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      DeSantis Slams Biden Climate Policy: ‘An Agenda to Control You’

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      The Florida governor delivered an address in Texas that favored oil and gas development over climate agreements and electric vehicles.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Wednesday unveiled an energy plan in the heart of oil country, criticizing electric vehicles and global climate agreements, promising lower fuel prices and pushing for more oil and gas development.In a policy rollout at an oil rig site in Midland — a West Texas city that derives much of its economy from oil production — Mr. DeSantis seemed to make a general-election argument, promising to roll back several of the Biden administration’s climate initiatives, calling them “part of an agenda to control you and to control our behavior.”“They’re trying to circumscribe your ambitions. They are even telling our younger generations to have fewer children, or not to even have children, on the grounds that somehow children are going to make our climate and planet unlivable — and that’s wrong to say,” he told a crowd of a few dozen rig workers and reporters.Mr. DeSantis mentioned his chief rival in the Republican primary, former President Donald J. Trump — whom he trails by a wide margin in the polls — only once.That didn’t stop Mr. Trump’s campaign from taking a shot at the governor for his remarks. Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, used expletives in calling Mr. DeSantis a “candidate that just steals from President Trump’s policy book” in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, during the governor’s remarks.In a lengthy, six-pronged policy outline, Mr. DeSantis promised to remove subsidies for electric vehicles, take the U.S. out of global climate agreements — including the Paris accords — and cancel net-zero emission promises. He also vowed to increase American oil and natural gas production and “replace the phrase climate change with energy dominance” in policy guidance.Mr. DeSantis spoke from behind a lectern that read “$2 in 2025,” a nod to his campaign’s promise to lower gas to $2 in the first year of his administration (a number not seen consistently since the George W. Bush administration). His remarks — delivered above the sounds of heavy machinery — paired standard Republican energy policy, blasting foreign energy dependence and blue state regulations, with criticism of the Biden administration’s focus on reducing carbon emissions and incentivizing clean energy.The Biden campaign criticized Mr. DeSantis’s plan.“This is a deeply unserious and impractical plan that won’t actually lower gas prices to $2 per gallon and is chock-full of the climate denialism that defines the MAGA Republican Party,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said in a statement. “Voters need look no further than DeSantis’s own state — where his agenda is leading to skyrocketing energy costs for his constituents and natural disasters are causing tens of billions of dollars in damages — to know what DeSantis’s plan would mean for the country.”Mr. DeSantis calls his plan “Freedom to Fuel,” and it includes a segment on automobiles, an industry segment that has also put Mr. Biden under scrutiny by Republicans, with autoworkers on strike. The United Auto Workers began targeted strikes last week over contract talks. In a recent op-ed piece in The Des Moines Register, Mr. DeSantis promised to “stand with our farmers” by opposing electric vehicles and supporting biofuel usage, a nod to the state’s large agricultural industry.But asked Wednesday if he believed that fossil fuels contributed to climate change, Mr. DeSantis deflected — which he has done repeatedly, most notably on the Republican debate stage last month.“The climate clearly has changed — you can judge that, I think, objectively. I think the question is, is what policy posture are we going to take from that?” he said, pointing to his own proposal as the “most practical way to reduce global emissions.”During his visit to Texas, Mr. DeSantis is also attending several high-dollar fund-raising events across the state over the next few days. But while he has had fund-raising success among Texas donors in the oil and real estate industries, some large donors nationally have expressed hesitation. And his fund-raising in the state has not necessarily translated to grass-roots support: The Oil and Gas Workers Association, based out of nearby Odessa, Texas, announced Wednesday that it would endorse Mr. Trump.Jimmy Gray, a Midland oil rig worker since 1979 who supported Mr. Trump in the last election, said after the event that he was impressed by Mr. DeSantis but remained undecided in the Republican presidential contest. “I’ve seen a lot of policies in a lot of administrations, and a lot of things change throughout that time, but one thing that hasn’t really changed is that in order for us to decrease costs across the country, energy — in whatever form that is — has to be done right,” he said.“Ron DeSantis made some good points — he’s got me interested,” he added. “I just would like to see a different direction than what we’ve got now.” More

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      A Republican 2024 Climate Strategy: More Drilling, Less Clean Energy

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      Project 2025, a conservative “battle plan” for the next Republican president, would stop attempts to cut the pollution that is heating the planet and encourage more emissions.During a summer of scorching heat that has broken records and forced Americans to confront the reality of climate change, conservatives are laying the groundwork for future Republican administration that would dismantle efforts to slow global warming.The move is part of a sweeping strategy dubbed Project 2025 that Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank organizing the effort, has called a “battle plan” for the first 180 days of a future Republican presidency.The climate and energy provisions would be among the most severe swings away from current federal policies.The plan calls for shredding regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels — the burning of which is the chief cause of planetary warming.The New York Times asked the leading Republican presidential candidates whether they support the Project 2025 strategy but none of the campaigns responded. Still, several of the architects are veterans of the Trump administration, and their recommendations match positions held by former President Donald J. Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination.The $22 million project also includes personnel lists and a transition strategy in the event a Republican wins the 2024 election. The nearly 1,000-page plan, which would reshape the executive branch to place more power into the president’s hands, outlines changes for nearly every agency across the government.The Heritage Foundation worked on the plan with dozens of conservative groups ranging from the Heartland Institute, which has denied climate science, to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which says “climate change does not endanger the survival of civilization or the habitability of the planet.”Mr. Dans said the Heritage Foundation delivered the blueprint to every Republican presidential hopeful. While polls have found that young Republicans are worried about global warming, Mr. Dans said the feedback he has received confirms the blueprint reflects where the majority of party leaders stand.“We have gotten very good reception from this,” he said. “This is a plotting of points of where the conservative movement sits at this time.”Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, in April.Leigh Vogel for The New York TimesThere is a pronounced partisan split in the country when it comes to climate change, surveys have shown. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted last month found that while 56 percent of respondents called climate change a major threat — including a majority of independents and nearly 90 percent of Democrats — about 70 percent of Republicans said global warming was either a minor threat or no threat at all.Project 2025 does not offer any proposals for curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously heating the planet and which scientists have said must be sharply and quickly reduced to avoid the most catastrophic impacts.Asked what the country should do to combat climate change, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation’s energy and climate center, said “I really hadn’t thought about it in those terms” and then offered that Americans should use more natural gas.Natural gas produces half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal when burned. But gas facilities frequently leak methane, a greenhouse gas that is much more powerful than carbon dioxide in the short term and has emerged as a growing concern among climate scientists.The blueprint said the next Republican president would help repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 law that is offering $370 billion for wind, solar, nuclear, green hydrogen and electric vehicle technology, with most of the new investments taking place in Republican-led states.The plan calls for shuttering a Department of Energy office that has $400 billion in loan authority to help emerging green technologies. It would make it more difficult for solar, wind and other renewable power — the fastest growing energy source in the United States — to be added to the grid. Climate change would no longer be considered an issue worthy of discussion on the National Security Council, and allied nations would be encouraged to buy and use more fossil fuels rather than renewable energy.In July, Phoenix experienced a record-breaking streak of above-100-degree days. Ash Ponders for The New York TimesThe blueprint throws open the door to drilling inside the pristine Arctic wilderness, promises legal protections for energy companies that kill birds while extracting oil and gas and declares the federal government has an “obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources” on America’s public lands.Notably, it also would restart a quest for something climate denialists have long considered their holy grail: reversal of a 2009 scientific finding at the Environmental Protection Agency that says carbon dioxide emissions are a danger to public health.Erasing that finding, conservatives have long believed, would essentially strip the federal government of the right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from most sources.In interviews, Mr. Dans and three of the top authors of the report agreed that the climate is changing. But they insisted that scientists are debating the extent to which human activity is responsible.On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists around the world agree that the burning of oil, gas and coal since the Industrial Age has led to an increase of the average global temperature of 1.2 degrees Celsius, or 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit.The plan calls on the government to stop trying to make automobiles more fuel efficient and to block states from adopting California’s stringent automobile pollution standards.Ms. Furchtgott-Roth said any measures the United States would take to cut carbon would be undermined by rising emissions in countries like China, currently the planet’s biggest polluter. It would be impossible to convince China, to cut its emissions, she said.Mandy Gunasekara was chief of staff at the E.P.A. during the Trump administration and considers herself the force behind Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord. She led the section outlining plans for that agency, and said that regarding whether carbon emissions pose a danger to human health “there’s a misconception that any of the science is a settled issue.”The plan does not offer any proposals for curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously heating the planet.Leigh Vogel for The New York TimesBernard L. McNamee is a former Trump administration official who has worked as an adviser to fossil fuel companies as well as for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which spreads misinformation about climate change. He wrote the section of the strategy covering the Department of Energy, which said the national laboratories have been too focused on climate change and renewable energy. In an interview, Mr. McNamee said he believes the role of the agency is to make sure energy is affordable and reliable.Mr. Dans said a mandate of Project 2025 is to “investigate whether the dimensions of climate change exist and what can actually be done.” As for the influence of burning fossil fuels, he said, “I think the science is still out on that quite frankly.”In actuality, it is not.The top scientists in the United States concluded in an exhaustive study produced during the Trump administration that humans — the cars we drive, the power plants we operate, the forests we destroy — are to blame. “There is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence,” scientists wrote.Climate advocates said the Republican strategy would take the country in the wrong direction even as heat waves, drought and wildfires worsen because of emissions.