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      Welcome Back, America?

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      America may well be divided about Donald Trump, but the rest of the world isn’t. The soon-to-be-former president has gotten high marks in the Philippines and Israel, a passing grade in a couple of African countries and India, and dismal reviews pretty much everywhere else. US allies in Europe and Asia are particularly relieved that Joe Biden will be taking the helm in January. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, summed up world sentiment with a pithy tweet: “Welcome back, America.”

      The international community is happy that the American people have taken down the world’s biggest bully. The heads of international bodies — from the World Health Organization to Human Rights Watch — are delighted that soon Trump won’t be undermining their missions. Perhaps the 2020 presidential election will inspire people elsewhere to dethrone their lesser bullies like Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi in India, even Vladimir Putin in Russia. Short of that, however, the removal of Trump from the international scene will restore a measure of decorum and predictability to global affairs.

      Joe Biden and America’s Second Reconstruction

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      With a slew of executive orders, Joe Biden is expected to press the reset button shortly after his January inauguration. The Washington Post reports: “He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing ‘dreamers,’ who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.”

      Just as Donald Trump was determined to delete the Obama administration’s legacy, Joe Biden will try to rewind the tape to the moment just before Trump took office. That’s all to the good. But the world that existed just before Trump began starting messing with it wasn’t so good: full of war, poverty and rising carbon emissions. Will Biden to do more than just the minimum to push the United States into engaging more positively with the international community?

      Dealing with Russia, China and North Korea

      The paradox of Trump’s foreign policy is that he often treated US adversaries better than US allies. Trump was constantly berating and belittling the leaders of European and Asian countries that had come to expect at least a modicum of diplomacy from Washington. The abrasive president berated NATO allies for not spending enough on their own defense, and he was constantly trying to pressure Japan and South Korea to pony up more money to cover the costs of US troops on their soil.

      Trump loved to insult what should have been his friends: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was “dishonest and weak,” British Prime Minister Theresa May was a “fool,” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was “stupid.” But Trump was positively glowing about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (“We fell in love”), Chinese President Xi Jinping (“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great”), and Russian President Vladimir Putin (“he might be bad, he might be good. But he’s a strong leader”). On the campaign trail in the fall, Trump reiterated: “One thing I have learnt, President Xi of China is 100 per cent, Putin of Russia, 100 per cent … Kim Jong-un of North Korea, 100 per cent. These people are sharp and they are smart.”

      Biden can be expected to reestablish the more routine praise of democrats and condemnation of autocrats. But will the reset go beyond rhetoric? During the campaign, for instance, Biden hit Trump hard on his China policy. The president, according to the Democratic candidate, wasn’t tough enough on China. Biden pledged to force Beijing to “play by the international rules” when it comes to trade and security. In addition, “under my watch America is going to stand up for the dissidents and defenders of human rights in China,” he has said.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The US-China relationship had begun its slide before Trump took office. The consensus, therefore, is that Biden’s election won’t reverse the trend. As Steven Lee Myers writes in The New York Times, “While many will welcome the expected change in tone from the strident, at times racist statements by Mr. Trump and other officials, few expect President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to quickly reverse the confrontational policies his predecessor has put in place.”

      Remember, however, that China-bashing has become a time-honored element of US presidential campaigns. Biden was not different. He saw an opening to criticize Trump and an opportunity to look tough on foreign policy, a perennial requirement for Democratic candidates. Once in office, however, presidents have generally adopted a more business-like approach to Beijing.

      My guess is that Biden will largely abandon the tariffs that Trump applied on Chinese goods because those were self-inflicted wounds that hurt American farmers and manufacturers. But he’ll continue to use sanctions against Chinese companies — on the grounds of intellectual property theft or security concerns — and against individuals associated with human rights abuses. Practically, that would mean shifting tensions to more targeted issues and allowing the bulk of US-China economic cooperation to proceed.

      More focused cooperation might be possible on environmental issues as well. In 2011, China and the United States established the Clean Energy Research Center to combine efforts to develop technology that can wean both countries of their dependency on fossil fuels. The funding runs out this year. Trump would not have renewed the project. Biden can do so and should even expand it. Of course, just talking would be a good start. The United States and China need to dial back tensions over Taiwan, the South China Sea and the global economy. Biden will likely move quickly to lower the temperature so that he can focus on cleaning up some other foreign policy messes.

      The same applies to Russia. Despite some rather conventional hawkish language about Russia, Biden is clearly interested in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US military policy. He is not only skeptical about the huge cost of modernizing the US arsenal but has shown some support for a no-first-use pledge, which would put him to the left of Obama. These positions should facilitate arms control negotiations with Russia, beginning with an extension of New START, even if the two sides remain far apart on issues like Ukraine, human rights and energy politics.

      The prospects for a resumption of negotiations with North Korea are perhaps not as rosy. Biden will probably order a strategic review of relations with Pyongyang, which will conclude after several months with various recommendations for cautious engagement. Those proposals, not terribly different from the ones that the Obama administration embraced in 2008, will not entice North Korea to give up its nuclear program. There might be negotiations, but they won’t be any more successful than the Trump administration’s efforts.

      The end result: the same “strategic patience” approach of the Obama years. But perhaps a more flexible Biden administration will allow South Korea to move forward with its own slow-motion engagement with the North.

      The Greater Middle East

      Trump tilted US policy toward the Israeli hard line. He was a great deal more accommodating of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, particularly around Yemen and human rights. And he substantially escalated tensions with Iran.

      Biden’s first and perhaps least controversial step will involve the nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated with Tehran. Biden has indicated that he favors rejoining the pact, and Iran would welcome such a move. To begin with, he’ll likely negotiate the removal of Trump-era sanctions in exchange for Iran reversing some of the nuclear moves it has made over the last three years.

      “One option for a Biden administration to jumpstart the process would be to revoke National Security Policy Memorandum 11, which formally ended U.S. participation in the JCPOA on May 8, 2018, on day one of his administration,” the National Iranian American Council recommends. “Sanctions-lifting could be accomplished by the same mix of statutory waivers, Executive order revocations, and U.S. sanctions list removals as performed by President Obama when implementing the initial U.S. commitments under the nuclear accord.” It can’t come too soon. Iran will hold its presidential election by June 2021, and the reformists need to demonstrate that their strategy of engagement with the United States is still effective. The reform camp did poorly in last spring’s parliament elections.

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      Another important first move would be for Biden to end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The cancellation of all military assistance, from intelligence-sharing to spare parts for planes, would seriously compromise the war effort, and it’s a move that even some Senate Republicans support. “He should publicly and privately tell the Saudis that he will do this on day one,” Erik Sperling, of Just Foreign Policy, told In These Times. ​“This will pressure them into negotiations and may end the war before he even enters the White House.”

      The Saudis, not thrilled with Biden’s victory, have been slow in sending their congratulations. In addition to his stance against the Yemen war, the next president will take a harder line on Saudi human rights violations, including the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. On the other hand, Biden might find a bit more common ground with Saudi Arabia in piecing together a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Donald Trump put a heavy thumb on the scale to favor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Biden will seek to correct the balance. Writes Yossi Melman in the Middle East Eye:

      “It is very likely that once Biden enters the Oval Office, his foreign and national security team will renew contacts with the Palestinian Authority, reinstate the Palestinian embassy in Washington and re-open the US Treasury’s pipes to allow the smooth flow of financial aid to the Palestinians, which were blocked and closed by the outgoing administration.

      From sources close to the Biden campaign, Middle East Eye also learned that the CIA will once again cooperate with its Palestinian counterparts and engage in mutual security collaboration to tackle terror threats. But at the same time, PA President Mahmoud Abbas will be asked to tone down anti-Israeli rhetoric and to resume talks with Israel.“

      Biden favors a two-state solution, but it’s not clear whether this option still exists after Trump and Netanyahu teamed up to undermine the Palestinian negotiating position.

