President Joe Biden is acting on his own to achieve something measurable on climate change with his party’s green energy legislative agenda at risk of dying out, but he is under immense pressure from the Democratic coalition to use his executive powers more aggressively.
Biden announced some smaller executive actions Wednesday, including that his administration would propose areas for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as allocate $2.3 billion in funding for a Federal Emergency Management Agency program that helps states and localities become more resilient against disasters and hazards like extreme heat.
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Still, Democrats and environmental groups want him to follow up on his pledge Friday to take “strong” executive action on climate and to do more than he’s prepared to at the moment with the party’s slim majorities on the line this November.
Here are some of the things Biden could do:
Climate emergency
One of the most popular ideas currently circulating among Democrats and green groups is for Biden to declare a climate emergency and wield powers provided by various federal laws, such as the National Emergencies Act, the Stafford Act, and the Public Health Service Act, to mobilize industry to build green energy technologies.
Liberals in Congress urged Biden to declare a climate emergency in the weeks after the war in Ukraine began as energy prices began spiking and the administration began calling for more oil production.
The idea has picked up momentum since news broke that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said he is not prepared to agree to tax hikes and climate-related spending as part of Democrats’ spending bill.
Lauren Maunus, advocacy director for liberal group Sunrise Action, said an emergency declaration would be a litmus test for Biden.
“As we stare now into the face of an existential midterm election, this declaration will either show young people that Biden gives a damn about our futures or be a further slap in the face to our generation that’s feeling utter despair and frustration of the failure of Democratic leadership,” Maunus said Wednesday.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre didn’t rule out a climate emergency, saying on Tuesday that “everything is on the table.” But she said at the very least that it wouldn’t come this week.
Defense Production Act
Some Biden allies have encouraged him to use the Defense Production Act to try and achieve some of the things that the green energy tax incentives under negotiation with the spending bill were designed to do.
“Part is the Defense Production Act, to secure the United States, would be a massive expansion of the production of solar panels and the deployment of solar panels, many of which could be put on … federal military sites,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said on Monday.
Biden has invoked the DPA multiple times during his tenure with the intention of enabling the production of more critical minerals, such as those used in electric vehicle batteries, and building more solar panel components domestically.
Litigation
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) recommended that the Biden administration and the Department of Justice put together a legal strategy and participate in climate-related litigation that state and local governments are carrying out against oil and gas companies.
“I’d advise him to make specific reference to the tobacco litigation for fraud about the harm [of] the product that the DOJ won in a thumping victory,” Whitehouse said alongside Merkley on Monday. “That seems to me to be a pretty good model for at least investigating whether such a case could be brought against the decades of misrepresentation by the fossil fuel industry.”
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Pricing and regulating carbon
Whitehouse said Biden should pursue putting a price on carbon emissions, including through a carbon border tariff. He also said the administration should put in place a “serious” social cost of carbon, which is a metric that executive agencies use to calculate the monetary costs associated with emissions of carbon dioxide.
