Biden’s incoherent fossil fuel politics
It’s a threat to our future — it shouldn’t be this way
by Stephen Leas
In early November, after 2 weeks of talks at the annual climate conference for world leaders known as the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, so-called world leaders came to an agreement on climate — one that deeply disturbed and angered youth climate activists and indigenous water protectors across the globe.
President Joe Biden made soaring proclamations, promising ambitious action to fight the existential crisis of our generation. However, the conference ultimately failed to achieve its purpose. Estimates show that the agreement, far from achieving a strong chance at keeping warming below 1.5*C, as agreed upon in the Paris Accords, blows way past that target — with catastrophic implications for us all. He returned to America with one shot at partial redemption — to show some spine against the fossil fuel oligarchy and pass the Build Back Better Act with historic climate funding in place.
It is not surprising, however, that this process led to such a disappointing outcome, when the fossil fuel industry was the largest delegation with over 500 fossil fuel companies represented at the conference. The industries most responsible for climate destruction and death were given primacy at the table to solve the problems that pad their pockets with profits. It is a travesty and a crime that more fossil fuel stooges were present than indigenous delegates. Though Indigenous groups were given more visibility than in previous years and awarded $1.7 billion in funding, marking a shift from previous years, it is not enough.
Indigenous groups safeguard 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity and indigenous resistance has prevented as much as one quarter of annual US and Canadian greenhouse gases emissions. Stewardship of the planet comes at a high cost for water protectors and those fighting the extractive industries that were so well represented at the conference. Over 1000 environmental activists have been killed protecting the planet since the Paris Climate Accords, and one in three were indigenous.
Massive demonstrations overtook the conference. Scientists were arrested after chaining themselves to a bridge.Thousands of youth activists marched, and Fridays For Future founder and school strike leader Greta Thunberg did not sugarcoat her feelings about the conference: it was a failure. Indigenous and black led activists from the Build Back Fossil Free coalition urged Biden to block fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. Despite the roaring discontent, fear, and militant activism that youth and indigenous and marginalized communities continue to express, Biden has dug his heels in. He is fueling the worst impacts of the climate crisis while ceding leadership on the better parts of his agenda to the worst wing of the Democratic party, callous coal baron Joe Manchin and gold digging traitor, Kyrsten Sinema.
Biden refuses to take action to stop the Line 3 pipeline, despite frac outs and artesian water breaches, phenomena that indicate that the great Mississippi water supply will likely be further contaminated. His inaction is insulting to water protectors who have fought the project all summer to protect the great lakes region, the Mississippi watershed, and the climate — particularly to indigenous water protectors standing for their treaty rights and the right to grow Manoomin (traditional wild rice), and standing against the fossil fuel company Enbridge and their complicity in Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and 2 Spirit relatives. This phenomena, in which mostly femme indigenous women are targeted, facing sexual violence and disappearances, is known to worsen around fossil fuel projects on indigenous land.
Members of our hub saw firsthand the brutal repression water protectors face for protecting the water and the climate, but the administration has done nothing. Similarly, the administration has done nothing to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. In the US, the indigenous and youth-led fight against fossil fuels is rising, but the administration is failing.
In Glasgow, there were some minor bright spots, such as Biden’s announcement of a methane rule and of an agreement between China and the US to lower emissions — but this was overshadowed by colossal failures that threaten our very survival. The insufficient emission targets mean catastrophic climate events like super storms, fires, droughts, and floods, will intensify significantly, it may also mean that we rapidly approach tipping points that make the situation irreparable. Representatives from countries from the global south,who are impacted worse by these crises, sounded the alarms that negotiations were insular among first world nations and failed to materialize a fund to address damage from climate.
So Biden returned from COP26 with a global accord to boil the youth alive on the planet we inherit, having demonstrated his glaring ignorance of indigenous sovereignty at home and abroad, and having dealt a devastating blow to life as we know it. During the conference, his administration at home went in the opposite direction — corporate Democrats rammed through the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill. While it has some good things in it, such as transit funding and electric vehicle charging networks, the bill was written in conjunction with fossil fuel companies. He is celebrating this bill as climate action, despite the fact that Exxon, the oil company most notorious for disinformation campaigns regarding climate, lobbied ruthlessly to pass this “roads and bridges” bill as a strategy to sabotage real action on climate. But exalting murderous Exxon’s bill as real climate action is not even the most hypocritical action he is taking.
