President Joe Biden has been humiliated by Joe Manchin on more than one occasion over his our fight to mitigate the worst impacts of climate breakdown.
Washington Post revealed some nauseating concessions on critical climate action the President was willing to abandon to secure the vote of Joe Manchin, a coal baron from West Virginia who, for some reason, sits as the chair of the Senate Energy and National Resources Committee. It has been abundantly clear that no cajoling Manchin would change his mind on neutering the climate change fight. He has always been a climate change enabler and profiteer.
Jeff Stein and Anna Phillips write:
In the past week and a half, the White House has taken steps that would have been considered unimaginable when President Biden first took office, suggesting that it might greenlight drilling plans in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico that would produce hundreds of millions more barrels of oil.
Despite violating the president’s climate pledges, officials have opened the door to these proposals as they wait to see if their approval could help finally secure Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin III’s (D-W.Va.) vote for a historic climate package stuck in Congress. Complicating their calculus is that White House aides do not even know if approving them — or Manchin’s other preferred energy projects, such as a pipeline in West Virginia — would bring the elusive senator on board.
The difficult balancing act, described by four administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing a potential deal, is part of the White House’s last-ditch effort to salvage the chances of meeting Biden’s carbon emissions reduction targets with just months until the 2022 midterm elections. The fossil fuel projects may also prove crucial to Democrats’ broader economic package focused on energy, prescription drugs and taxes, since Manchin has so far balked at only approving the new clean energy tax credits that form the core of the party’s climate legislation.
The uncertain fate of the climate bill — and Manchin’s vote — has driven the White House to postpone decisions on energy projects with significant environmental impacts, including the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline and future drilling plans in the Gulf of Mexico and on Alaska’s North Slope.
This was all a waste of time, as we knew it would be. You can't blame just Biden. The senate has played footsie with him since he bulldozed the Build Back Better plan months ago. Lucy Manchin and the fossil fuel industry are giddy after dragging this process out to the eve of the mid-terms, only to have Lucy pull the football away at the moment before Charlie's foot touched the ball.
Daily Kos blogger and climate activist Meteor Blades wrote yesterday in his piece titled Biden said to be pondering a climate emergency declaration soon, along with executive actions on the actions the President could declare.
One action is killing by EO West Virginia's Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). The pipeline is a natural gas methane pipeline and spans over 300 miles from the obliterated shale rock in NW West Virginia to the Virginia border. And the West Virginia Democrat has been drooling over this fossil fuel for years. A heartfelt fuck you to Manchin would be exquisite. Demoralized green voters would be ready to fight another day, and their votes will go to the Democrats.
Jake Johnson writes in Common Dreams on the prospect of just that EO would do.
In a statement to Common Dreams, Nuccitelli said that "with the Supreme Court having limited EPA's ability to regulate climate pollutants and Sen. Manchin having prevented the current session of Congress from passing meaningful climate legislation, there are few remaining pathways for the Biden administration to come close to meeting America's 2030 Paris commitment."
"As Sen. Whitehouse put it, 'it's now time for executive Beast Mode' on climate," said Nuccitelli. "That includes curtailing new fossil fuel projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would not only create adverse local environmental impacts, including to the Appalachian Trail, but would lock in decades of additional climate pollution, including in the form of methane leakage. West Virginians would be better served by pursuing clean energy projects than climate-polluting pipelines."
The multibillion-dollar Mountain Valley project has been bogged down in regulatory and court battles for years as advocates and Indigenous groups warn it would endanger key waterways and forest land.
Oil Change International and Bold Alliance estimated in a 2017 analysis that the completed pipeline would produce 89,526,651 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, the equivalent of 26 coal plants or 19 million passenger vehicles.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has nevertheless granted permission for construction of the pipeline to move forward even as it awaits key government authorizations. Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC recently asked FERC for a four-year permit extension to complete the fracked gas project.
Payback is a $itch.
Democrats Want Biden To Go 'Beast Mode' And Fight Climate Change Via Executive Action
WASHINGTON ― Democratic lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden to take a more aggressive approach to address the threat of global warming now that the bulk of his “Build Back Better” agenda has stalled in Congress.
“This unchains the president from waiting to act. This frees up the president to use the full powers of the executive branch, and those full powers certainly include a climate emergency,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said Monday after it became clear Democrats lacked the support to revive their economic agenda.
As Meteor Blades notes in his closing paragraph.
Whatever the case, even if litigation hangs up some, most, or all climate-related executive actions, Biden should take action anyway. Better to have fought and lost than surrendered without a fight. In the past 30 years, we've had enough of that when it comes to climate policy.