“This agenda would be laughable if the consequences of it weren’t so dire,” said Christy Goldfuss, chief policy impact officer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.Republicans who have called for their party to accept climate change said they were disappointed by the blueprint and worried about the direction of the party.“I think its out-of-touch Beltway silliness and it’s not meeting Americans where they are,” said Sarah Hunt, president of the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, which works with Republican state officials on energy needs.Firefighters battling the Agua Fire in Soledad Canyon near Agua Dulce, Calif., last month.David Swanson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesShe called efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which is pouring money and jobs overwhelmingly into red states, particularly impractical.“Obviously as conservatives we’re concerned about fiscal responsibility, but if you look at what Republican voters think, a lot of Republicans in red states show strong support for provisions of the I.R.A.,” Ms. Hunt said.Representative John Curtis, Republican of Utah, who launched a conservative climate caucus, called it “vital that Republicans engage in supporting good energy and climate policy.”Without directly commenting on the G.O.P. blueprint, Mr. Curtis said “I look forward to seeing the solutions put forward by the various presidential candidates and hope there is a robust debate of ideas to ensure we have reliable, affordable and clean energy.”Benji Backer, executive chairman and founder of the American Conservation Coalition, a group of young Republicans who want climate action, said he felt Project 2025 was wrongheaded.“If they were smart about this issue they would have taken approach that said ‘the Biden administration has done things in a way they don’t agree with but here’s our vision’,” he said. “Instead they remove it from being a priority.”He noted climate change is a real concern among young Republicans. By a nearly two-to-one margin, polls have found, Republicans aged 18 to 39 years old are more likely to agree that “human activity contributes a great deal to climate change,” and that the federal government has a role to play in curbing it.Of Project 2025, he said, “This sort of approach on climate is not acceptable to the next generation.” More

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      Jay Inslee Sees Greener Pastures Ahead

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      After nearly 30 years in elected office, Washington’s governor plans to shift his focus to climate solutions and clean energy, underscoring the need for “a sense of optimism and confidence.”Jay Inslee has been in elected office so long that he served in Congress during the tail end of the George H.W. Bush administration.On Monday Mr. Inslee, 72, announced that he would not seek a fourth term as Washington State’s governor, ending a nearly 30-year career in elected office. He went to Congress as a centrist Democrat and evolved into a fierce critic of the Iraq war and later of President Donald J. Trump. He will leave the State Capitol after the 2024 elections as one of America’s leading climate hawks.Mr. Inslee ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination by arguing that the country would have to radically reshape its relationship with fossil fuels and promote renewable energy. While Mr. Inslee’s candidacy never caught fire, his goals later became the blueprint for the climate spending in the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law last year.When I interviewed Mr. Inslee in 2017, he said the only other job he would want was to be the quarterback of his hometown Seattle Seahawks. When I reminded him of this as we spoke Monday afternoon, he replied, “Now I want to be the next goalie for the Seattle Kraken,” the city’s hockey team. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Why did you make this decision now?There comes a time to pass the torch, and to everything there is a season, and for a variety of reasons, I decided it was the right season. But I’ve got another year and a half to put the pedal to the metal. My dad was a track coach, and he always said run through the tape, so I’ll be running through the tape. Have you spoken with President Biden about your decision?I have not, but he has a few other things on his mind, so I’m happy that he’s up and running in his race. I’m glad he’s in his race.How would you grade him on climate policy?I’ve never liked grades because I always thought it was a bit presumptuous, but I can just tell you I was so delighted at him pulling a rabbit out of the hat to get the Inflation Reduction Act through. Its prospects were so dim. And for him to get that $360 billion in clean energy investment is so pivotal for us to have even a fighting chance to deal with climate.I just came from an unveiling of the world’s largest commercial hydrogen fuel cell plane that represents a potential for sustainable aviation. Last week, I signed a permit for a solar farm in Yakima County. These are the things that his accomplishment is going to accelerate, and I could not be more excited about that. So, you know, there’s always things on siting and permitting that are contentious.You mentioned the siting and permitting. I take it you’re referring to his approving the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. I imagine you don’t agree with his decisions on that front.I don’t, but he won the presidency, and I did not. So we should point that out.What’s your level of interest in serving in his administration at some point?It isn’t something I’ve thought about. I really am so focused on the next 20 months. I think he’s done a real crackerjack job as president. I’m glad he’s running. I feel good about him winning the next election. I just haven’t thought about what happens after this term of office, except it’s going to be involved in something that will push the climate agenda and the clean energy