After what was left of his legislative agenda to fight climate change appeared to crash and burn in the Senate, President Biden flew to Saudi Arabia to press the region's oil giants to pump more crude onto global markets.
Mr. Biden promised to remove the United States from fossil fuels in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
He set ambitious goals to speed an energy transition that would touch every corner of the American economy and surrounded himself with experienced and aggressive advisers. He said that he could build coalitions on big legislation and that he was a master negotiation.
A 24 hour period at the end of this week showed how frustrated Mr. Biden has been. His climate goals have been put on hold due to Democratic infighting and shifting economic priorities caused by fast-rising inflation.
After more than a year of discussions, a coal-state Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, told party leaders on Thursday that until he saw more encouraging government inflation data, he wouldn't support a $300 billion collection of tax incentives meant to help electric utilities and other businesses The provisions were to be part of a larger bill that the administration says will reduce health and electricity costs and relieve inflationary pressure.
The legislation was the last hope for aggressive climate action by the president before the election.
A scaled-back version of the climate initiatives Mr. Biden tried to sell to Mr. Manchin was the one that Mr. Manchin had been negotiating with. On Friday, Mr. Manchin told a West Virginia radio host that he might support energy legislation in September, but only if it was done earlier.
At a time when inflation is rising at its fastest pace in 40 years, Mr. Manchin is hesitant to raise taxes on businesses and high-earning individuals in order to offset the energy and climate credits. He told Mr. Schumer that he wanted to see the next set of inflation figures before moving forward.
Mr. Manchin said that inflation was killing people. Everything they buy and consume for their daily lives is a hardship to them. We have to make sure that we don't add to that. I can't make that decision because it takes the taxes to pay for the investment into clean technology that I'm in favor of I will not do anything that will cause more problems.
The climate plan was objected to by Mr. Manchin for more than a year before the invasion of Ukraine. The experts who worked for months on the climate package said they were not under the impression that there was more to negotiate with Mr. Manchin.
The senior vice president for energy and environment policy at the Center for American Progress called it oil and gaslighting. She said that Mr. Manchin didn't want to admit that he was going to block it all the way. His power and influence are reduced when this conversation is over.
Not a single Republican is willing to vote on climate legislation, so Mr. Manchin's vote was crucial. According to a New York Times survey, no Republicans would vote for the clean energy tax credits if they were in a stand alone bill.
It came at a bad time for Mr. Biden. The president was flying from Israel to Saudi Arabia on Friday with hopes that the Saudis and their oil-rich neighbors will ramp up production and help to drive down the gasoline prices. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, was on her way to Saudi Arabia.
She said that Mr. Biden would use every tool in his power to make sure that we deal with the climate change.
The leaders of some of the country's biggest environmental organizations are going to meet with two of Mr. Biden's top aides at the White House.
The death of the legislation is a blow to Mr. Biden as his tools to tackle global warming have been stripped away one by one.
Varshini Prakash is the executive director of the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group that represents many young climate activists.
Ms. Prakash wants Biden and his administration to be aware of this. They have to create a response across all agencies of the government over the course of the two and a half years that they remain in office to do everything in their power to address the climate crisis, or risk being a huge failure and disappointment to the American people and young people.
Ms. Goldfuss believes it is time for an honest conversation about how difficult it will be to meet Mr. Biden's climate goals.
According to economists, there are two basic ways to reduce emissions. One way to drive down the cost of low-carbon energy sources is to improve energy efficiency. If you put a price on carbon emissions or raise the price of fuels, it will make fossil fuels more expensive to use.
Mr. Biden has lost his best chance to promote clean energy at the moment. He could pursue executive actions to regulate emissions in some sectors of the economy, though his options have been narrowed by a recent Supreme Court ruling that limited the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to limit emissions from power plants, the nation's second- largest source of planet-warming pollution.
Legal experts say that decision will likely set a precedent that will limit the federal government's ability to regulate other sources of heat-trapping emissions.
At the White House, Mr. Biden is assembling a suite of smaller and less potent tools to fight global warming, which experts say could still take slices out of the nation's carbon footprint. The United States will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by half by the end of the decade, according to him.
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas that leaks from oil and gas wells, and a more modest rule to cut emissions from utilities will be issued by the E.P.A.
Mr. Biden and his advisers say they want to reduce, not raise, gasoline prices. The president is aware of the political toll high gas prices have taken on him.
When gasoline prices were rising but were still $1.50 a gallon cheaper than they are today, Mr. Biden acknowledged the contradictions.
"On the surface," he told reporters at a news conference, "it seems like an irony, but the truth of the matter is that we're going to be able to move."
He said that it has a profound impact on working-class families just to get back and forth to work.
The collapse of climate legislation coincides with the departure of Mr. Biden's top environmental advisers. Gina McCarthy, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was one of the experts assembled by Mr. Biden to lead a White House office of climate policy.
After the passage of climate legislation, aides have said that Ms. McCarthy intended to step down from her position this year.
John Kerry, who served as secretary of state in the Obama administration, is expected to leave after the next round of UN climate negotiations in Egypt.
With little to show from the US, Mr. Kerry will have a hard time pushing other countries to cut their pollution. It's important to keep the planet stable at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. That is the point at which the likelihood of a disaster increases greatly. The Earth has warmed by an average of about two degrees.
The United States is the biggest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. When Mr. Biden was elected, he said that America was back and would lead the world in fighting pollution.
Nat Keohane is the president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, an environmental group. The honeymoon is over, that's right.
Emily gave reporting.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
