supply as prices surge in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it also violates a signature campaign pledge made by Mr. Biden as he sought to assure climate activists that he would prioritize reducing the use of fossil fuels.
“And by the way, no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period,” Mr. Biden told voters in New Hampshire in February 2020. […]
Upon taking office, Mr. Biden issued an executive order calling for a temporary ban on new oil and gas leasing on public lands, which was to remain in place while the Interior Department produced a comprehensive report on the state of the federal oil and gas drilling programs.
[Update 4/6/22 – it’s getting hard to keep track of all the betrayals and rollbacks. This is egregious. Biden is not even trying. NY Times reports about the Clean Water Act Section 401 State Water Quality Certification issue I’ve been trying to get focus on for years:
E.P.A. did not ask the judges to vacate the regulation while it worked on a new one.
[Update 4/1/22 – it’s getting even worse. NY Times reports (and shame on Harvard and Columbia for providing cover):
Biden will tap oil reserve, hoping to push gasoline prices down
The American Petroleum Institute, which represents oil and gas companies, said Mr. Biden ought to encourage domestic oil production by reducing regulations. …
But Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, welcomed the Biden announcement, saying it would “provide much-needed relief while also allowing for the simultaneous ramping up of domestic oil and gas production to backfill Russian energy resources.” …
The administration plans to call on Congress to require companies to produce oil on more than 12 million acres of federal lands that are already permitted for extraction or pay fines, a proposal that will probably face an uphill climb.
[Update: 3/19/22 – The evidence keeps piling up:
[Update: 3/15/22 – as the planet burns and the science gets even more dire, Biden pulls an Obama and is getting WORSE. This is literally insane:
Biden bragged last week, U.S. fossil fuel corporations “pumped more oil during my first year in office than they did during my predecessor’s first year.”
Domestic oil and gas production is “approaching record levels,” said Biden, “and we’re on track to set a record for oil production next year.” The president, who has ordered the release of tens of millions of barrels of oil from the nation’s strategic reserves, argued that any blame for untapped extractive potential should be placed on the shoulders of those who are sitting on millions of acres of federal property.
“They could be drilling right now, yesterday, last week, last year,” Biden said, referring to leaseholders who possess thousands of unused permits.
[More Updates below]
Back in July, after it became absolutely clear that Biden’s Executive Order “pause” on oil & gas leasing on public lands was a sham, I wrote:
The evidence to support that claim is now over-whelming (it’s actually worse than Biden’s approval of Enbridge pipeline and opening 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to drilling and asking OPEC and Russia to increase fossil production and expansion of Obama’s “Asian Pivot” with gunboat diplomacy and warmongering that undermine climate diplomacy with China and embrace of Trump’s bloated record Pentagon budget (the Pentagon is one of the world’s leading GHG emitters) and limping into COP26).
Here are the climate programs in Biden’s “Build Back Better Framework Agreement”:
Investments in Clean Energy and Combatting Climate Change
• Clean Energy Tax Credits ($320 billion):
Ten-year expanded tax credits for utility-scale and residential clean energy, transmission and storage, clean passenger and commercial vehicles, and clean energy manufacturing.
• Resilience Investments ($105 billion):
Investments and incentives to address extreme weather (wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes, including in forestry, wetlands, and agriculture), legacy pollution in communities, and a Civilian Climate Corps.
• Investments and Incentives for Clean Energy Technology, Manufacturing, and Supply Chains ($110 billion):
Targeted incentives to spur new domestic supply chains and technologies, like solar, batteries, and advanced materials, while boosting the competitiveness of existing industries, like steel, cement, and aluminum.
• Clean Energy procurement ($20 billion):
Provide incentives for government to be purchaser of next gen technologies, including long-duration storage, small modular reactors, and clean construction materials.
After Biden:
a) walked away from the “pause” on fossil extraction on public lands (half the loaf of a “keep it in the ground” policy);
b) ignored multi-billion subsidies to fossil fuels;
c) did not not even discuss EPA regulation of GHG emissions; and
[Update 10/30/21: Speaking of EPA regulations! Into the Biden EPA regulatory vacuum, the Supreme Court just intervened:
“It’s a huge deal — and a big surprise,” said Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA assistant administrator and now a partner at Bracewell LLP. The court’s decision to get involved will “almost certainly prevent the Biden administration from moving forward with a new rule to regulate carbon emissions from the power sector. They’ll have to wait to see what the Supreme Court says.”
The Biden administration urged the Supreme Court not to get involved, saying the issues in the case had been overtaken by events because the EPA doesn’t plan to revive the Clean Power Plan.
“This court’s review therefore should await the completion of EPA’s new rulemaking, when any challenge to the new rule will take a more concrete shape,” the administration told the justices.
d) failed to consider establishing a “price on carbon”;
Biden has now abandoned his proposed Clean Energy Performance Program – which was market based and incentives only, not regulatory mandates and thus even weaker than Obama EPA’s Clean Power Plan –
Biden’s “clean energy investments” do virtually nothing to assure reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Corporations – their overpaid mangers and wealthy shareholders – and Wall Street love “incentives” (AKA subsidies). There is no guarantee that incentives for renewable energy actually replace fossil power (they might just serve growth in demand). And these public subsidies are not conditioned upon contribution of private corporate money. Why should the public have to pay for what amounts to private infrastructure?
On top of all that, the linked bi-partisan Senate infrastructure bill is a climate disaster.
[Update 10/30/21 – I was aware of the logging crap in the infrastructure bill (and haven’t read the 1,684 page reconciliation bill).
Jeffrey St. Clair flags another provision in reconciliation:
Biden’s reconciliation package looks like a catastrophe for the environment and not just on climate. The new language codifies “collaboration logging” projects on the national forests, providing $14 billion in funding for clearcutting public forests, a destructive bailout of the timber industry, which the timber industry will promptly pocket and then campaign like hell to take Biden down in 2024.
~~~ end update]
The progressives have already publicly “enthusiastically endorsed” this framework, so, unfortunately, I can’t urge you to contact them and demand that they stand by their “No Climate – No Deal” pledge.
Perhaps you might want to call or tweet them and tell them what you think about their sellout.
The Democrats’ failure to deliver on climate – plus lots of other promises and very popular “human infrastructure” programs like: paid family leave; Medicare for all, or at least Medicare expansion for vision and dental; negotiated (lower) prices for prescription drugs; living wage (should be $24/hour); mortgage and eviction moratorium; student debt relief; free college; public housing; public transit; redistribution of the $50 trillion stolen by the 1%; abandonment of tax increases for corporations and wealthy; surrender on pro union PRO Act; elimination of the Green New Deal Climate Conservation Corps (CCC); abandoning the abolition of the filibuster; walking away from the voting rights bill; etc – virtually assure Republicans regain power in ’22 and ’24.
By failure to deliver concrete benefits that improve the daily lives of people – and by dissing progressives and the base – Biden and the Democrats re playing right into the Trumpers hands. There will be little enthusiasm among Democrats and the Trumpers will be able to attack the Weimar “do nothing” Democrats.
Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a simple majority vote.
I warned of exactly this many times, most recently:
[End Note: Forgot to mention that Biden and his AG allowed the persecution of climate and human rights lawyer Steven Donzinger. Oops, I almost forgot: they are seeking extradition of Julian Assange.]
[Update – 11/16/21 – even more evidence:
Update – 11/12/21 – Heres’ more evidence: (h/t CP)
[Update – 12/6/21: Here’s more:
[Update – 12/15/21: Exactly like Biden’s assurance to Wall Street that “nothing fundamentally will change”, Biden Sect. Energy assures Big Oil that they are not “the bogeyman”: