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      Right seizes Trump playbook to blame migrants for environmental harm

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      Joe Biden has sought to spur an expansion in renewable energy and electric vehicles since entering the White House but his climate agenda has also stirred something wholly unintended – a surge in blame foisted upon migrants for environmental degradation.An unusual lawsuit filed last month by Mark Brnovich, Arizona’s attorney general, is indicative of a growing nativist framing of the climate crisis, according to academics. In the lawsuit, Brnovich, a Republican, demands the reinstatement of Donald Trump’s immigration policies to help remedy the “pollution and stress on natural resources” caused by migrants who move to the US.“Migrants (like everyone else) need housing, infrastructure, hospitals, and schools,” the lawsuit reads. “They drive cars, purchase goods, and use public parks and other facilities. Their actions also directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which directly affects air quality.”Groups opposed to immigration and “overpopulation” have also found fresh impetus following the election of Biden. One group, called NumbersUSA, has complained that huge swaths of Arizona have been paved over due to immigration policies that amount to a “forced US population growth program”.Another organization, Negative Population Growth, recently launched a new campaign aimed at persuading the US president to undertake a “complete elimination of illegal and quasi-legal immigration and reduction of current legal immigration by 80%” in order to slash planet-heating emissions.Craig Lewis, executive vice-president of the group, urged members and supporters to bombard the White House with pleas to limit America’s population growth. “If the goal is to reduce emissions, it stands to reason that the number of emitters must be part of any calculations considered,” Lewis said.Concerns over population growth are not new, but the recent rhetoric indicates that the rightwing response to the climate crisis could be shifting from dismissal to antipathy aimed at the actions of other countries and their migrants as the impacts of global heating become undeniable, researchers have suggested.“This sort of language is coming back again and it’s not surprising,” said Betsy Hartmann, an academic at Hampshire College who specializes in the environment and migration. “The overt position of Trump to blame immigrants for crime and calling Mexicans rude names mobilized these tropes and now we have a liberal administration they being adapted to these times.”Hartmann said she was “very concerned this will be used by far-right groups to fuel hatred. It has become a sort of conventional wisdom now, which poses a real danger.”Warnings over unsustainable population growth stretch back decades, spanning proponents of Malthusianism and environmental groups that advocated for limited family sizes to reduce pressures upon the natural world. The issue is still occasionally aired by progressives and environmentalists – Jane Goodall, the famed primatologist, said last year that many ecological issues “wouldn’t be a problem” with a smaller population.But more recently the theme has been seized upon by those on the right pushing for toughened borders. France’s far-right National Rally party has declared that “borders are the environment’s greatest ally; it is through them that we will save the planet”, while, in Germany, the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany has warned the country’s environment faces “a great danger” if it allows in more migrants.In the US, the most prominent voices linking environmentalism with anti-immigration has been the web of groups dubbed the Tanton network, named after John Tanton, an ophthalmologist from Michigan who was once active in the Sierra Club and died in 2019. The Center for Immigration Studies, one of these groups, has welcomed Brnovich’s lawsuit.“Arizona is the first state to sue, but we can hope that it will not be the last,” said Julie Axelrod, director of litigation at the group and former adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency during Trump’s presidency. “The environmental consequences of immigration have never been more apparent.”The most extreme versions of this thinking, known as eco-fascism, has cropped up in the screeds issued by those accused of mass murder. Shortly before Patrick Crusius entered a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019 and shot dead 23 people and injured dozens of others, police say he uploaded a rambling manifesto to the 8chan website where he complained about the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and how “the environment is getting worse by the year.”According to some scientists, blaming migrants for the unfolding climate and biodiversity crises racking Earth not only stokes resentment, it also obscures more important causes such as overconsumption by the planet’s richest – the world’s wealthiest 10% produce around a half of all consumption-based emissions, while the poorest half of humanity contributes only 10% – and the entrenched power of fossil fuel companies and their political allies.Environmental groups have now largely moved away from talking about overpopulation to focus on these other themes. “In the environmental community it has become a bit of a third rail issue. It’s very difficult to talk about,” said Dale Jamieson, a professor of environmental studies and philosophy at New York University.Jamieson added: “But if you’re trying to hang environmental concerns on to an anti-immigration agenda, that is so transparent, it’s just not sincere.“When it comes to problems like climate change, nationalism is the problem, not the solution. Ecological boundaries do not care about national boundaries so trying to solve climate change within one nation state is not an effective way of doing things.” More

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      ‘Decades ahead of his time’: history catches up with visionary Jimmy Carter

