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Earth Day, April 22, 2021

Biden Climate Pledges Rely Heavily on the Infrastructure Package

And they don't really have to

 

President Biden arriving at the Summit on Climate in Washington. (Evan
Vucci/AP Photo)

The Chief

**** President Biden was up early this morning, kicking off a
climate summit

in which 40 leaders, including Chinese president Xi Jinping
,
will participate. As had been previously announced, Biden pledged at the
summit in opening remarks to cut greenhouse gas emissions from 2005
levels in half by 2030

and make America carbon neutral by 2050.

The White House produced a fact sheet

on this today that's missing most of the important question: how will
you reduce these emissions. Really you have a few standbys-invest in
clean energy to make electricity carbon-free, make buildings energy
efficient, electrify transportation, plant trees, capture industrial
carbon output, hope for an energy innovation. Not so much how as "hey,
let's do this!"

Much of the how, of course, is embedded in the American Jobs Plan, which
is as close as we're getting to a Green New Deal. We've been
analyzing
some of the climate components, from the clean energy standard by 2035
to the
capping of orphaned oil and gas wells
that leak
greenhouse gases to electrifying the federal vehicle fleet

to building national charging infrastructure

to establishing a Civilian Climate Corps

to put other policies into practice. There's more policy in there,
including a $174 billion commitment to electric vehicles
,
primarily for point-of-sale rebates and aid to manufacturers; 24-7 clean
energy at federal buildings
;
a tax credit for high-voltage transmission lines

that can move clean energy to population centers; electrifying school
buses
;
and more.

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**** Biden has room to maneuver outside of the AJP. He can and will
end the silly fight with California

and allow its higher fuel economy standard to go national. He can go
further, as several governors have asked, and ban the sale of
greenhouse-gas emitting cars

by 2035; California has already adopted this. There's been a
cancellation of the KeystoneXL pipeline but not the Line 3 Oil Pipeline
,
as Colleen Connolly reports for us today. There's an end to
"permitting" of fossil fuel projects on public lands, but at the end
of the Trump administration oil and gas companies loaded up on permits,
and drilling continues. The announcement launching more offshore wind

was definitely positive.

Our executive action tracker
has
several other actions that Biden could take, including at this week's
summit. He could set targets for 2025 in international agreements that
would further restrict the use of greenhouse gases. He could incorporate
the pledge for carbon-free power generation by 2035 into the EPA's
Clean Power Plan regulation, which right now would only reduce emissions
in the baseline power sector by 34 percent by 2030. He could sanction
companies with fines that allow carbon leaks into the atmosphere, and
adopt stronger rules for sulfur dioxide, ozone, mercury, and coal ash.
Activists want more

out of the infrastructure bill, because that is their role to maximize
climate action. I've heard surprisingly less from that world on
maximizing executive authority

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The point here is that there's a whole-of-government approach to the
climate crisis that is more aggressive than the path Biden is now
taking, which relies heavily on a massive infrastructure bill that
hinges on a lot more than climate-related elements passing through
Congress, including winning the support of the guy who shot a copy of
climate legislation with a rifle

in his campaign ads. If that bill shatters there are certainly
command-and-control fallback options for some of the energy transition,
but the lack of total urgency on those right now isn't a good sign.

Personnel is policy and Biden has assembled a lot of smart thinkers
on
climate (Even that's not unilateral; Treasury's choice to run its
climate hub is ex-private equity

and has no regulatory experience). But in addition, policy is policy,
and if all the personnel does is make pledges and cross fingers about
Joe Manchin, that's not going to be enough.

That's especially true because, as Adam Tooze explains
,
the AJP is tied up with revenue-raisers subject to unending fights,
which both have the potential to delay the final package and shrink its
ambitions. If the package must be "paid for" over a certain time
frame and things like the corporate tax rate is already been shaved,
then that would necessarily lead to reductions on the spending side.
Arguing about taxes in the face of an energy transition imperative every
bit as much of an emergency as, say, distributing COVID vaccines and
managing the concomitant economic pain, adds unneeded friction into the
whole enterprise. The foregrounding of climate transition as a job
creator

is smart politics, but that also should negate the need to offset it
with revenues.

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And in the background of all of this is the international diplomacy
piece
,
on display this week at the climate summit. The U.S. will simply not be
able to impose the green revolution on its own; cooperation,
particularly with heavy emitters China, India, Russia, and Brazil, will
be required. On the opposite end, developing countries already facing
severe damage from global warming need climate aid, which richer
countries have been reluctant to provide.

The climate conference in Glasgow at the end of this year matters more
than this week's talks, but the goal this week is to draw out
countries' new climate targets. Of course, no country in the
industrialized world honored its targets

in the Paris agreement, so these pledges aren't worth much beyond the
paper.

Biden has definitely leapt past Donald Trump and even Barack Obama on
his foregrounding of climate, but that's a low bar. And
"foregrounding" is talk, not necessarily action. There have been
strong promises on greening the country, and half-steps on getting
there. We need more than pledges, and the Biden team can do it even if
Congress balks and hedges and trims.

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What Day of Biden's Presidency Is It?

Day 93.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* Here I am on Hill.tv's Rising

talking about the infrastructure package. (The Hill)

* Top White House aide Steve Ricchetti's pharma lobbyist brother is
lobbying the White House
.
(CNBC)

* The Biden inaugural committee raised $61.8 million
,
mostly from rich people and big business, for... I don't know, a TV
show? Tom Hanks costs a lot? (Wall Street Journal)

* With India's COVID crisis out of control
,
today would be a good day to drop IP restrictions

on vaccines. Ten months ago would have been better. (The Hill)

* Weekly unemployment claims again drop to a record low

since the onset of the pandemic. (Calculated Risk)

* Despite the boom, the retail apocalypse soldiers forward. Here's a
snapshot of New York City
.
(Bloomberg)

* Postal Service Board of Governors chair Ron Bloom again expresses
unequivocal support

for Louis DeJoy, who isn't going anywhere. (The Atlantic)

* Lina Khan had a strong confirmation hearing yesterday
.
(BIG newsletter)

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