Extreme Temperature Diary- Tuesday November 21st, 2023/Main Topic: Why Biden Is Still Fanning the Flames of Climate Change

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The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉

Main Topic: Why Biden Is Still Fanning the Flames of Climate Change

Dear Diary. Yesterday we noted that the world has burned through the +2.0°C above preindustrial temperature threshold, at least temporarily (we hope), with the date of 11/17/2023 for this breakthrough held in infamy. Today we will point more fingers at someone fanning worldwide flames, a person who knows better but has done some good work as a president to combat the climate crisis. Biden can do better if he has a second term, but people, and particularly young people, need to hold their noses and vote for him in November 2024. Of course, another term by Trump would put the final nail in our climate coffins.

Here are details on why Biden’s flawed Inflation Reduction Act continues to raise the planet’s already too hot temperatures:

Biden’s Key Climate Law Gives Big Oil a ‘Massive Escape Hatch’: Analysis (commondreams.org)

Freshly painted banners for the ‘People vs. Fossil Fuels’ protests on October 11-15, 2023 are seen outside the White House in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Josh Yoder/Look Loud )

Biden’s Key Climate Law Gives Big Oil a ‘Massive Escape Hatch’: Analysis

“While the IRA was touted as the ‘largest investment in climate and energy in American history,’ it could turn out to be a failure if Biden doesn’t also take bold action on fossil fuels,” said Oil Change International.

By JULIA CONLEY

Nov 20, 2023

The 2022 law heralded as U.S. President Biden’s key climate achievement may support an expansion of clean energy, but a new analysis out Monday demonstrates how the Inflation Reduction Act leaves the fossil fuel industry with vast opportunities to extract more oil and gas and continue boosting its record-breaking profits at the expense of frontline communities.

The report, said Oil Change International (OCI) as it released the new findings, proves that the Biden administration can’t rely on the IRA to demonstrate its commitment to the emissions reduction that scientists agree is needed to mitigate the climate crisis.

Titled Biden’s Fossil Fuel Fail: How U.S. Oil and Gas Supply Rises Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Exacerbating Environmental Injustice and released 10 days before the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), the analysis uses previously unpublished data from climate modeling by the Rhodium Group, an environmental think tank.

“The model projects that despite the IRA’s investment in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and batteries, the United States could still miss its Paris Agreement goal of reducing U.S. emissions by 50 to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030,” reads the report, noting that as the world’s largest historical emitter of fossil fuel emissions, the U.S. has a responsibility to “cut its emissions faster than the global average.”

The group’s model projects that domestic fossil gas demand in the U.S. will decline by 16% by 2035, yet production is expected to rise by 7%. Petroleum demand is expected to decline by 20%, yet production will rise by 13%.

“The gap between production and demand is filled by surging exports,” explained OCI. “Gas exports are projected to double by 2035, while oil and petroleum product exports rise 23%.”

Wind and solar power are expected to replace gas domestically, added the organization, but the positive effects of the decline in gas demand in the U.S. are “tempered by an increase in gas consumption within the oil and gas industry itself.”

The “energy-hungry” liquefied natural gas (LNG) export sector will essentially cancel out progress made by surging wind and solar power in the U.S., said OCI, with gas consumption by LNG export plants growing 140% by 2035.

“The Biden administration touts the Inflation Reduction Act as a centerpiece of its achievements on climate,” said Collin Rees, U.S. campaign manager for OCI. “In reality, the bill leaves a massive escape hatch for the fossil fuel industry to continue business as usual.”

Rhodium’s modeling projects that the U.S. will miss its targeted emissions reduction for 2030 by 16-18 percentage points if the Biden administration relies on the IRA and its investments in technological fixes like carbon capture and storage and fossil hydrogen production while allowing continued investments in oil and gas exports.

“While the IRA was touted as the ‘largest investment in climate and energy in American history,’ it could turn out to be a failure if Biden doesn’t also take bold action on fossil fuels,” said OCI in a statement. “As the world gathers for COP28, Biden still has a chance to be the climate leader he claims he is by making a commitment to phasing out fossil fuels.”

The phase-out of all oil and gas production in the U.S. is widely recognized as necessary by energy and climate experts, and has long been demanded by advocates for frontline communities, which bear a disproportionate public health burden due to the strong links between fossil fuel extraction, storage, and transport and harms including respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and poor outcomes for pregnant people and infants.

Boosting fossil fuel production and exports “while exacerbating pollution in environmental justice communities,” said OCI, is a “deadly combination.”

Roishetta Sibley Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, said Biden’s approval of projects like the Willow oil drilling initiative in Alaska, nearly $2 billion for publicly financed fossil fuel projects abroad, and his support for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, among other pollution-causing infrastructure, has shown frontline communities that the president’s campaign promises regarding environmental justice were “nothing but a smokescreen.”

“We supported [President Joe] Biden for change, not to deal with deadly decisions made without us at the table,” said Ozane. “The fight against climate disaster is collective, and the United States cannot preach about caring for communities while exporting pollution globally.”

The pollution impacts of continued fossil fuel production and exports will be “disproportionately borne by Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities—specifically in Appalachia, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico,” said OCI.

To align with Biden’s stated climate goals, the group said, the president’s efforts must go far beyond the IRA and include a phase-out of oil and gas exports, an end to fossil fuel leasing on federal lands, and a halt to all approvals for new fossil fuel infrastructure.

“At COP28 the spotlight will be on our collective effort to end the fossil fuel era,” said Rees. “Will the United States deliver, or will Biden’s climate legacy be one of disastrous oil and gas expansion and failure to adequately tackle the climate crisis?”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

JULIA CONLEY

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:

Here is more October 2023 Climatology:

Here is More Climate and Weather News from Tuesday:

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)

Today’s News on Sustainable Energy, Traditional Polluting Energy from Fossil Fuel, and the Green Revolution:

More from the Weather Department:

More on the Environment and Nature:

More on Other Science and the Beauty of Earth and this Universe:

If you like these posts and my work on record temperature ratios, please contribute via my PayPal widget on this site. Thanks in advance for any support. 

Guy Walton… “The Climate Guy”

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