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      When I reach Jimmy Carter’s grandson by Zoom, he answers wearing a Raphael Warnock campaign T-shirt. Jason Carter is a lawyer and politician himself, mid-40s, animated and well-read, with blue eyes reminiscent of his grandfather’s. He’s just got off the phone with his 93-year-old grandmother, Rosalynn. It’s a special day; Joe Biden is on his way to the Carter house in Plains, Georgia.“My grandfather has met nearly everyone in the world he might want to,” Jason Carter says. “Right now, he’s meeting with the president of the United States. But the person he’d say he learned the most from was Rachel Clark, an illiterate sharecropper who lived on his family’s farm.“He didn’t pity her,” Carter says. “He saw her power. My grandfather believes in the power of a single human and a small community. Protect people’s freedoms, he says, and they can do great things. It all comes back to an enormous respect for human beings.”Carter is openly moved speaking about his grandfather, though it’s also clear he does so often. A spate of recent biographies and documentaries shows not just a renewed interest in the former president, but a willingness to update the public narrative surrounding his time in office. Recent biographer Jonathan Alter calls Carter “perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history”.Carter, who lost his bid for re-election in a so-called landslide to Reagan in 1980, is often painted as a “failed president” – a hapless peanut farmer who did not understand how to get things done in Washington, and whose administration was marked by inflation, an energy crisis and the Iran hostage disaster.Subsequent presidents, especially fellow southern Democrat Bill Clinton, kept a distance – assumably not wanting to be seen as part of a political narrative that emphasized piety over getting things done. Even Obama was apparently wary of being associated with the sort of soft-hearted ineffectuality ascribed to Carter.But was Carter actually so ineffectual?In his 2020 biography of Carter, Alter speaks to a more nuanced interpretation of Carter, calling him “a surprisingly consequential president – a political and stylistic failure, but a substantive and far-sighted success”. It is, perhaps, the far-sighted nature of Carter’s ambitions, particularly around energy, that allows us to appreciate him more four decades after his term concluded.Born in 1924, Carter is now 96. Americans must process his mortality and the onset of climate change, which Carter explicitly warned the nation about 40 years ago.Carterland, a just released documentary, offers a particularly sharp focus on Carter’s extensive work on conservation, climate and justice.[embedded content]“Here’s what people get wrong about Carter,” Will Pattiz, one of the film’s directors tells me. “He was not in over his head or ineffective, weak or indecisive – he was a visionary leader, decades ahead of his time trying to pull the country toward renewable energy, climate solutions, social justice for women and minorities, equitable treatment for all nations of the world. He faced nearly impossible economic problems – and at the end of the day came so very close to changing the trajectory of this nation.”Will’s brother, Jim, agrees. “A question folks should be asking themselves is: what catastrophes would have befallen this country had anyone other than Jimmy Carter been at the helm during that critical time in the late 1970s?”Those late 1970s were defined by inflation, the cold war, long lines at gas pumps, and a shift in cultural mores. Carter himself showed a willingness to grow. Although Carter served in the navy himself, he pardoned Vietnam draft-dodgers. Though from a segregated and racist background in Georgia, Carter pushed for affirmative action and prioritized diversity among judicial nominees, including the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amalya Lyle Kearse. He employed Mary Prince, a Black woman wrongly accused of murder, as his daughter Amy’s nanny, a move criticized by some contemporary thinkers as perpetuating domestic servitude.What was radical in the 1970s can appear backwards decades later; the public narrative works in both directions. Carter is, in some respects, difficult to narrativize because he could be both startlingly conservative – financially, or in his appeal to the deep south’s evangelicals – and progressive, particularly on human rights and climate. He seemed to act from his personal compass, rather than a political one.He startled the globe by personally brokering the critical Middle East peace treaty between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin at Camp David. He ceded access to the Panama canal, angering conservatives who thought he was giving away an American asset. Through the Alaska Natural Interests Lands Conservation Act, he doubled the national park system and conserved over 100m acres of land – the most sweeping expansion of conserved land in American history.He was not afraid to make unpopular moves, or ask for personal sacrifice. He was old-fashioned and a futurist, and nowhere did his futurism matter more, or seem more prescient, than on climate and conservation. He risked speaking directly to the American public, and asking them to do a difficult thing – focus on renewable energy and reduce reliance on oil.He paid the price for this frank ask, and so did we.In advance of his trip to Plains, Georgia, Biden participated in a video tribute to Carter, joining an all-star cast of Georgia politicians, the familiar faces of Senator Jon Ossoff, Senator Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams serving as an affirming nod to Georgia’s return to political importance.The messages address the substance of the film, but also serve as a heartfelt thank you to a former president who has only recently begun to look prescient on climate, and singular in his moral bearing.“He has always lived his values,” Abrams says in the video.“Our world cries out for moral and ethical leadership,” Warnock offers. “Few have embodied it as clearly and consistently as Carter.”“He showed us what it means to be a public servant, with an emphasis on servant,” Biden says.