ENERGY
& ENVIRONMENT
Biden faces calls to declare climate emergency as
he heads to Maui
Climate groups and many of the president’s allies in
Congress urge him to invoke emergency powers to mitigate environmental threats.
The ongoing crisis in Hawaii and a string of climate
events this summer have intensified appeals for a national emergency over
climate change, building pressure on Joe Biden ahead of his scheduled trip to
the island disaster site Monday. |
By MYAH
WARD
08/20/2023
07:00 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/20/biden-climate-emergency-hawaii-00111973
As
President Joe Biden prepares to visit Maui, the Hawaiian island devastated by
the deadliest wildfire in U.S. modern history, lawmakers and climate groups are
begging the White House to do more to prevent future climate-related disasters.
Their
argument: If the latest environmental catastrophe won’t spur the president into
action, what will?
The fires,
likely sparked by the island’s electric utility and heightened by climate
change impacts, swept through the Pacific paradise last week, killing at least
110 people and leaving the famed town of Lahaina smoldering in ruins. As
survivors search for missing family members and friends, and a housing crisis
unfolds amid the vast destruction, climate activists and members of Congress
are urging Biden to declare a national emergency over climate change.
It isn’t
the first time the White House has faced calls to take this step, but the
ongoing crisis in Hawaii and a string of climate events this summer — including
this weekend’s first-ever tropical storm warning for southern California — have
intensified the appeals, building pressure on the president ahead of his
scheduled trip to the island disaster site Monday.
“Even when
I talk about this issue, I tend to say things like, ‘I want to make sure my
children have clean air and water — that they have running water. That they
have a livable planet when they’re my age.’ But that’s not right. Tomorrow, you
could wake up and your whole community could be ashes,” said Kaniela Ing, a
seventh-generation indigenous Hawaiian from Maui and the national director of
the Green New Deal Network, a climate justice organization.
“That’s the
urgency we’re operating under,” he added, “so if there was ever a moment to
declare a climate emergency, it is right now.”
Alongside
climate groups, many of Biden’s allies in Congress have urged him to invoke
emergency powers, which would enable the president to take sweeping action to
restrain greenhouse gas production, implement large-scale clean transportation
solutions and finance distributed energy projects, among other actions.
“The
devastation in Maui is a clear sign that the president must declare a climate
emergency — now. While FEMA is providing resources to the local heroes on the
ground fighting for the lives and livelihoods of Hawaiians, the underlying
climate-driven conditions of drought, extreme heat, environmental injustice,
and non-resilient infrastructure will remain,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in
a statement to POLITICO.
Rep. Earl
Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who has long called on Biden to take this step, said that
if the devastation in Hawaii isn’t a national emergency, “what is?”
“I refuse
to accept that people choosing between burning alive or jumping into the ocean
for hours on end is our new normal. This is a crisis and we need to treat it
that way. That starts with President Biden declaring a national climate
emergency to unlock vast federal resources and emergency powers to help our
communities prepare for and recover from these deadly climate disasters,” he
added.
Declaring a
climate emergency could come with political risks for an incumbent president
heading into an election year, potentially spurring a spike in already high gas
prices. Plus, any executive action Biden takes would likely face legal
challenges, including going up against a conservative Supreme Court that has
already ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the broad
authority to rein in carbon pollution.
Still,
advocates and lawmakers are pushing the president to be bold amid the latest
crisis, arguing that the move would also reap political benefits among
disillusioned young voters, as well as communities of color who have been
disproportionately harmed by the effects of climate change.
While polls
show that many Americans say they have heard little about the Inflation
Reduction Act — the largest climate-focused investment in U.S. history —
headlines on climate events have been continuous, and Biden’s approval for a
massive oil drilling project in Alaska known as Willow earlier this year drew
fierce opposition. Declaring a climate emergency would send a clear signal to
these voters, Ing said.
“If he did
that next week in Hawaii, I’d be standing right next to him. I’d be telling all
my friends. I’d be campaigning for him all the way up until November. Because
the stakes are too high to not. This is our last chance. There are six years
left to really hit the transition — to decarbonize at the rate we need to. So
this election, this is it,” he said.
The White
House has so far avoided committing to an official declaration, while the
president earlier this month said he has already “practically” declared a
climate emergency.
Last week,
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the president has
called the climate crisis an emergency since “day one,” noting that Biden has
used the Defense Production Act to jumpstart heat-pump manufacturing and the
building of the electric grid. He’s also used the DPA to deploy money to stand
up solar manufacturing and source needed materials for electric vehicles.
“While
we’re trying to deal with this existential threat, this climate change crisis,
the president is doing everything that he can to make sure that we are dealing
with this … in a way that actually leads to results,” Jean-Pierre said Monday
when asked if the president was considering declaring a national emergency.
“And that’s what the president is going to continue to do.”
She also
pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act’s investment in combating climate
change, which the White House celebrated last week on the legislation’s
one-year anniversary.
The work of
the Sunrise Movement and other climate organizations has been credited with
playing a key role in the passage of the country’s first climate law, which
Evan Weber, a co-founder of Sunrise, says is his life’s greatest
accomplishment.
Weber lives
in Oahu and has been working to assist with recovery efforts in his state, as
his friends in Lahaina continue to search for family members. Watching the
anniversary celebration in Washington this week while his state burned and
survivors provided DNA swabs to identify the ashes of their loved ones was
painful, said Weber, who co-founded the nonprofit Our Hawai’i.
“The
president and his Cabinet members often talk about the Inflation Reduction Act,
the bipartisan infrastructure law as once-in-a-generation investments. And I
think if that’s true, we are going to see a lot more Lahainas in the future,”
Weber said, adding that Biden has done a lot of work on climate. “But we also
really need him to know that just being the greatest president on climate
action in United States history is the lowest bar in the world to clear, and it
is not the same as acting at the scale of what science and the reality of our
people on the ground demands.”
The federal
response in Hawaii has been strong, Ing said, and the community is grateful for
Biden’s upcoming visit. The president moved quickly to declare a major disaster
declaration: There are over 1,000 federal responders on Maui and Oahu, and the
government has provided over $7 million in financial assistance to nearly 2,200
households, Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Deanne Criswell
told reporters Saturday.
There are
also 450 search and rescue teams on the ground, with 60 percent of the affected
area searched as of Saturday afternoon. The shelter population also continues
to fall, Criswell said, as FEMA, the Red Cross and the state pay for residents
to transition into hotels.
Details of
the president’s trip are still in flux, Criswell said, so it’s not yet clear if
Biden will survey damage on the ground or fly over the path of destruction.
The
president has vowed that Hawaii will get “everything it needs” and wants to
meet with survivors who have been directly affected Monday, Criswell said. The
hope among activists is that after the president sees the devastation in
person, and hears directly from the people of Maui and Lahaina, that his
promise will also include an official climate emergency declaration.
“It’s all
coming to a head, and we’re just in a moment now where this makes the most
sense,” said Michele Weindling, electoral director at Sunrise. “From every
angle that you look at it, it is so clear that Biden making a climate emergency
official is the no-brainer choice.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário