President Biden Will Need to Declare a Climate Emergency
The larger question now is whether we have what it takes for what Millet beautifully calls “an extraordinary redemption.”
By Jim Miller
Nature knows no pity. Just as we were girding ourselves for a long, dark winter of death and suffering and what many medical professionals are warning will likely be one of the worst crises in American history, more bad news hit last week with public health experts releasing a report on the present peril to our wellbeing by posed by climate change.
As the New York Times noted, a Lancet study addressed “climate change as a public health risk now, rather than a hazard faced by future generations. It points to the immediate dangers of extreme heat, wildfires and air pollution, and makes the case for rapidly shifting to a green economy as a way to improve public health.”
And as those experts reminded us that, “Rising temperatures and environmental pollutants are already endangering the health and well-being of Americans, with fatal consequences.” A separate United Nations study on the State of the Climate documented continued record warming, catastrophic weather events, fires, and a dangerous reduction of biodiversity.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres bemoaned, the Washington Post tells us, that “the state of the planet is broken” and “humanity is waging war on nature” in a fashion that is “suicidal.”
Indeed, we are.
But, unlike Trump’s catastrophic response to the Covid-19 crisis, it doesn’t have to be this way. The Biden Administration has an opportunity to play the role of an unlikely savior. As grim as things seem, even if the Democrats lose the Georgia Senate run-offs, Biden can steal a card from Trump’s playbook, go big, and aim for a solution to the climate crisis that is commensurate with the problem.
What can he do?
In a recent column in the New York Times Lydia Millet insightfully outlines the fraught political landscape and calls on the new regime to seize the moment and change the game:
Congress, and the entrenched private interests behind it, has proved too spineless to tackle this singularly universal threat. Only this president, now, has the power to lead with enough strength to push our country and the other two largest emitters, China and India, to zero carbon by 2040.
He can do this by recasting his climate plan to hit emissions-reduction targets not by midcentury but much sooner. By creating millions of jobs in green energy, building and transportation — in energy justice, sustainable agriculture, health care and education. By executive order and other available means, he can declare a climate emergency, keep fossil fuels in the ground both offshore and on, stop their export and infrastructure build-out, direct cabinet departments to shift subsidies to clean energy, and use the Clean Air Act to cap greenhouse gas emissions. That would be a start.
There’s no “interest” group that will not be permanently devastated by a ruined climate — rich or poor, Black, Native, Latino or white, Democrat or Republican.
If I were Joe Biden, a paragon of centrist decency compared with Donald Trump but no one’s warrior king, at least so far, I’d seize this moment for what it is: the possibility of an extraordinary redemption. Not to cave to mediocrity and compromise and damn the ones who come after, but to show a depth of honor and a fighting spirit that will never be forgotten.
Rise up and save us, Mr. Biden. Not in the vague tomorrow, but today.
If the Trump pandemic showed us anything, it is that moorless leadership that focuses on petty immediate political considerations in the face of an existential threat is a recipe for untold disaster. Surely Biden is correct to call for immediate action to right the ship with regard to our public health response to Covid-19 and the economic damage that came in its wake. He is also correct to speak plainly about the need for immediate climate action. Thus, he has to do both at the same time.
This will be a daunting task, but the devastation that unchecked climate change will bring makes this pandemic look like the small wave that nudged us off our footing before we were knocked upside-down and drowned by the larger swell that followed. It is no exaggeration to say that if we fail to meet the challenge now, we will look back at this crossroads as the moment when everything changed for the worse, when our last meaningful chance to reverse course away from the suicide path was squandered.
Biden can marry the fight against climate catastrophe with the struggle to overcome our historic level of economic inequality in the service of a just recovery that paves the way for a sustainable future. But to do so, he needs to ignore the calls for moderation and half measures in the face of what is not just a national but a global emergency. To do so he can frame this moment not in partisan or ideological terms but with moral clarity.
We have seen how low we can go, what depravity we are capable of at the worst possible moment. The larger question now is whether we have what it takes for what Millet beautifully calls “an extraordinary redemption.”
To be frank, the pessimism of my intellect tells me no, but when I look at the faces of the young people I teach and into the eyes of my son whose future depends on it, I pray that we can.
Happy holidays dear reader, and good wishes for a full and speedy recovery to my good friend Doug Porter, for whom I promise to keep organizing rather than mourning.
See you all virtually, next year.