The US President announces new measures for climate protection.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
Washington A few days after the failure of a comprehensive climate and economic package in the US Senate, President Joe Biden announced new measures to combat climate change. These include initiatives to boost the domestic offshore wind industry and actions to help communities cope with rising temperatures, the White House said. 2.3 billion US dollars (2.25 billion euros) are earmarked for a program by the National Disaster Management Agency (FEMA): It is intended to help people in the USA to prepare themselves for heat waves, droughts, forest fires, floods or hurricanes.
“Climate change is an existential threat to our nation and the world,” Biden said Wednesday while visiting a former coal-fired power plant in Somerset, Massachusetts, whose infrastructure will be used to support the offshore wind industry. “This is an emergency and that’s how I’m going to deal with it,” he said. After China, the United States is the world’s second largest emitter of climate-damaging gases.
Movement on the subject of climate protection is extremely important for the Democratic US President a few months before the US congressional elections. If the Democrats have little to offer when it comes to climate – one of their core issues – it will likely cost voters.
So far, Biden’s climate projects have failed in the US Senate, where the Democrats are dependent on all votes from their party due to a wafer-thin majority. The more conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin recently blocked a climate and economic package worth billions.
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The White House is therefore considering declaring a national climate emergency, a spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday. Such a declaration would allow the US President to divert federal funds, for example for the expansion of renewable energies.
The declaration could also serve as a legal basis for blocking oil and gas drilling, for example. That, in turn, could be challenged in court by energy companies or Republican-run states.
More: Resistance from the Supreme Court, headwind from within your own party: the US President’s climate policy is on the verge of disaster. Now he wants to take action.