Joe Biden has unquestionably amassed one of the strongest climate policy records of any U.S. president. But for some green advocates, it’s not yet enough. What do they want? They say Biden needs to start shutting down fossil fuel infrastructure and shift the country and its economy away from oil and gas — in contrast to his greenlighting of oil drilling and gas pipeline projects in states like Alaska and West Virginia. This, they maintain, would more closely heed the warnings of climate scientists, who say drastic action is needed to head off the worst effects of global warming. Those activists tend to skew young, and they make up one of the voting blocs most essential to Biden’s reelection. Whether he can win them over looms large as he heads toward a likely showdown with former President Donald Trump, as I write today. “The climate movement is composed of a whole lot of young people who are really angry with Biden right now,” Colin Rees, U.S. program manager for the activist group Oil Change International, told me. The pause that the administration announced Friday on new natural gas export permits was clearly aimed at such voters. Biden partially credited the move — which comes after a year of record gas production — to the “calls of young people and frontline communities.” To some, that was a sign that the pressure is working. Jamal Raad, co-founder of Evergreen Action, a climate policy advocacy group, told me that election season is a “key moment” to push for more commitments and promises that raise the country’s climate ambitions. But others in the climate policy community worry that such pressure could backfire, causing a rift within the Democratic Party. They point out that Biden pushed through the largest climate law in U.S. history, pouring $369 billion into the economy for electric vehicles and renewable energy projects. The administration is also rolling out rules to cut power plant pollution and fine oil and gas companies for methane emissions. If climate voters don’t head to the polls come November, the next president may be Trump, whom Leah Stokes, a professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara, called a “climate arsonist.” “We have a responsibility as a climate movement to be telling the truth about Biden’s record, and yes to push him, but also to be communicating accurately about what he’s managed to accomplish and to be reckoning about the alternative, which is climate destruction,” she said.
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