economic development. I’ll find some way to be productive in that realm.It sounds like you’d listen if the president were to call and talk to you about something.Of course I would listen, but it’s just not something that’s on my agenda to consider at the moment.We talked a lot when you were running for president about the urgency of the climate moment. Do you think the country and the planet are beyond a state of no return?One of the most important things we need to do at this moment is to establish a sense of optimism and confidence in what you might call a can-do attitude when it comes to the development of clean energy. It is necessary to keep people from the despair, which leads to inactivity and passivity. And the antidote for despair is action. It is also just healthy for us from a mental health standpoint.The rate of change is so dramatic that it legitimately should give us optimism in our ability to transform this economy much faster than we believe. In 2007, I said we’re going to be driving electric cars. People thought I was smoking the cheap stuff. Well, now we’re buying them so fast that production can’t even keep up.Obviously, we are going to be suffering some changes that to some degree are baked into the climatic system. But we don’t need to focus on despair, we need to focus on action and a can-do spirit. More

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      Gas Prices in U.S. Rise Amid West Coast Refinery Shutdowns

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      The gains could raise pressure on policymakers, but analysts say the higher prices may be short-lived as refineries in California and Washington restart production.Gasoline prices in the United States are creeping higher, reversing a monthslong streak of declines and chipping away at a potent talking point for the Biden administration, which had been emphasizing its success at easing pressure on drivers since the summer.Though the uptick has followed a rise in crude oil prices, analysts pointed to two new factors that are also pushing gasoline higher — a loss of refining capacity in California and Ohio, and rising demand in recent weeks.The national average price of regular gasoline stood at $3.891 a gallon on Friday, climbing for more than two weeks, according to data from AAA. That’s lower than the record of about $5.02 reached in June but still higher than usual for this time of year.Prices have made a particularly big leap in California. At about $6.39 a gallon, prices are close to the state’s June record of $6.44. Gas prices there and in other Western states, including Nevada and Arizona, jumped after several refineries in the region closed for maintenance.The rise, should it last, could increase pressure on the White House to act quickly to bring prices back down. A spike in gas prices, which followed a surge in crude oil and other energy costs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, became both a political liability and a policy headache as consumer prices rose across the board.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Wisconsin Senate Race: Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate, is wobbling in his contest against Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, as an onslaught of G.O.P. attack ads takes a toll.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.President Biden, who over the summer responded to the increase in gas prices by chiding energy companies for profiteering on consumers, released oil from strategic reserves and encouraged Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. Gas prices eventually started to decline, as global oil prices tumbled amid rising concern about the slowing global economy and demand eased.As the streak of declines stretched to 98 days, the White House regularly pointed to the drop and the savings it would offer to drivers.The recent jump means White House officials have been pressed to address the issue again. Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, said on Thursday that energy companies needed to lower prices at the pump.“If you look at the gap between wholesale and retail prices, it has come down,” he said during a press briefing. “It hasn’t come down enough — right? — but it has come down.”Analysts say the refinery shutdowns will be temporary, and the fact that Americans tend to drive less in the winter could keep prices from climbing as sharply as they did in June. But a recent rebound in crude oil prices, which rose nearly 17 percent this week as the world’s major oil producers agreed to cut production, means predicting what’s next will be difficult.“This is not the Biden administration’s fault, but they know that if gas prices are back at $4.50 on Election Day, they’re in trouble,” said Tom Kloza, a founder of Oil Price Information Service, a price reporting agency, referring to the November midterm elections.Aside from the political consequences, a sustained rise in gas prices could affect how businesses and consumers view the economy. In July, falling gas prices were a key part of the better-than-expected reading of the Consumer Price Index, offering a brief glimmer of hope to those looking for signs that inflation has peaked.Among the West Coast refineries that have shut down is one in Washington State run by Phillips 66 and two near San Francisco that are run by Valero and Chevron. Not every shutdown is predictable. A fire at a BP-owned refinery near Toledo, Ohio, shuttered that facility in September. It may not reopen until early 2023, Bloomberg News reported late last month, citing unnamed sources. In Ohio, the average price of gas rose to $3.939 a gallon on Friday from $3.609 a month earlier.Chevron and Phillips 66 said they do not comment on the day-to-day operations of their refineries. BP and Valero didn’t immediately respond to questions about the refineries. The refineries do not typically release much detail about closings or when they expect to reopen, analysts said.Prices in California and other states have fallen slightly since Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week that the state could start producing its winter blend of gasoline early, which is cheaper for refiners to produce since it contains fewer of the additives that protect against environmental conditions in the summer. The introduction of the winter blend, paired with the potential for slowed demand in fall and winter driving seasons, could help bring prices back down, said