With time running out, the administration is scrambling to secure its legacy ahead of an incoming president who has vowed to shred it all.
By Marcus Baram for Capital & Main
Even before Election Day, environmental groups were suggesting ways that the Biden administration could protect the president’s climate agenda from an incoming president who has vowed to increase fossil fuel production and repeal major climate initiatives.
Since then, Biden has taken many of those steps — backing a proposal to curtail public financing for oil and gas projects around the globe, limiting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, protecting the endangered sage grouse and announcing tough new regulations banning or restricting the use of the chemicals trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, which are linked to cancers and other severe health problems.
But with just weeks to go before Donald Trump returns to the White House, vowing to slash regulations on the oil and gas industry and derail climate action, the Biden administration has still not addressed some of the most important policies that otherwise might not survive Trump’s second term.
“There’s a lot that Biden can still do in his remaining six weeks in office to stop the expansion of fossil fuels and send a powerful signal to distance himself from the incoming Trump administration and its fossil fuel cronies,” said Collin Rees, U.S. program manager of the climate nonprofit Oil Change International.
The administration recently released a long-awaited study on the economic and environmental impacts of new liquefied natural gas exports — which concluded that “unfettered exports would drive up gas prices and lead to a huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions” — but it stopped short of recommending a ban on such exports. Trump has vowed to renew LNG exports on his “very first day back,” though the study’s conclusions could be used to challenge some of those project approvals.
The Biden administration could deny liquefied natural gas export authorization permits for pending LNG terminals and even “claw back and deny” permits already issued by the administration, Rees said. He noted that if all pending projects are approved, U.S.-sourced liquefied natural gas emissions would exceed the European Union’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
The Environmental Protection Agency could take several steps as well — including granting California a waiver to enforce its ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars and trucks in the state by 2035. The administration is expected to grant such a waiver to California and 11 other states, the New York Times reported.
“Approving these waivers before Biden leaves office would create legal and procedural hurdles for any attempts to undo them, safeguarding long-term climate protections,” said Seth Nelson of the climate group Evergreen Action. “Finalizing waivers such as the Advanced Clean Cars II waiver is a vital step toward reducing climate pollution in the automotive sector and advancing the industry’s long-term decarbonization.”
In addition, the EPA’s enforcement office is reportedly rushing to assess penalties and reach settlements with companies accused of environmental violations — on the assumption that the Trump administration will offer them leniency.
In a statement to Capital & Main, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team said: “The Harris-Biden’s last-ditch effort to pass their green new climate scams, which the American people just roundly rejected in the election, will not deter President Trump’s Administration from using every tool to unleash America’s energy dominance.”
The White House did not respond to Capital & Main’s requests for comment.
The Biden administration is also rushing to push out climate-related grants, recently announcing that it had awarded more than $100 billion for climate-related projects. Among the most recent awards are $256 million in Rural Energy for America Program grants and loans from the Agriculture Department, a $120 million contract to electrify some federal buildings in the D.C. region and $147 million to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help assess the impact of climate change on fisheries.
Biden officials told Reuters that they are on track to exceed their goal of getting more than 80% of the Inflation Reduction Act funding out the door by the end of his term next month.
“When funds are obligated, they are protected,” an official told Reuters. “They are subject to the terms of the contract, so when those contracts are signed and executed, this becomes a matter of contract law more than a matter of politics.”
The majority of the IRA’s grants and subsidies have gone to red states, and lawmakers in those states are vigorously pushing to keep them. Eighteen Republican House members wrote a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson in August urging him not to scrap clean-energy tax credits in the law.
And environmentalists are urging the administration to extend its conservation legacy — when he took office, Biden vowed to set aside 30% of the country’s lands and waters for conservation by 2030. Among the recommended designations: Chuckwalla National Monument, a massive desert region south of Joshua Tree National Park, and the Owyhee, a million-acre watershed in Oregon that is threatened by the ranching industry.
Climate scientists and environmental officials in the administration are also taking steps to protect themselves from a Trump team; from 2017-2020 the first Trump administration reversed more than 100 federal rules and shut down studies.
A union that represents thousands of workers at the EPA recently secured a contract that includes protections for “scientific integrity” and is designed to “prevent inappropriate interference in scientific work” by allowing disputes to be heard by independent arbitrators instead of political appointees, among other measures.
Marie Owens Powell, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238 and a gas station storage tank inspector for the EPA, told HuffPost’s Dave Jamieson: “You can’t be forced to change data or the interpretation of the data, as long as it’s based in sound science.”
Among other steps the Biden administration could take as it nears the final curtain, Rees said, would be to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline, reject the GulfLink crude oil export terminal off the coast of Texas and release a “nationally determined commitment” that includes funding for climate mitigation and adaptation in Global South countries and a 80% reduction in domestic greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2035.