[embedded content]Many Americans can’t help but spot a link between Carter and Biden – who became the first elected official outside of Georgia to support Carter’s bid for the presidency in 1976. Biden’s colleagues decried him as an “exuberant” idealist at the time.There’s also an increasingly stark comparison between the Carter and the Trump administration.James Gustave Speth served as the chairman of Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality. As Carter’s chief adviser on environmental matters, Speth helped brief Carter on climate change and direct policy. He finds the contrast between Carter and Trump “striking”.“People see now that Carter was at a pole,” Speth tells me. “Carter was the opposite of Trump – and everything that people despised about him. Carter had integrity, honesty, candor and a commitment to the public good of all else. Carter was a different man, totally.”Carter’s vice-president, Walter Mondale, died a month ago at 93, perhaps putting an exclamation mark on the need to expedite overdue praise and understanding. Speth agrees that it would be best to speed up our recognition of Carter. “So many fine things are said over the bodies of the dead,” Speth said. “I’d love to have the recognition occur now.”Speth is also working on his own book on the Carter administration, that covers the Carter and subsequent administrations on climate and energy and highlights the failure to build on the foundation that Carter laid. His project, soon to be published with MIT, carries a damning title: They Knew.One of the most profound– even painful – parts of watching documentaries like Carterland is bearing witness to the fact that Carter was right on asking us to drive less, to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to focus on conservation and renewable energy. Not only was Carter’s vision a path not taken, it was a path mocked. Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House, politicized the environmental movement and painted it as a fringe endeavor.“Carter was our only president who had a visceral environmental and ecological attachment. That was part of his being,” Speth says. “We had an opportunity in 1980 – but we’ve lost 40 years in the pursuit of a climate-safe path. We can no longer avoid serious and destructive changes, period. That didn’t have to happen.”I ask Speth why getting Carter’s legacy right matters. First, Speth says, it’s important to recognize the example Carter set for looking ahead, in a culture that prizes soundbites and short-term gains. “Carter was a trained engineer who believed in science,” Speth points out. “He understood things on a global scale, and believed in forecasting. Preparing for the long run is rare in politics.”Carter’s biographer Alter agrees. “If there is a gene for duty, responsibility and the will to tackle messy problems with little or no potential for political gain,” he writes, “Jimmy Carter was born with it.”While none of these recent documentaries or biographies seeks to portray Carter as a saint or even politically savvy, they do insist that his presidency was more successful than history has acknowledged, particularly on the energy, conservation and human rights fronts. Still, there are aspects of his single term that will probably remain embedded in his narrative, such as his tenuous relationship with Congress, early catering to segregationists to win votes, and Iran’s hostage crisis.What can we learn from the shifting narrative around Carter’s presidency?“You can talk about how Carter was an underrated president,” film-maker Jim Pattiz says. “But can you ask yourself: what qualities do you actually want in a leader? Do you want someone who will challenge you to be better, or speak in catchphrases and not ask much of you?“This film is a cautionary tale,” Pattiz says. “We can elect another Carter. Let’s reward leaders willing to do the right thing.”Jason Carter has lived with the nuances and inconsistencies in the narrative surrounding his grandfather’s presidency his entire life. “Stories are always summaries,” he says. “They leave out so much so that we can understand them in simple terms. Public narrative, these days, is so often about politics. It should really be about the great, public problems we’re solving. There’s a difference.“I don’t want history to be kind to my grandfather,” Jason Carter tells me. “I just want history to be honest.” More

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      Dare we hope? Here’s my cautious case for climate optimism | Rebecca Solnit

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      That we are living in science fiction was brought home to me last week when I put down Kim Stanley Robinson’s superb climate-futures novel The Ministry for the Future and picked up Bill McKibben’s New Yorker letter on climate, warning of the melting of the Thwaites Glacier, “already known as the ‘doomsday glacier’ because its collapse could raise global sea levels by as much as three feet”. Where we are now would have seemed like science fiction itself 20 years ago; where we need to be will take us deeper into that territory.Three things matter for climate chaos and our response to it – the science reporting on current and potential conditions, the technology offering solutions, and the organizing which is shifting perspectives and policy. Each is advancing rapidly. The science mostly gives us terrifying news of more melting, more storms, more droughts, more fires, more famines. But the technological solutions and the success of the organizing to address this largest of all crises have likewise grown by leaps and bounds. For example, ideas put forth in the Green New Deal in 2019, seen as radical at the time, are now the kind of stuff President Biden routinely proposes in his infrastructure and jobs plans.It’s not easy to see all the changes – you have to be a wonk to follow the details on new battery storage solutions or the growth of solar power in cheapness, proliferation, efficiency and possibility, or new understanding about agriculture and soil management to enhance carbon sequestration. You have to be a policy nerd to keep track of the countless new initiatives around the world. They include, recently, the UK committing to end overseas fossil fuel finance in December, the EU in January deciding to “discourage all further investments into fossil-fuel-based energy infrastructure projects