President Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled a series of new executive actions to confront the mounting effects of global climate change following another stalled legislative push from the president and Senate Democrats to secure billions of dollars in climate and clean energy investments.
Biden detailed the unilateral effort during a visit to the shuttered Brayton Point coal-fired power plant in Somerset, Massachusetts. The facility is now being transformed into a manufacturing hub for submarine cables that will be used on offshore wind farms now being developed off the East Coast.
Biden called planetary warming a “clear and present danger” and said he has “a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve.”
“Let me be clear: Climate change is an emergency,” he said. “In the coming weeks, I’m going to use the power I have as president to turn these words into formal, official government actions through the appropriate proclamations, executive orders and regulatory power that a president possesses. When it comes to fighting climate change, I will not take no for an answer.”
The executive push includes actions to further advance the already rapidly growing U.S. offshore wind industry as well as better safeguard communities affected by extreme heat. But it falls far short of a national emergency declaration or the “beast mode” executive action that progressive lawmakers and climate hawks have demanded in recent days.
“Our focus is on what we can do in light of where we find ourselves, between the urgency of action and the clarity of opportunity that’s in front of us,” a senior White House official said during a press call ahead of Biden’s speech.
The Interior Department for the first time will propose establishing a pair of offshore wind areas in the Gulf of Mexico encompassing some 700,000 acres off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. Biden also directed the Interior Department to advance offshore wind off the mid- and southern Atlantic Coast, as well as and Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Biden also announced $2.3 billion in funding for FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program to help communities confront a myriad of climate impacts, from extreme heat and drought to flooding and wildfires. Those impacts have been on full display this week, as punishing heat and wildfires plague swaths of the U.S. and Europe.
Finally, the Department of Health and Human Services will issue new guidance to help states leverage funding through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) in order to build community cooling centers and purchase at-home air conditioners.
Last week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) ruled out any new climate spending in a scaled-down social spending package, seemingly upending months of negotiations on Capitol Hill. Manchin subsequently said he was still open to a bigger deal that includes climate funding and that he just wanted to see July’s inflation numbers first. But public outrage had already ballooned. Climate and environmental advocates condemned the coal state Democrat for negotiating in bad faith and urged Biden to immediately use his executive powers, including declaring a national climate emergency, to curb planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
Reporting earlier this week from The Washington Post and other media outlets indicated Biden was considering, even likely, to sign an emergency declaration as soon as today. But by Tuesday, the White House had at least temporarily sidelined the idea.
“The climate emergency is not going to happen tomorrow, but we still have it on the table,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said during a Tuesday briefing. “I don’t have a date circled in the calendar.”
In the 18 months since Biden took office, many climate activists, environmental groups and progressive Democrats have repeatedly called on the president to lean into his executive powers to confront the global threat, including halting new oil and gas leases on federal lands and blocking new pipelines and other fossil fuel projects.
That pressure only grew after Manchin torpedoed the climate talks on Capitol Hill last week. Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.) joined those calls, urging Biden to use the Defense Production Act to boost clean energy technologies.
“The potential to enact the legislation is dead,” Merkley told reporters previously. “This then frees up the president to use the full powers of the executive branch. And those full powers certainly include a climate emergency.”
The White House has signaled that Biden plans to take additional executive action on climate in the coming days and weeks.
Biden’s speech and the administration’s announcements Wednesday received mixed reviews from climate and environmental advocates. Many welcomed the executive actions but called on Biden to go further to rein in planet-warming fossil fuels.
“We appreciate that Biden feels like the climate crisis is an emergency, but now is the time for him to act like it,” JL Andrepont, a senior policy campaigner at environmental group 350.org, said in a statement. “The planet is burning; droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires are contributing to famine and death on almost every continent, while Biden waits to officially declare a Climate Emergency, and waits to use all of the powers at his disposal to comprehensively address the climate crisis.”
“What is needed right now is not more words, but action,” Andrepont said.