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April 16, 2021

Biden's Climate Agenda Comes Into Focus

Also, Biden's Justice Department still seizing land for the border
wall

 

Oil rigs on an early morning in Odessa, Texas. (Eli Hartman/Odessa
American via AP)

The Chief

**** From an uncertain start at the beginning of his campaign, Joe
Biden has earned a small measure of trust among climate activists. Many
appointments were well-received, particularly Deb Haaland at Interior
and people like Ali Zaidi inside the White House's climate offices.
Biden accomplished some early executive actions
like
restoring national monuments, rejoining the Paris agreement, and
recalculating the social cost of carbon
. And in
general the administration has been responsive to the urgency of climate
action.

We saw more of that this week. One of the more interesting executive
actions Biden plans to take in the coming days involves putting in place
a government-wide strategy

for climate-related risks. This has been a particular blind spot

for federal regulators prior to the Biden administration. Not only could
natural disasters harm physical financial assets like homes and business
offices and their associated mortgages and insurance policies, but
shifting away from fossil fuels could strand carbon-sensitive assets,
causing fire sales and broken balance sheets. This is essentially what
happened in the subprime mortgage crisis, only instead of banks
realizing too late that crappy housing loans were worthless, it would be
oil and gas rigs and coal-fired power plants.

It was bad news when media reports that the Treasury Department would
establish a climate hub
,
allegedly to be helmed by former Fed governor Sarah Bloom Raskin, turned
out to be completely untrue. But the executive order includes
data-sharing through the Financial Stability Oversight Council on
climate-related risk. It's a step that signals top-level support to
manage the process, in a way that Treasury probably cannot ignore.

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**** The U.S. trade representative's office can also be a
climate leader; trade policy can be tied to climate standards. I cannot
recall a single U.S.-led trade agreement even using the words "climate
change." But at a Center for American Progress event yesterday
,
USTR Katherine Tai laid out her vision to build climate into U.S. trade
policy. She said that leaving climate out of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada
agreement was a mistake. And she said that polluting industries should
not be outsourced to poorer countries, which could be enforced through
bilateral investment treaties and other carrots. This could really
change things.

There are hitches, however. Next week, as part of Earth Day, the U.S. is
convening a climate summit
.
The invitation was put out to 40 world leaders, including Chinese
president Xi Jinping, whose agreement to help mitigate the climate
crisis would be the most crucial. Xi hasn't yet accepted. John Kerry,
the U.S. climate envoy, visited Beijing

this week. And even before he got there, the official word from a house
organ newspaper in the country
was "The U.S. has neither the moral standing nor the real power to
issue orders to China over climate issues." In an AP interview
,
a top Chinese diplomat called the U.S. "too negative" and said
it's "not very realistic" to expect China to deliver more than
what it's already promised (with emissions peaking in 2030 and going
carbon-neutral by 2060) on climate.

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China and the U.S. have been antagonistic on a host of issues, including
human rights in Tibet and Hong Kong, threats to the sovereignty of
Taiwan, and claims of technology theft by U.S. multinationals. There's
a strain of U.S. thought that says we must relent on this to get Chinese
buy-in on climate. This is ridiculous. China's survival depends on a
livable planet, and they're well aware of that. Competition on things
like supply chains could have a virtuous effect on greening
manufacturing. You don't need full cooperation to have a mutual
relationship that recognizes the planet takes precedence over
internecine rivalries.

Mostly the goal is to have China recognize its own interests. This is
the trickiest piece of the climate push. And Biden's team must get
other pieces, like oil and gas drilling on public lands, right. But the
summit might provide another sliver of optimism on some actual global
coordination.

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Frightened on Immigration

I don't know how much more insistent Joe Biden could have been. "Not
another foot
"
of border wall would be built under his presidency. And on his first day
in office, in the first flurry of executive actions, he suspended border
wall construction
.
That left 300 miles planned for but unconstructed. Advocates want the
400 miles of wall Donald Trump managed to put up to be knocked down
,
but at least the promise of no new construction was being kept.

Or maybe not. A disturbing Politico report

states that the administration continues to use eminent domain to seize
land around the southern border with Mexico. Six acres in Hidalgo County
were seized just this week. In addition to vowing not to build another
foot, Biden had promised to withdraw all lawsuits and not confiscate any
more land
.
And in various court cases that are still active, the Justice Department
left open the possibility

of more building.

Two things here. One is that this continues a disturbing trend of
executive actions that mandate reviews or reports by a date certain and
then don't get done. A review of the border wall situation was due
March 20 and has yet to be completed. The Trump administration was
notorious for this; I did a long

series

at The Intercept

about it. The lack of transparency enables this behavior; DOJ's excuse
for continuing the cases is that the review isn't completed.

The second point is that the Biden team has been absolutely spooked by a
couple weeks of fear mongering around the border. It's the reason the
refugee cap hasn't been lifted

(even though the two situations are wholly different); it's the reason
the Title 42 order

summarily expelling nearly all migrants from the country for bogus
health reasons is still in place; and it's the reason border wall
activities continue as normal. A shell-shocked political team is running
an inhumane immigration policy with way too much resemblance to
Trump's.

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What Day of Biden's Presidency Is It?

Day 87.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* Pfizer CEO says everyone will need a booster shot

of the COVID vaccine within a year and then annual shots after. (CNBC)

* Out of 66 million vaccinations studied, there have only been 5,800
"breakthrough" cases

of people getting COVID. That's 0.008 percent. (Wall Street Journal)

* Biden is maintaining an export ban

that affects vaccine raw materials, this is almost worse than
maintaining the IP protections. (Axios)

* Senate Republicans are having a hard time even coming up with a
counteroffer

to the Biden infrastructure package. (NBC News)

* Of all the things House Democrats could take their stand on, repealing
the SALT cap

could be the absolute worst. (Spectrum News)

* The effects of the American Rescue Plan are starting to hit the
economy
.
(Wall Street Journal)

* Biden Justice Department asks the Supreme Court not to rule

on the constitutionality of the all-male military draft. (Washington
Post)

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