in third countries”, and the US making a less comprehensive but meaningful effort this spring to curtail funding for overseas extraction. In April, oil-rich California made a commitment to end fossil fuel extraction altogether – if by a too-generous deadline. A lot of these policies have been deemed both good and not good enough. They do not get us to where we need to be, but they lay the foundation for further shifts, and like the Green New Deal many of them seemed unlikely a few years ago.We have crossed barriers that seemed insurmountable at the end of the last millenniumThe US itself has, of course, made a huge U-turn with a presidency that has begun by undoing much of what the previous administration did, reregulating what was deregulated, restarting support for research, and rejoining the Paris climate accords. The Biden administration is regularly doing things that would have been all but inconceivable in previous administrations, and while it deserves credit, more credit should go to the organizers who have redefined what is necessary, reasonable and possible. Both technologically and politically far more is possible. There are so many moving parts. The dire straits of the fossil fuel industry is one of them – as the climate journalist Antonia Juhasz put it recently: “The end of oil is near.”The organization Carbon Tracker, whose reports are usually somber reading, just put out a report so stunning the word encouraging is hardly adequate. In sum, current technology could produce a hundred times as much electricity from solar and wind as current global demand; prices on solar continue to drop rapidly and dramatically; and the land required to produce all this energy would take less than is currently given over to fossil fuels. It is a vision of a completely different planet, because if you change how we produce energy you change our geopolitics – for the better – and clean our air and renew our future. The report concludes: “The technical and economic barriers have been crossed and the only impediment to change is political.” Those barriers seemed insurmountable at the end of the last millennium.One of the things that’s long been curious about this crisis is that the amateurs and newcomers tend to be more alarmist and defeatist than the insiders and experts. What the climate journalist Emily Atkin calls “first-time climate dudes” put forth long, breathless magazine articles, bestselling books and films announcing that it’s too late and we’re doomed, which is another way to say we don’t have to do a damned thing, which is a way to undermine the people who are doing those things and those who might be moved to do them.The climate scientist Michael Mann takes these people on – he calls them inactivists and doomists – in his recent book The New Climate Wars, which describes the defeatism that has succeeded outright climate denial as the great obstacle to addressing the crisis. He echoes what Carbon Tracker asserted, writing: “The solution is already here. We just need to deploy it rapidly and at a massive scale. It all comes down to political will and economic incentives.” The climate scientist Diana Liverman shares Mann’s frustration. She was part of the international team of scientists who authored the 2018 “hothouse Earth” study whose conclusions were boiled down, by the media, into “we have 12 years”.The report, she regularly points out, also described what we can and must do “to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System – biosphere, climate, and societies – and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.” It was a warning but also a promise that if we did what science tells us we must, we would not preserve the current order but form a better one.Another expert voice for hope is Christiana Figueres, who as executive secretary of the United Nations framework convention on climate change negotiated the Paris climate accords in 2015. As she recently declared: “This decade is a moment of choice unlike any we have ever lived. All of us alive right now share that responsibility and that opportunity. The optimism I’m speaking of is not the result of an achievement, it is the necessary input to meeting a challenge. Many now believe it is impossible to cut global emissions in half in this decade. I say, we don’t have the right to give up or let up.” She speaks of how impossible a treaty like the one she negotiated seemed after the shambles at the end of the 2009 Copenhagen meeting.Each shift makes more shifts possible. But only if we go actively toward the possibilities rather than passively into the collapseThe visionary organizer adrienne maree brown wrote not long ago: “I believe that all organizing is science fiction – that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle …” All these voices have taken the side of hope in the imagination battle, offering choices and possibilities and the responsibilities that come with those things, as does the actual science fiction in The Ministry for the Future, which takes a turn for the utopian by the end. When I began reading it, apocalyptic news seemed to chime in with the novel. But as I finished it I ran across stories about Scotland’s plans to rewild much of its land, which could have come from the book. And I saw the astonishing news that on the afternoon of Saturday 24 April, California got more than 90% of its energy from renewables.That we cannot see all the way to the transformed society we need does not mean it is impossible. We will reach it by not one great leap but a long journey, step by step. If we see how impossible our current reality might have seemed 20 years ago – that solar would be so cheap, that Scotland would get 97% of its electricity from renewables, that fossil fuel corporations would be in freefall – we can trust that we could be moving toward an even more transformed and transformative future, and that it is not a set destination but, for better or worse, what we are making up as we go. Each shift makes more shifts possible. But only if we go actively toward the possibilities rather than passively into the collapse. More

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      Targets like 'net-zero' won't solve the climate crisis on their own | Mathew Lawrence