Devin Gladden, a spokesman for AAA.On Friday, Mr. Newsom said on Twitter that he would call a special session of the California Legislature to weigh “a windfall profits tax” on energy companies that are profiting from high prices, a move that some Democratic lawmakers in Washington have also called for. Britain announced a similar tax on the “extraordinary” profits of oil companies in May.On Wednesday, the group known as OPEC Plus, which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia, said that it would slash oil production by two million barrels a day, a decision that drew an immediate condemnation from the Biden administration. On Thursday, Mr. Biden told reporters that he was “disappointed” by the decision, and the White House also said it would release more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country’s stockpile of crude oil.Though oil prices have climbed sharply this week, the recent increase in gas prices began in September, well before the OPEC Plus decision.The overall impact of the announcement remains “a big maybe,” Mr. Gladden said. It could lead to a short-term rise in prices, but whether or not it is sustained depends on how energy investors react to the cut, he said. Analysts have noted that several OPEC Plus members are already unable to meet production quotas.Crude oil prices account for more than half of the cost of gasoline. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, the U.S. benchmark stood at about $93 a barrel on Friday, well below its peak of $130 in March but still up more than 23 percent since the beginning of the year.“This really hasn’t been about crude,” Mr. Kloza, the Oil Price Information Service founder, said of the most recent gain. “It’s been about the inability to refine a lot of that crude for various reasons.”Mr. Kloza said he did not think an “extraordinary spike” in prices was ahead, particularly one comparable to what consumers experienced earlier in the year. Still, prices are subject to several variables —  many of which, including hurricanes or wildfires that lead to major refinery shutdowns, are unpredictable.“If we lost one of these big refineries that can run 500,000 barrels a day of crude or more, it can really haunt the markets,” Mr. Kloza said. More

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      What You Need to Know About the Elections in Italy

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      The elections could produce the first government led by a woman and by a hard-right party with post-Fascist roots.ROME — Italians vote on Sunday for the first time in almost five years in national elections that will usher in a new, and polls predict, right-wing government that will face economic challenges, a deepening energy crisis, and questions about Italy’s hard line against Russia and its full-throated support for the European Union.The elections come after the national unity government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, a darling of the European establishment who is widely credited with increasing Italy’s credibility and influence, collapsed amid a revolt in his coalition.The elections had been scheduled for February, but the premature collapse raised familiar questions about Italy’s stability and the popularity of the country’s far-right opposition, which had grown outside the unity government, and rekindled doubts about Italy’s commitment to the European Union.International markets, wary of the country’s enormous debt, are already jittery. And Italy’s support for sending arms to Ukraine, which has been influential within Europe, has emerged as a campaign issue, raising the prospect of a possible change of course that could alter the balance of power in Europe.Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the hard-right Brothers of Italy party, at a rally this month in Cagliari, Sardinia. Her party has a clear edge in opinion polls. Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesWho is running?Despite the broad popularity of Mr. Draghi, a Eurocentric moderate, it is the populist-infused right, with a recent history of belligerence toward Europe, that has had a clear edge in the polls.Most popular of all has been the hard-right Brothers of Italy party, led by Giorgia Meloni, whose support skyrocketed as it was the only major party to remain in the opposition. If she does as well as expected, she is poised to be Italy’s first female prime minister.Ms. Meloni is aligned with the anti-immigrant and hard-right League party, led by Matteo Salvini, and Forza Italia, the center-right party founded and still led by the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.Italy’s election law favors parties that run in a coalition, and so the coalition on the right has an advantage over the fragmented left.The largest party on the left, the Democratic Party, is polling around 22 percent. But Ms. Meloni’s support has polled around 25 percent, and the right is expected to gain many more seats in Parliament, the basis upon which the government is composed.The once anti-establishment Five Star Movement cratered from its strong showing in 2018, when it had more than 30 percent of the vote. But after participating in three different governments spanning the political spectrum, it has lost its identity. Now headed by the former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, it has opted to run alone. In recent weeks, its poll numbers have climbed up, thanks to support in the south, which is rewarding the party for passing, and now defending, a broad unemployment benefit.A centrist party called Azione, led by a former minister, Carlo Calenda, and backed by another former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, would claim a moral victory even if it only hit 6 or 7 percent.At the Brothers of Italy rally in Cagliari. Voters’ main concerns are energy prices, inflation, the cost of living, and Italy’s policy toward Russia and Ukraine.