Biden touts climate efforts as advocacy groups back re-election
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US President Joe Biden has sought to solidify high-profile endorsements for his re-election campaign.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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NEW YORK – US President Joe Biden defended his record confronting climate change and earned the endorsement of major conservation groups as he sought to consolidate support for his 2024 re-election campaign
“Your work has never been more important than it is today,” Mr Biden said at the annual dinner of the League of Conservation Voters in Washington. “Together, we’ve made a lot of progress so far, but we’ve got to finish the job.”
Before Mr Biden’s remarks, the league and other top environmental groups – including the Sierra Club, National Resources Defence Council’s Action Fund, and the NextGen political action committee – announced their backing of his candidacy.
“There’s no support I’d rather have,” Mr Biden said. “You know, many of you have been with me throughout my career and I can’t tell you how much it means.”
The endorsements are some of the earliest by major environmental groups in a presidential contest. It is also the first time the four groups have made a joint endorsement.
In lining up behind the President more than 16 months before the election, some advocates said they hoped to remind Democratic voters that Mr Biden had enacted the biggest climate legislation in US history, pouring at least US$370 billion (S$497 billion) into clean energy and electric vehicles. His administration has also proposed strict regulations on pollution from automobiles,
“This is an administration that has done more to advance climate solutions than any by far,” said Ms Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice-president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters.
“Certainly we don’t agree with every decision that they’ve made, but on balance this administration has done far more than any in history,” Ms Sittenfeld said. She said the groups intend to recruit members to raise money for Mr Biden’s campaign, participate in phone banks and attend rallies, particularly in battleground states.
The President, 80, has sought to solidify high profile endorsements for his re-election campaign in the weeks since formally entering the race, hoping outside groups can help counteract poll numbers that show lagging enthusiasm and concerns about his age.
Mr Biden campaigned in 2020 on the most ambitious climate agenda of any candidate, promising to slash US emissions roughly in half this decade. Young voters, who surveys show are particularly concerned about global warming, turned out in force during that election. Half of eligible voters ages 18 to 29 cast ballots in that election, one of the highest rates of participation since the voting age was lowered to 18, according to the Centre for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.
The landmark climate law that Mr Biden signed last year is projected to reduce America’s climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions by up to some 1 billion tonnes in 2030, and proposed regulations could eliminate as much as roughly 13 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2055.
But Mr Biden also promised “no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period”.
Yet some climate activists have expressed dismay over the White House’s willingness to expedite federal permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline in the debt-ceiling deal brokered late last month. The US$6.6 billion pipeline would carry natural gas across West Virginia from Marcellus Shale fields to the North Carolina line, and is a pet project of Mr Joe Manchin, the state’s influential Democratic senator, who is facing a potentially difficult re-election campaign of his own next year.
Other environmentalists have expressed their displeasure over Mr Biden’s approval of a US$8 billion drilling project that will allow ConocoPhillips to develop three well pads at the Willow site, part of a protected reserve in Alaska.
“You cannot honour the President and call him a climate champion when he is actively approving new fossil fuel projects,” said Mr Michael Greenberg, president of Climate Defiance, referring to the Mountain Valley protect.
Climate Defiance members intended to protest outside the League of Conservation Voters dinner Wednesday night, Mr Greenberg said. The non-profit group has been disrupting events featuring Biden administration officials and other Democrats.
At a demonstration against the Mountain Valley Pipeline in front of the White House last week, Ms Alice Hu, 25, said Mr Biden’s climate legacy has been undercut by his approval of oil and gas development. As smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires hung in the air, Ms Hu said the President needed to take on the fossil fuel industry in order to get her vote.
“If he wants to count on progressive votes, if he wants to count on youth votes, he needs to stop being a climate villain,” she said.
Ms Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez, president of NextGen America, which is focused on young voters’ participation, said her group hoped to counter that dissent by endorsing Mr Biden now. She noted that since Mr Biden was elected in 2020, 17 million people have reached voting age.
“We know we need to spend the time and money to tell young people about why their vote still matters, and that’s why we’re doing this endorsement so early,” she said.
The front-runner in the 2024 Republican field, former president Donald Trump, has attacked Mr Biden’s climate policies, mocked climate science and championed the production of the fossil fuels chiefly responsible for warming the planet.
Mr Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist and pollster, said young, climate-minded voters are going to be critical to Mr Biden’s re-election. But he also argued that while young people want to see the President do more to tackle climate change, there is little evidence that those angry over Willow or the Mountain Valley Pipeline will have much influence.
Still, Mr Garin said, the Biden campaign needs to be better at communicating his climate achievements. “For Biden, what he’s dealing with with young voters is a lack of recognition of what he’s done rather than hostility to any particular decision or policy,” he said.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Biden issued the sixth veto of his presidency, of a Bill that would have rolled back stronger vehicle emissions standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Separately, the Treasury Department announced new guidance allowing churches and non-profit organisations to be able to take advantage of clean energy tax credits for buses.
“Imagine the choice – imagine seeing all this happening in the wildfires, storms, floods, and doing nothing about it,” Mr Biden said. “Imagine taking away those clean energy jobs from working class folks all across the country. Imagine turning your back on all those mums and dads living in towns poisoned by pollution and telling them, ‘Sorry, you’re on your own.’ I was determined not to let that happen.”
The President’s re-election campaign said in a statement that the joint endorsement from the environmental groups was a “powerful recognition of President Biden’s historic climate agenda”. BLOOMBERG/NYTIMES