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      Last week was a critical time in the global response to the climate emergency: the US vowed to cut its emissions by at least 50% by 2030, while the UK government committed to reducing emissions by 78% by 2035, relative to a 1990 baseline. Both announcements were important steps that reflected the significance of one particular tool in climate governance: the target. From the legally binding targets in the UK’s Climate Change Act (2008) to those of the 2015 Paris agreement, targets define a sense of direction and signpost of ambition. Alone, however, targets are not enough. We need more than just targets to transition to a post-carbon future. We need planning.Despite what free-market economists may suggest, markets are not “free”, nor do they emerge spontaneously. They are created and sustained by governments, laws and political institutions, which plan how they operate and whose interests they serve. What’s more, the global economy, far from being organised by the anarchy of competition, is itself structured by institutions with vast planning power. Targets may dominate the headlines, but it’s these institutions of planning that are central to the climate struggle.Central banks are at the apex of economic planning. The actions of central banks during the Covid-19 emergency, such as buying assets to stabilise turbulent financial markets and controlling interest rates, reflect the coordinating function they perform. Financial institutions, from banks to treasuries, also structure the global economy and plan our economic and environmental future by choosing which businesses and activities to invest in. Decisions about who gets liquidity and who doesn’t are the difference between a business living or dying, stagnating or thriving.These economic institutions all have a common theme. They are responsible for planning, and therefore bringing to life one particular version of the future that is accelerating environmental breakdown and stark inequality. The world’s biggest 60 banks, for instance, have provided $3.8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since 2015. The Bank of England’s corporate bond holdings as of June 2020 are consistent with – and contribute towards – catastrophic average temperature increases of 3.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2100, and provide no-strings attached finance to carbon-intensive companies. These priorities are also reflected in the UK’s public policies; while the government has committed itself to climate targets, it still supports the development of fossil fuel extraction and carbon-intensive infrastructure, while providing inadequate support for low-carbon public transport or net-zero housing.Announcing new climate targets without rethinking how our global economy is planned can quickly amount to “greenwashing”. In 2018, the increase in fossil fuel production was more than three times higher than in renewables. Since then, fossil fuel giants have announced “net-zero” goals that still envisage a critical role for oil, gas and coal in 2100. In this way climate targets can give a green veneer to plans that merely continue the carbon-intensive status quo.The political challenge is to ensure that planning itself is more democratic and centred on meeting our needs and decarbonising our economy. To reach the UK and world’s climate targets, we’ll need to reimagine planning: the tools we use, the time horizons involved, the voices and values that shape these plans, and how they are enacted. This is not about centralising power in an unresponsive and overweening state, turning our futures over to algorithmic decision-making, or further concentrating corporate power. Instead, it’s about prioritising our ability to plan for the common good: in our homes, in our communities, and in a democratic economy, from workplaces and markets to the state.What might this look like? As John Maynard Keynes foresaw when he called for the steady socialisation of finance and the “euthanasia of the rentier” in 1936, investment should be organised by needs, rather than short-term profits. In our era of sustained economic stagnation, we can’t afford to wait for a revival of capitalist dynamism to trigger investment. Instead, governments should be coordinating a green industrial strategy and heavily investing to build the low-carbon infrastructures, industries and institutions we need. There is so much to be done, and yet current plans fall dangerously short; even Biden’s much-trumpeted infrastructure plan fails to deliver the levels of public investment needed to decarbonise at the pace and scale the climate emergency requires.If we’re to rethink how planning works, central banks will play a crucial role. By consciously embracing their planning function, central banks could steer societies toward rapid decarbonisation. They could do this through changing the relative cost of “green” versus “dirty” capital, for example, by enforcing higher capital requirements for carbon-intensive industries and guiding credit to low-carbon activities. They could also introduce new, socially just rules for carbon pricing that would ensure private investment is geared towards tackling the climate crisis.Part of rethinking planning will also involve rethinking the tools that are used to organise the global economy: the legal contracts, accounting and auditing processes, property claims and financial flows at the heart of it. Currently, these tools and processes are geared towards maximising short-term returns in an economy that excludes ordinary workers and communities from decision-making. We need to refocus these on securing social and environmental wellbeing.Targets are necessary, but they’re only half of the picture. In addition to setting ambitious goals, governments now need to decarbonise the global economy and democratise how it is planned and organised. Our economy isn’t a natural state, but a malleable creation. We still retain the power to reimagine what version of the future it is hurtling towards – and now we must urgently embrace this. More

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      In his first 100 days, how has Biden handled the four crises he outlined?

