After campaigning for a historic climate and an environmental agenda, which went well beyond the Trump administration’s damage, President Joe Biden had a disappointing start to his first year in office. The Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund concluded Monday.
“Biden’s environmental agenda is at the edge of collapse.”
The nonprofit published another “report card” six months after the release of the first one in July. AssessmentThe environmental record of his administration. Both cases were given a C- grade by the group for “desperately needed improvement”.
The new report warns Biden’s environmental agenda is on the brink of collapse, with his signature Build back Better Act in danger. The Senate has held the House-approved bill up, and it needs support from all Democrat in order to pass.
According to the analysis, Biden “squandered” his first year in office by following former President Barack Obama’s strategy of prioritizing legislation above executive action.
The administration’s long-delayed legislative packages is not the only failure. As the document details:
His administration has broken many key climate promises made during his campaign, including a foundational promise to end all new offshore or onshore fossil fuel leases on public lands and to stop fossil fuel subsidies.
Worse, the Biden Administration continues to support fossil-fuel extraction. The administration’s climate-change-fueling actions cannot be reconciled to its climate rhetoric, from holding the largest lease sale in U.S. History in the Gulf of Mexico, to supporting additional coal mining on public lands and offshore drilling in Cook Inlet.
Brett Hartl, chief political strategist at the center, Monday’s statement stated that the president had broken his promise to stop new drilling on public lands, and waters. This is a serious breach of trust.
Hartl warned, “President Biden said the right thing when he was elected, but he’s walking away more and more from his environmental promises.”
Overall, the group considered 25 of Biden’s key environmental pledges made during the campaign. His administration has only broken two of the pledges, according to the report, but it could violate at least two more if Build Back Better Act is not passed.
The report says that “The Biden administration has fulfilled six campaign promises, and partially achieved four additional goals.” “The administration has yet not started any meaningful action in order to enact four campaign pledges. Nine more are in progress, but it’s too early to know if they will be fully realized or partially.
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The document also criticizes Biden’s failures to address the damage done in former President Donald Trump’s “devastating environment rollbacks”. It notes that there have been only 11 reversals of Trump’s policies and some progress on eight others over the past year.
The report states that out of 50 Trump administration actions that were detrimental to our public lands, wildlife and our ability to combat climate change and other scourges of polluting, 13 have been ignored by the Biden administration.
“Worse, this administration is supporting the previous government’s position on 12 additional rollbacks,” the assessment states. “Including supporting the Line 3 pipeline, continued operation of Dakota Access pipeline, widespread use of toxic pesticides like atrazine, and the construction a terrible road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.”
Hartl stated that it was difficult to imagine how the Trump administration could keep any other major promise, given its failure to address half of Trump’s environmental destructions.
Noting the Covid-19 crisis that is still raging, the assessment also highlights that “despite the direct connection between the destruction of biodiversity and the spread of diseases that jump from wildlife to people… the Biden administration has failed to take a single meaningful action to address the root causes of such pandemics.”
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The report outlines Biden’s failures and makes three detailed recommendations to the administration. They are asked to keep campaign promises, reverse Trump-era rollbacks and make “bold progress” on the intertwined climate/extinction crises.
Hartl stated that “the administration needs to make major course corrections to fulfill key environmental commitments because the climate- and extinction crises continue to get more dire each day.” Hartl’s group plans to release a new report in July.
“The climate crisis punishes all delay with greater catastrophe,” he warned. “And the president needs to get serious about preventing it now.”