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesWhat are the issues?While Ms. Meloni’s post-Fascist roots have attracted attention and prompted worries outside of Italy, few voters in Italy seem to care. The issues of the day are energy prices, inflation, the cost of living and Italy’s policy toward Russia and Ukraine.On the last issue, the conservative coalition is split. Ms. Meloni, in part to reassure an international audience that she is a credible and acceptable option, has been a consistent and outspoken supporter of Ukraine throughout the war. Even though she has been in the opposition, where she criticized coronavirus vaccine mandates, she has emerged as a key ally of Mr. Draghi on the question of arming Ukraine.Her coalition partners are less solid on the issue. Mr. Salvini, who has a long history of admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, even wearing shirts with the Russian’s face on them, has argued that the sanctions against Russia should be reconsidered.Mr. Berlusconi was once Mr. Putin’s best friend among leaders of Western Europe. He once named a bed after Mr. Putin and still argues that he could make peace.The conservative coalition has proposed cutting taxes on essential goods and energy, offering energy vouchers to workers, and renegotiating Italy’s European Union recovery funds to adjust for higher prices. It is also seeking to reinvest in nuclear energy, which Italy has not produced since the 1990s and banned in a 2011 referendum.Its leaders have proposed a deep flat tax and the elimination of unemployment benefits popular in the south — known here as the “citizens’ income.” The benefit, pushed through with much fanfare by the Five Star Movement in its first government, acts as a subsidy to the lowest-income earners.To drum up electoral support, hard-right parties have also tried to make illegal migration an issue, even though numbers are far below earlier years. They are also running to defend traditional parties from what Ms. Meloni has called gay “lobbies.”The right also wants to change the Constitution so that the president can be elected directly by voters — and not by Parliament, as is now the case.The center-left Democratic Party has argued to continue the hard line against Russia and has emphasized energy policies that focus on renewable sources, cutting costs for low and medium-income families, and installing regasification plants to increase natural gas supplies as Italy faces shortages from Russia. The party has advocated easing the path to citizenship for children of immigrants born in Italy, and wants to increase penalties for discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people. It also proposes introducing a minimum wage, cutting income taxes to raise net salaries, and paying teachers and health care workers better wages.The Five Star Movement is, like Mr. Salvini, dubious of a hard line against Russia and against the shipment of Italian weapons to help Ukraine. The Five Star Movement is proposing an energy recovery fund to tackle the price surge and investments in renewable energy. It is also calling for a ban on new drilling for fossil fuels.What happens after the vote?Exit polls should come out the night of the vote, but since voting places close at 11 p.m., no official results are expected to be declared until the next day, or even later. But even once the results are known, Italy will not have a new prime minister for weeks.The new members of Parliament will be confirmed and convened in Rome in the middle of October. They will then elect the speaker of the Senate and of the Lower House, and party leaders for each house.The president, Sergio Mattarella, will then begin consultations with the speakers of both houses and the parties’ representatives. The coalition that won the most votes will designate their candidate for premiership. If their candidate is able to win a majority in the newly elected Parliament, the president will appoint a potential prime minister to form a new government.Should Brothers of Italy win the most votes, as is expected, it would be difficult for its coalition parties to justify a prime minister other than Ms. Meloni. More

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      Rising Energy Prices and High Inflation: The Economic Issues Facing Liz Truss

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      For the past eight weeks through the Conservative Party’s leadership contest, the severity of Britain’s economic troubles only worsened. The new prime minister, Liz Truss, will be greeted with a long list of demands for rapid and aggressive support to alleviate the pain caused by the rising cost of living.Looming over the new government is the specter of stagflation — an unpleasant mix of stagnant economic growth and high inflation. Consumer prices are rising at their fastest pace in four decades as the rate of inflation exceeds 10 percent and is expected to keep climbing. Meanwhile, the economy contracted in the second quarter, and the Bank of England is forecasting a long recession to begin later this year as wages lag and household budgets are squeezed by rising food and energy costs. Household incomes, adjusted for inflation and taxes, are predicted to fall sharply this year and next, in the worst decline in records dating back to the 1960s, the central bank said.Britain caps household energy bills, but that limit will increase by 80 percent beginning next month. And there are calls for urgent action to help low-income households as it becomes increasingly accepted that a relief package laid out in May is inadequate. Liz Truss said on Sunday that should introduce a package to help people with energy bills within a week of taking office. Small businesses — especially energy-intensive ones, such as pubs and restaurants — are warning of widespread closures over the winter as companies won’t be able to afford their energy bills. The pub industry said there needs to be “swift and substantial” government intervention to avoid large-scale job losses.There is also a growing number of labor strikes, as workers across industries demand pay raises in line with the cost of living. Among those walking out or threatening to are port workers, nurses, teachers, train drivers and mail service personnel.Beyond these immediate problems, Britain also has many long-running economic challenges to overcome. How will the new government try to make a success of Brexit, which so far has made trading with Britain’s closest neighbors more cumbersome and costly? Can the government close the inequality gap between London and the rest of the country? Amid an energy crisis, will the government get on track to meet its legally binding targets to reach net zero carbon emissions?The gloomy economic prospects for Britain are clear in financial markets. The pound dropped 4.5 percent against the U.S. dollar in August, its worst month in nearly six years, and is now trading at $1.15. It’s at its lowest level since March 2020, and approaching the lowest since 1985. The price of British government bonds has dropped as investors turn away from British assets and expect the central bank to need to raise interest rates sharply to rein in inflation. More