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      In his inaugural address on 20 January, Joe Biden declared: “We will be judged, you and I, for how we resolve the cascading crises of our era.”The new US president outlined four crises facing America: the coronavirus pandemic, climate, economy and racial justice. Here is an assessment of his progress on each in his first 100 days:Coronavirus pandemicIn the first and more pressing crisis, Biden has been largely successful in changing the trajectory of the pandemic. Vaccine distribution has accelerated and the White House has been active in fighting hesitancy.The administration has also made a point of celebrating its milestones for vaccinating the public – in late April the Biden team passed the 200m shot milestone.There have been some bumps. The White House had to rethink its mass-vaccination site program while Johnson & Johnson had to temporarily halt distribution of its vaccine after a tiny fraction of recipients suffered blood clots. At moments the Biden team has had to fine tune and clarify statements on proper health protocols for staving off the pandemic.Dr Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, has also gotten into proxy sparring matches with Republican elected officials over the pandemic. But if Biden’s presidency is to be judged on the pandemic, the figures speak for themselves.Jeffrey Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator, said at a press briefing last week: “This crucial milestone of 200m shots in less than 100 days enabled more than 52% of adults across the country to have at least one shot. That’s more than 135 million Americans who are on their way to being protected from this virus.“Importantly, seniors accounted for 80% of Covid deaths. But now, we’ve seen an 80% reduction in deaths and a 70% reduction in hospitalization among seniors, proving just how effective vaccination is in preventing death and severe disease. This significant progress in a short period of time is a direct result of our deliberate, whole-of-government, wartime effort.”But even as the Biden administration oversees the end of the pandemic, some states are still struggling with coronavirus cases. There is also the outstanding question of how the Biden administration will do in helping the rest of the world battle the pandemic. On Monday the United States announced it would start sharing its stores of AstraZeneca vaccines with other countries.Climate crisisEarly on in his presidency, Biden appointed former secretary of state John Kerry to be climate czar and elevated that to a cabinet-level position. He issued a number of executive orders reversing the Trump administration’s moves weakening car emissions and energy efficiency standards.In February, Biden restored the pricing standard for carbon to the level it was at during the Obama administration. At the time though that fell short of boosting the cost to the level some climate scientists were recommending. Later the administration increased the cost again to keep up with inflation.Last week Biden convened a summit with 40 world leaders to discuss the climate crisis. He said: “The steps our countries take between now and Glasgow [host of a UN climate change conference] will set the world up for success to protect livelihoods around the world and keep global warming at a maximum of 1.5C.“We must get on the path now in order to do that. If we do, we’ll breathe easier, literally and figuratively; we’ll create good jobs here at home for millions of Americans; and lay a strong foundation for growth for the future. And that can be your goal as well.“This is a moral imperative, an economic imperative, a moment of peril but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities. Time is short, but I believe we can do this. And I believe that we will do this.”Nevertheless, the Biden administration has had to grapple with trying to accomplish its climate change goals with a narrowly divided Senate. The threat of filibusters in the Senate makes it very difficult for the administration to see its policy proposals move through federal legislation.Economic recoveryCoronavirus vaccinations are up, unemployment is down and businesses are reopening. Whether he is talking about infrastructure or the climate crisis, Biden has been pushing a message hard for anyone on the left or right to disagree with: jobs, jobs, jobs.The economy added 379,000 jobs in February and 916,000 jobs in March, exceeding expectations. The unemployment rate now stands at 6%. Weekly unemployment claims have fallen to their lowest level since the pandemic began. Growth increased to 6.4% in the first quarter of 2021, up from 4.3% in the final quarter of last year.And the stock market has seen better returns in Biden’s first hundred days than under any president in the past 75 years, despite former president Donald Trump’s prophecy of a Biden crash.Promising to “build back better”, Biden moved fast to sign a $1.9tn rescue plan on 11 March. It was the biggest federal recovery effort in a generation and more than double the size of Barack Obama’s stimulus package that followed the 2008 financial crisis.The legislation, which gained no Republican votes in Congress, sent more than 150m stimulus checks to US citizens, extended unemployment benefits, expanded food assistance and boosted health insurance subsidies. Its historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit aims to cut child poverty in half.The pandemic has exacerbated inequality. The rescue plan did not include a federal $15-an-hour minimum wage but is expected to boost the incomes of the lowest 20% by 20%. After four decades of Ronald Reagan’s low tax, trickle-down economics, it marked a restoration of faith in big government.Then came a $2tn infrastructure bill, which is likely to take longer and face more significant amendments in Congress. Biden, again touting job creation, is proposing to pay for it by increasing the corporate tax rate to 28% – lower than the 35% it stood at before Trump but still a stumbling block with Republicans.In the meantime, experts predict that the US economy could grow as fast as 7% this year – a potentially strong tail wind for Democrats going into the 2022 midterm elections.Racial justice“The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer,” Biden said in his inaugural address, and he appointed a historically diverse administration that includes, in the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve in cabinet.The administration vowed to embed racial equity in its policies as never before. The $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill, for example, $5bn for Black farmers, and was described as the most significant legislation for this group since Civil Rights Act more than half a century ago.Biden’s first 100 days also coincided with the trial of ex-police officer Derek Chauvin, found guilty of murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis. The White House is pushing for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which aims to improve police training, curb use of excessive force and end techniques such as chokeholds.It shouldn’t take a whole year to get this done“George Floyd was murdered almost a year ago,” Biden said after the Chauvin verdict. “It shouldn’t take a whole year to get this done.”The contrast from last year, when Donald Trump sided with police against Black Lives Matters supporters, was startling. In a sign of Biden’s resolve to exert federal oversight over police, the justice department launched an investigation into the Minneapolis police department.But Biden has gone back on a campaign promise to create a national police oversight commission in his first hundred days, reportedly after consulting civil rights organisations and police unions and concluding it might be used by Congress as an excuse to procrastinate.Some observers suggests that Biden, 78, is not undergoing a personal transformation so much as keeping in step with the Democratic party, which belatedly recognises racial justice as a defining issue.Rashad Robinson, president of the group Color of Change, told the New York Times: “Biden is actually being Biden by being inside of all of the ways in which the current landscape is sending him messages. That is good, but I don’t want to be classifying this as some sort of out-front radical leadership. That would really not represent everything that could be possible if we leaned in more.” More

