By Adrien Salazar and Kate Alexander
Common Dreams
Joe Biden must end U.S. climate obstructionism, or else future generations will mark his leadership on climate in this time of great need as a complete and abject failure.
The Biden administration’s rhetoric about confronting the climate crisis obscures a frightening reality: Joe Biden’s policies are keeping us on a path to climate catastrophe. The latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the climate crisis is happening faster and more intensely than predicted. We need urgent action, instead, we have the Biden administration.
The week after the UN climate conference (COP26), Biden launched the largest oil and gas lease sale in US history, of 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. A federal court blocked the sale, citing the administration’s failure to consider climate impacts. Climate investments in the Build Back Better Act are in a state of limbo while Senator Manchin, a coal tycoon Democrat from West Virginia, holds the package hostage. As Greenpeace reports, this administration’s policies entrench the interests of the fossil fuel industry and prioritize profits over the survival of our planet and communities at the frontline of climate catastrophe, with Black, brown, and Indigenous communities, and women and girls paying the highest price.
Biden’s climate rhetoric is undermined by the US strong-arming developing nations who demand climate justice, while domestically, Biden pushes to expand fossil fuel extraction and fails to deliver on climate investments he promised throughout his campaign.