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      Al Gore: I Have Hope on the Climate Crisis. America Must Lead.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyAl Gore: Where I Find HopeThe Biden administration will have the opportunity to restore confidence in America and take on the worsening climate crisis.Mr. Gore was the 45th vice president of the United States.Dec. 12, 2020Al Gore at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015.Credit…Francois Mori/Associated Press­­­­­This weekend marks two anniversaries that, for me, point a way forward through the accumulated wreckage of the past year.The first is personal. Twenty years ago, I ended my presidential campaign after the Supreme Court abruptly decided the 2000 election. As the incumbent vice president, my duty then turned to presiding over the tallying of Electoral College votes in Congress to elect my opponent. This process will unfold again on Monday as the college’s electors ratify America’s choice of Joe Biden as the next president, ending a long and fraught campaign and reaffirming the continuity of our democracy.The second anniversary is universal and hopeful. This weekend also marks the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement. One of President Trump’s first orders of business nearly four years ago was to pull the United States out of the accord, signed by 194 other nations to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases threatening the planet. With Mr. Trump heading for the exit, President-elect Biden plans to rejoin the agreement on his Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.Now, with Mr. Biden about to take up residence in the White House, the United States has the chance to reclaim America’s leadership position in the world after four years in the back seat.Mr. Biden’s challenges will be monumental. Most immediately, he assumes office in the midst of the chaos from the colossal failure to respond effectively to the coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation that has resulted.And though the pandemic fills our field of vision at the moment, it is only the most urgent of the multiple crises facing the country and planet, including 40 years of economic stagnation for middle-income families; hyper-inequality of incomes and wealth, with high levels of poverty; horrific structural racism; toxic partisanship; the impending collapse of nuclear arms control agreements; an epistemological crisis undermining the authority of knowledge; recklessly unprincipled behavior by social media companies; and, most dangerous of all, the climate crisis.What lies before us is the opportunity to build a more just and equitable way of life for all humankind. This potential new beginning comes at a rare moment when it may be possible to break the stranglehold of the past over the future, when the trajectory of history might be altered by what we choose to do with a new vision.With the coronavirus death toll rising rapidly, the battle against the pandemic is desperate, but it will be won. Yet we will still be in the midst of an even more life-threatening battle — to protect the Earth’s climate balance — with consequences measured not only in months and years, but also in centuries and millenniums. Winning will require us to re-establish our compact with nature and our place within the planet’s ecological systems, for the sake not only of civilization’s survival but also of the preservation of the rich web of biodiversity on which human life depends.The daunting prospect of successfully confronting such large challenges at a time after bitter divisions were exposed and weaponized in the presidential campaign has caused many people to despair. Yet these problems, however profound, are all solvable.Look at the pandemic. Despite the policy failures and human tragedies, at least one success now burns bright: Scientists have harnessed incredible breakthroughs in biotechnology to produce several vaccines in record time. With medical trials demonstrating their safety and efficacy, these new vaccines prefigure an end to the pandemic in the new year. This triumph alone should put an end to the concerted challenges to facts and science that have threatened to undermine reason as the basis for decision-making.Similarly, even as the climate crisis rapidly worsens, scientists, engineers and business leaders are making use of stunning advances in technology to end the world’s dependence on fossil fuels far sooner than was hoped possible.Mr. Biden will take office at a time when humankind faces the choice of life over death. Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of severe consequences — coastal inundations and worsening droughts, among other catastrophes — if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050.Slowing the rapid warming of the planet will require a unified global effort. Mr. Biden can lead by strengthening the country’s commitment to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement — something the country is poised to do thanks to the work of cities, states, businesses and investors, which have continued to make progress despite resistance from the Trump administration.Solar energy is one example. The cost of solar panels has fallen 89 percent in the past decade, and the cost of wind turbines has dropped 59 percent. The International Energy Agency projects that 90 percent of all new electricity capacity worldwide in 2020 will be from clean energy — up from 80 percent in 2019, when total global investment in wind and solar was already more than three times as large as investments in gas and coal.Over the next five years, the I.E.A. projects that clean energy will constitute 95 percent of all new power generation globally. The agency recently called solar power “the new king” in global energy markets and “the cheapest source of electricity in history.”As renewable energy costs continue to drop, many utilities are speeding up the retirement of existing fossil fuel plants well before their projected lifetimes expire and replacing them with solar and wind, plus batteries. In a study this summer, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Sierra Club reported that clean energy is now cheaper than 79 percent of U.S. coal plants