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      Republicans falsely claim Biden wants to restrict meat in climate crisis fight

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterAt a major summit hosted by Joe Biden last week, a procession of world leaders fretted over the spiraling dangers of the climate crisis, with some pledging further cuts to planet-heating emissions, others touting their embrace of electric cars and a few vowing the end of coal.In the US, however, Biden’s political opponents were focused on one pressing matter – meat.“Bye, bye burgers” screamed an on-screen graphic on Fox News, which ran the false claim that the US president would tyrannically allow Americans to devour just one burger a month. Larry Kudlow, a former economic adviser to Donald Trump now Fox Business host, baselessly envisioned Fourth of July celebrations where people would only be allowed to “throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts” on the barbecue.Prominent Republicans seized upon the supposed Biden climate diktat – which does not exist. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, retweeted a claim of a 4lb-a-year meat allocation with the comment: “Not gonna happen in Texas!” The far-right conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative, called Biden the “Hamburglar” while Garret Graves, ostensibly a more moderate House Republican, said the president’s plan amounted to “dictatorship”.The unfounded claims, which appear to have somehow sprouted from a University of Michigan study on the impact of meat eating, do not reflect Biden’s actual proposals to tackle global heating, which make no mention of personal meat consumption. But they have dealt a hefty blow to Republicans’ latest efforts to present themselves as committed to taking on the climate crisis.A week prior to the White House climate summit, Republicans released what they framed as a sensible, market-based alternative to Biden’s climate plan. “Democrats often dismiss Republicans as disinterested in address global climate change – this is just false,” said Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader. McCarthy said that Republicans have been “working for years to develop thoughtful, targeted legislation” to reduce emissions that, unlike Democratic proposals, “won’t kill American jobs”.Cognizant of growing voter alarm over the climate crisis – a majority of Republican voters now support the regulation of carbon dioxide – McCarthy has brushed aside the objections of some colleagues to recast the party’s beleaguered environmental reputation by promoting various tax breaks for renewable energy, making it easier to import minerals for clean technology and supporting a push to plant one trillion trees around the world.Critics, however, say the proposals are wildly inadequate to avoid disastrous global heating, which scientists say must involve sharply cutting emissions this decade before reaching net zero by the middle of the century. In lieu of any mention of phasing out fossil fuels – the primary cause of the climate crisis – the Republican plan instead calls for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, an oil project halted by Biden.“Getting to net zero requires extraordinary and sustained effort across all of society, not just the federal government, so you can’t just take a piecemeal approach like this, clap your hands and say, ‘We’re done here’,” said Nate Hultman, an expert in public policy at University of Maryland who helped draw up emissions reduction targets for Barack Obama’s administration. “This is a sort of mishmash of proposals, not a comprehensive strategy. I just don’t see how you get to a 50% cut by 2030 or to net zero with this.”Neither McCarthy’s office nor Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES), a conservative group that created a website for the plan, responded to questions on what emissions reductions the assorted proposals would achieve. Last week, Heather Reams, executive director of CRES, accused Biden of “radically impacting our already battered economy” by promising to cut US emissions in half by the end of the decade.During Trump’s presidency, Republicans laid siege to various climate regulations, largely backed his decision to remove the US from the Paris climate accords and acquiesced as the president repeatedly mocked climate science. Despite moves by some younger, more moderate conservatives to prod the party to respond to the increasingly severe wildfires, storms and heatwaves strafing the US, the party’s rhetoric has barely shifted following Trump’s election loss, according to Robert Brulle, a visiting professor of the environment and society at Brown University.“These guys need to get a new PR agency, it’s like they are talking about climate change in the 1990s,” said Brulle. “It’s just recycled arguments from the past or, on the meat thing, just outright lies. These arguments may have worked in the past to delay climate action but it’s so exhausted now. It’s different day, same old shit.”Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, said it was pleasing to see most Republicans shift away from outright denial of climate science but that a “new climate war” was opening up involving “reassuring sounding but empty rhetoric” to stymie regulations to reduce emissions.“They have the same intent as outright denial – to keep us addicted to fossil fuels as long as possible so that fossil fuel interests, who now have such great influence over the Republican party, can continue to make trillions of dollar profits, at our collective expense,” Mann said.Last week’s climate summit, which featured more than 40 world leaders, offered a stark illustration of the extreme position Republicans now find themselves in the global political landscape.During the virtual gathering, even leaders considered climate villains by environmentalists called for greater action on global heating, with Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, warning the “fate of our entire planet, the development prospects of each country, the well-being and quality of life of people largely depend on the success of these efforts” to reduce emissions.“The GOP is an extraordinary outlier in the political spectrum around the world, they have backed themselves into a political and rhetorical cul de sac,” said Brulle.“They are stuck in a really bad position that no other major political party in the world is in. Climate obstructionism is now a core part of Republican creed, much like opposition to abortion and gun control. As long as they remain competitive in elections I don’t see that changing.” More

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      Biden’s big climate pledge: can it succeed, and what noticeable changes could it bring?

