Hard to see America waking from its climate slumber
He has claimed one thing about the need to address climate change, but his practices suggest different
IF ever there was an image that summed up the world’s attitude towards climate change, it had to be that of Joe Biden seemingly dozing while attending this week’s COP26 Summit.
The US leader, whose country is second behind China as the planet’s biggest polluter, needed to be nudged by one of his aides before he opened his eyes.
The image of the President waking from his slumber could not have been more apt, given the States’ appalling track record on tackling climate change.
His predecessor Donald Trump infamously pulled out of the Paris Accord while vowing to bring back “big beautiful coal” and open up the mines.
To his credit, Biden, on day one of entering the White House, rejoined the 2015 pact, but by then America had been set back years in its bid to bring Mother Nature off life support.
When Biden was elected to the White House, it was hard to overstate the elation of the environmental community.
Instead of a guy who dismissed climate change as a “hoax”, the world now had someone who said he saw it as a serious threat, and who talked at his inauguration of the planet’s need to respond to “a cry for survival” that “comes from the earth itself.”
In Biden, they gained someone who considered government rules as reasonable levers for achieving cleaner air and water, rather than as “job killers.”
Here was a politician who saw public lands as a gift from nature to future generations, rather than a resource to be exploited by business interests.
But, since taking office, Biden has not only failed to follow through on his campaign pledges but has frequently pursued policies that contradict his promises.
Despite his grandiose rhetoric, he has represented the same elite that has put humanity in jeopardy.
He has claimed one thing about the need to address climate change, but his practices suggest different.
Or, as Greta Thunberg so brilliantly
phrased it: “Build back better, blah blah blah.”
Instead of using its authority to regulate the fossil fuel sector, the Biden administration has pushed to expand it significantly.
Sure, the President signed an executive order prohibiting “new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters” during his first few days in office.
However, in May, Biden’s government defended an oil project in Alaska, which is expected to generate over 100,000 barrels of oil per day for the next 30 years.
And only last month, the White House approved the lease of 78 million acres of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, described as America’s greatest offshore oil and gas auction.
There is little reason then why the world doubts the States is prepared to step up and do the right thing rather than merely talk about it.
This week’s summit was Biden’s big chance but if the first nine months of his leadership are anything to go by, he seems to be failing. Spectacularly.
He headed to Glasgow, taking with him a significant chance to reclaim American leadership on what is perhaps the world’s biggest priority.
Yet he seems to have been caught sleeping at the wheel, quite literally.