Biden’s own agenda — the Build Back Better Act — will take bold and necessary foundational measures to address climate, including establishing a green union jobs program known as the Civilian Climate Corps and investing $500 billion in climate spending. But passage has been delayed time and again. Meanwhile, Biden’s administration leased vast swaths of sensitive land to fossil fuel interests on the Gulf of Mexico, locking in extractive and polluting industries for decades, sacrificing environmental justice communities, and breaking a key campaign promise.
As if to atone for the blatant hypocrisy on fossil fuels and weak leadership in passing his own agenda, Biden then signed an executive order to reach net zero emissions from federal operations by 2050 with a 65% reduction by 2030. If only because “something is better than nothing, the executive order is a firm step in the right direction, one of the few decisive actions he has taken to provide an action oriented framework for the US government to begin decarbonizing. It commits federal government operations to 100% carbon pollution free electricity by 2030 with an emphasis on local production, 100% zero-emission vehicle purchases by 2035, and a net-zero federal buildings by 2045 with 50% reduction by 2032. The problem here is that an executive order can be reversed, it only applies to the federal government, and his hypocrisy regarding fossil fuels threatens the integrity of any positive steps he’s made.
If his actions on climate continue to lack integrity, he will lose youth support, the Democratic Party will lose ground, and the climate justice movement will likely be forced into escalated direct action against the fossil fuel industry to ensure our own survival. Lacking appropriate government leadership to transition from fossil fuels, the challenges we will face this decade start to look grotesquely unfair and dangerous. We will rise to the occasion — I have unshakeable faith in that truth. But if Democrats submit to the monsters destroying our future rather than leading the fight against them, they likely face an entirely different political and social landscape. If Democrats are unable to guarantee prosperity alongside a livable climate, the resulting resentment for the the unlivable communities, poverty, and domestic instability will overwhelm their basic political viability. The time is ripe for Biden to actually represent those of us who supported his ascendency to the highest office. It is time for him to grow a spine and confront the fossil fuel industry.
Activists are calling on the Army Corps of Engineers to issue Environmental Impact Statements for the Line 3 Pipeline as well as for the entire Permian basin and Gulf of Mexico region. These efforts should garner his support. Furthermore, he can declare a climate emergency and take sweeping action to encourage the replacement of fossil fuel projects with publicly owned and community controlled renewable energy projects. And of course he must pass Build Back Better with full climate funding. It is literally the least he must do, seeing as it is his own agenda.
If only a couple Senators stand in his way, threatening millions of young people with early death, then Biden should do what must be done to lead them away from such intolerable obstruction. This will likely be the legacy test of his leadership, the consequences of which will ring out through history for hundreds of years, as this is the timescale and impact of the climate crisis.
Even after his agenda passes and a climate emergency is passed for sweeping economy-wide action, there will still be the need for a true Green New Deal — and this must happen with or without the support of corporate Democrats. We must take down the fossil fuel industry and build the society that will endure the climate crisis — one where our communities and working people thrive, where all people get their needs met, where the earth and its people are cared for intentionally. This is not a pipe dream — a world where pipelines can deliver us from fossil-fuelled disaster is the real pipe dream. The Green New Deal is our only shot at survival.
Stephen Leas is a political team lead of Sunrise Mvt Baltimore, and a representative of the Sunrise MD Coalition. Follow him on twitter at @StephenLeas
Follow Sunrise Mvt Baltimore on Twitter (@SunriseBmore), Instagram (sunrisemovementbaltimore), or Facebook (@SunriseBaltimore).
Follow Sunrise MD Coalition on twitter (@SunriseMaryland), Instagram (sunrisemvmtmd), or Facebook (@SunriseMovementMaryland).