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      Joe Biden has closed out a two-day climate summit of more than 40 world leaders by warning that the planet risks reaching the “point of no return” if more isn’t done to escalate efforts to constrain the climate crisis.Biden, along with several other national leaders, made a number of new promises in the summit. Here’s what it all means.What has Joe Biden promised at the summit?As its centerpiece announcement, the Biden administration has said planet-heating emissions will be cut by 50%-52% by 2030. The target was officially submitted to the United Nations as part of an overarching global system where countries submit voluntary emissions reduction goals in order to collectively avoid dangerous global heating.On top of this, the summit saw an American promise to double financial aid for developing countries struggling with the escalating droughts, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of the climate crisis, as well as a new US push to work with other countries on clean energy innovation.The White House hopes the new commitments will spur other countries to do more, as well as signal the return of the US to the top table to climate leadership after a ruinous self-imposed exile under Donald Trump.Is that enough to deal with the threat of climate change?No. But then very little at this stage is sufficient. Despite decades of warnings from scientists, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to soar, only dipping last year due to pandemic-related shutdowns. The cuts required to stave off truly disastrous global heating are now precipitously steep – reduce by around half this decade and then to zero by 2050.Some activists feel the US could be doing more, with a group of protesters dumping wheelbarrows of manure outside the White House on Thursday. The climate aid pledge has also been criticized as “very low” by ActionAid USA.Conversely, the US goal is one of the most ambitious for a developed country, will make a significant dent in overall emissions and has generally been received as striking the right balance between ambitious and feasible by governments desperate to see the world’s largest economy rejoin the climate battle.“Is it enough? No,” said John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy. “But it’s the best we can do today and prove we can begin to move.”How will big reductions in emissions change Americans’ lives?Emissions have been gradually declining in the US for several years, largely due to the collapse of the ailing coal industry. Cutting emissions in half within a decade will require far more aggressive, and noticeable, changes – an explosion in solar and wind jobs, a rapid shift to electric cars, the refitting of energy inefficient buildings, the demise of coal country, a revamp of farming practices.Biden has framed this unprecedented transition as a glorious economic opportunity – “when I think of climate change, I think of jobs” has become a presidential slogan – and while experts agree that millions of new jobs can flow from a shift to clean energy the change will be jarring to some, particularly those working in fossil fuels.Regulations to force oil, coal and gas out of the energy system, along with mandates for electric cars, will have to materialize. But the climate problem is manifest – if the US is to get to net zero emissions by 2050 the focus at some point will shift to everything from airline and shipping emissions to gas stovetops in homes to whether a switch away from meat eating could help lower the sizable methane pollution from cattle.Biden’s task is to help accelerate a shift already under way to renewables while cushioning the blow to those left by the wayside, all while avoiding a backlash from an American public wary of personal sacrifice.How likely is it Biden will be able to deliver this?There are record levels of alarm among the American public over the climate crisis, with majorities of Democratic and Republican voters supporting action to bring down emissions. Big business, unions and city leaders have also swung strongly behind the push for a federal response.Imposing barriers remain in Congress, however, where Republicans have clung on to Trump-era rhetoric that acting on the climate crisis will harm the economy. The Biden climate target will put “good-paying American jobs into the shredder,” warned Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader.Biden will be able to unilaterally shut off new oil and gas drilling on public lands and set new pollution standards for cars and power plants, but further legislation will be required. Given the paper-thin Democratic control of Congress, the fate of even broadly popular measures such as Biden’s $2tn infrastructure plan – which would greatly expand electric vehicle charging stations, boost public transit and push forward renewable energy deployment – appear uncertain.At some point Biden will have to bring in “sticks” as well as “carrots”, such as a tax on carbon emissions and a directive to utilities to phase out fossil fuels. Again, such measures face huge hurdles in Congress.If he does get all of that done, is it problem solved?As the administration is keen to point out, the rest of the world is responsible for about 85% of all emissions and only through a coordinated, determined international effort will humanity avoid the punishing ravages of the climate crisis.Canada and Japan announced upgraded emissions reduction targets at the climate summit but China, the world’s leading carbon polluter, didn’t bring anything new and some countries, such as Brazil and Australia, have deeply recalcitrant leaders. Ahead of key UN climate talks in Scotland later this year, Biden will not only have to corral an unusually divided domestic polity to achieve his goals but also prod other countries to do more. It’s an unenviable task. More