and 39 percent of coal plants in the rest of the world — a number projected to increase rapidly. Other analyses show that clean energy combined with batteries is already cheaper than most new natural gas plants.As a former oil minister in Saudi Arabia put it 20 years ago, “the Stone Age came to an end, not because we had a lack of stones, and the oil age will come to an end not because we have a lack of oil.” Many global investors have reached the same conclusion and are beginning to shift capital away from climate-destroying businesses to sustainable solutions. The pressure is no longer coming from only a small group of pioneers, endowments, family foundations and church-based pension funds; some of the world’s largest investment firms are now joining this movement, too, having belatedly recognized that fossil fuels have been extremely poor investments for a long while. Thirty asset managers overseeing $9 trillion announced on Friday an agreement to align their portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050.Exxon Mobil, long a major source of funding for grossly unethical climate denial propaganda, just wrote down the value of its fossil fuel reserves by as much as $20 billion, adding to the unbelievable $170 billion in oil and gas assets written down by the industry in just the first half of this year. Last year, a BP executive said that some of the company’s reserves “won’t see the light of day,” and this summer it committed to a 10-fold increase in low-carbon investments this decade as part of its commitment to net-zero emissions.The world has finally begun to cross a political tipping point, too. Grass-roots climate activists, often led by young people of Greta Thunberg’s generation, are marching every week now (even virtually during the pandemic). In the United States, this movement crosses party lines. More than 50 college conservative and Republican organizations have petitioned the Republican National Committee to change its position on climate, lest the party lose younger voters.Significantly, in just the past three months, several of the world’s most important political leaders have introduced important initiatives. Thanks to the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the E.U. just announced that it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent in the next nine years. President Xi Jinping has pledged that China will achieve net-zero carbon emissions in 2060. Leaders in Japan and South Korea said a few weeks ago said that their countries will reach net-zero emissions in 2050.Denmark, the E.U.’s largest producer of gas and oil, has announced a ban on further exploration for fossil fuels. Britain has pledged a 68 percent reduction by 2030, along with a ban on sales of vehicles equipped with only gasoline-powered internal-combustion engines.The cost of batteries for electric vehicles has dropped by 89 percent over the past decade, and according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, these vehicles will reach price parity with internal-combustion vehicles within two years in key segments of vehicle markets in the United States, Europe and Australia, followed quickly by China and much of the rest of the world. Sales of internal-combustion passenger vehicles worldwide peaked in 2017. It is in this new global context that President-elect Biden has made the decarbonization of the U.S. electricity grid by 2035 a centerpiece of his economic plan. Coupled with an accelerated conversion to electric vehicles and an end to government subsidies for fossil fuels, among other initiatives, these efforts can help put the nation on a path toward net-zero emissions by 2050.As the United States moves forward, it must put frontline communities — often poor, Black, brown or Indigenous — at the center of the climate agenda. They have suffered disproportionate harm from climate pollution. This is reinforced by recent evidence that air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels — to which these communities bear outsize exposure — makes them more vulnerable to Covid-19.With millions of new jobs needed to recover from the economic ravages of the pandemic, sustainable businesses are among the best bets. A recent study in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy noted that investments in those enterprises result in three times as many new jobs as investments in fossil fuels. Between 2014 and 2019, solar jobs grew five times as fast in the United States as average job growth.Still, all of these positive developments fall far short of the emissions reductions required. The climate crisis is getting worse faster than we are deploying solutions.In November of next year, all of the signatories to the Paris Agreement will meet in Glasgow with a mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions much faster than they pledged to do in 2015. What will be new in Glasgow is transparency: By the time the delegates arrive, a new monitoring effort made possible by an array of advanced technologies will have precisely measured the emissions from every major source of greenhouse gases in the world, with most of that data updated every six hours.With this radical transparency, a result of efforts of a broad coalition of corporations and nonprofits I helped to start called Climate Trace (for tracking real-time atmospheric carbon emissions), countries will have no place to hide when failing to meet their emissions commitments. This precision tracking will replace the erratic, self-reported and often inaccurate data on which past climate agreements were based.Even then, a speedy phaseout of carbon pollution will require functional democracies. With the casting of a majority of the Electoral College votes on Monday for Mr. Biden, and then his inauguration, we will make a start in restoring America as the country best positioned to lead the world’s struggle to solve the climate crisis.To do that, we need to deal forthrightly with our shortcomings instead of touting our strengths. That, and that alone, can position the United States to recover the respect of other nations and restore their confidence in America as a reliable partner in the great challenges humankind faces. As in the pandemic, knowledge will be our salvation, but to succeed, we must learn to work together, lest we perish together.Al Gore shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for his work to slow global warming.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More