The plan may move the country further from its pledge to slash the nation’s planet-warming pollution in half by 2030 compared with 2005 levels and help avert even fiercer fires, storms and drought driven by rising temperatures. Biden’s climate agenda now hinges on whether Democrats can pass a reconciliation package in the Senate that includes robust environmental policies.
“The Supreme Court just put a lead ball around his ankle with regard to his executive authority,” said John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “If you don’t get reconciliation, together with the constraints that the Supreme Court has put on, I think there’s no way you can get the 50 percent reduction by the end of the decade.”
But the offshore plan, along with other events this week, underscores the political and legal limits in the United States to tackle global warming, and carries risks for Democrats as Americans experience record-breaking gasoline prices ahead of November’s midterm election and as many in Biden’s base demand stricter limits on fossil fuels.
On Thursday, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court struck a blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to force power providers to stop burning coal. And Biden’s Interior Department was compelled by an injunction from a lower court to lease acreage in the Western United States this week for onshore drilling.
The consequences of warming 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels by continuing to burn other fossil fuels are enormous for humanity: If left unchecked, global warming may stall headway on combating hunger, poverty and disease worldwide. The International Energy Agency has urged halting investment in new fossil fuel supplies to meet that goal.
“We’re going to be slowing down the progress that we otherwise might be making,” said Brian O’Neill, a chief scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute and a lead author on a U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on impacts and vulnerability.
The Interior Department is considering 10 potential auctions in the Gulf of Mexico and one in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland emphasized that the plan has not been finalized and that her department is considering the option of having no lease sales at all. The plan narrows areas considered for oil and gas leasing from one proposed under President Donald Trump in 2018.
“A Proposed Program is not a decision to issue specific leases or to authorize any drilling or development,” Haaland said in a statement. “From Day One, President Biden and I have made clear our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy.”
During his bid for the White House, Biden vowed to ban new oil and gas drilling across federal lands and waters. “No more drilling on federal lands, period,” he said at a campaign event in New Hampshire. “Period, period, period.”
In the Senate, there is growing optimism that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who effectively ended negotiations over a previous iteration of a sweeping package, can strike a deal.