Following the historic fires in Maui, Hawaii, climate activists and lawmakers ramped up a plea to President Biden to declare a national climate emergency. Such a declaration would allow the president to take more actions aimed at reducing the toll and destruction of climate-driven disasters.
“Tomorrow, you could wake up and your whole community could be ashes,” Kaniela Ing, a Maui resident and the national director of the Green New Deal Network, a climate justice organization, told Politico amid the Maui fire disaster. “That’s the urgency we’re operating under, so if there was ever a moment to declare a climate emergency, it is right now.” Lawmakers, mostly Democrats, also urged the president to consider an emergency declaration.
“I refuse to accept that people choosing between burning alive or jumping into the ocean for hours on end is our new normal,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) told Politico. “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.”
If he declared a climate emergency, President Biden could take quicker, more independent action on issues such as limiting greenhouse gas production and implementing large-scale clean transportation structures. When pressed on the issue in August amid the Maui fires, President Biden said that he has “practically” declared an emergency already.
“We’ve conserved more land; we’ve moved into rejoining the Paris Climate Accord; we’ve got a $60 billion climate control facility,” Biden said during an interview with the Weather Channel. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre echoed President Biden’s sentiments, noting that the administration has used the Defense Production Act to increase heat-pump manufacturing, electric vehicle manufacturing and the building of the electric grid as well as funding solar manufacturing.
She also pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act’s investment in reducing negative climate change effects. While the president has yet to declare a climate emergency, some Republicans are moving to prevent that from even being a possibility and in June 2023 reintroduced the Real Emergencies Act, which would deny the president the ability to declare a national emergency, an emergency or major disaster, or a public health emergency due to climate change.
“The Biden administration has repeatedly governed by executive overreach when it comes to energy and environmental regulations, ignoring the law and doing so without congressional approval,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who introduced the bill, said in a statement.
“These regulations have made us less energy independent, led to higher prices for consumers, and created uncertainty for employers and workers across the country. The Real Emergencies Act would ensure the president cannot go further by declaring a national emergency, which would grant him more executive authority and grow the size of government all in the name of climate change.” The bill, which currently has 14 Republican co-sponsors, was initially introduced in 2022 but did not advance in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Critics of the bill point to links between some of its sponsors and the oil and gas industry.
For example, there are reports that Capito and her husband own stocks in a utility company that is advocating for a new pipeline in Capito’s home state. Outside of the Real Emergencies Act, other skeptics of declaring a climate emergency argue that it could do more harm than good because it may not address and could potentially even distract from the root causes of specific disasters and localized issues.
“Whole-of-government climate policies are a distraction from implementing practical policies that could make a tangible improvement,” Mandy Gunasekara, director of the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Energy and Conservation and a former chief of staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, wrote in an op-ed for The Hill. Gunasekara also argued that a climate emergency could be more nebulous than other types of national emergencies given the indefinite nature of climate change. “None of these limits would apply to a climate change emergency.”
Given the likelihood of ongoing environmental disasters in the U.S., President Biden will likely continue to face pressure to declare a climate emergency.
For more background, see the May 2022 issue of Congressional Digest on the “Green New Deal.”