      Climate Crisis and Security

      Unlike the progressive wing of the Democratic Party — or major political parties in Europe and other countries — Joe Biden has not fully embraced the Green New Deal. Instead, he has put forward his “clean energy revolution,” which envisions a carbon-neutral United States by 2050 and would invest around $1.7 trillion into job creation in clean energy and infrastructure.

      Biden’s positions on the climate crisis are in marked contrast to Trump’s denialism. According to the president-elect’s website, he “will not only recommit the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change – he will go much further than that. He will lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets. He will make sure those commitments are transparent and enforceable, and stop countries from cheating by using America’s economic leverage and power of example. He will fully integrate climate change into our foreign policy and national security strategies, as well as our approach to trade.”

      This plan, if implemented, “would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalents,” reports The Guardian. “Calculations by the Climate Action Tracker show that this reduction would be enough to avoid a temperature rise of about 0.1C by 2100.”

      Achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement is certainly a major improvement over Trump. But those goals themselves are insufficient. The pledges of Paris would still result in an increase of more than 3 degrees Celsius, well above the 2-degree target. Moreover, those pledges were voluntary, and many countries are not even meeting those modest goals.

      Of course, Biden will face considerable resistance from the Republican Party for even his modified Green New Deal. That’s why he has to focus on the jobs and infrastructure components to force the Republicans to appear “anti-job” if they stand in the way of the “clean energy revolution.” To pay for his green transition, Biden plans to rescind the tax cuts for the wealthy and leverage private-sector funds. He hasn’t discussed reallocating funds from a sharply reduced military budget. Indeed, Biden hasn’t talked about reducing military spending at all, right he favors reducing American military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Joe Biden is rather unexceptional when it comes to his views on American exceptionalism. The Foreign Affairs article that outlined his foreign policy approach was titled “Why American Must Lead Again,” after all.

      Granted, Biden was focusing more on the soft-power side of American leadership, leading on climate change, human rights and democracy, nuclear non-proliferation. His tone in the Foreign Affairs article is a welcome antidote to Trump’s bombast: “American leadership is not infallible; we have made missteps and mistakes. Too often, we have relied solely on the might of our military instead of drawing on our full array of strengths.” He emphasizes diplomacy, international cooperation, openness.

      But Biden will be the president of the United States of America, not the Democratic Socialists of America. He believes that the United States has a right to intervene militarily overseas if necessary. He views the United States as an honest broker to mediate in parts of the world — the Middle East, East Asia — where the United States is hardly neutral. He will, like Obama, sell weapons, and lots of them, to almost any country with the cash to buy them (and even some that don’t). And if that weren’t enough, he’ll have a still-strong “America First” constituency in Congress scrutinizing his every move, eager to label him a “traitor.”

      The international community, although welcoming the new president, will understandably remain wary of the United States. Dr. Jekyll will be back in charge in the White House, but who’s to say that Mr. Hyde won’t return in four years or even make some guest appearances before the next election? It simply doesn’t make a lot of sense to entrust leadership to a country with a severe personality disorder.

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Guardian view on Biden and the climate crisis: fight for net zero | Editorial

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      There is no question that Joe Biden’s win will make a big difference to international efforts to deal with the climate emergency. A US president who recognises global heating as an “existential threat” will be a vital extra pillar propping up the teetering edifice of climate diplomacy. Four years of Donald Trump have done huge damage to the US’s reputation. But the world’s biggest economy, and second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (after China), remains vastly influential. With President Biden in charge, the prospects for next year’s Cop26 talks in Scotland, when drastic emissions cuts must be agreed if the world is to stand a chance of avoiding catastrophic heating, are already brighter.
      President Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement was a key plank of his nationalist “America first” agenda and an act of sabotage against both the UN climate process and the principle of a rules-based international order. It also gave cover to the world’s other climate vandals: Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Russia and Australia. With Mr Biden, that cover is gone, and ecocidal policies such as Amazon rainforest destruction and coal-power expansion should come under renewed and relentless pressure. It is striking that the president-elect put climate at the heart of his phone calls with foreign leaders.
      The path ahead is anything but smooth. A green stimulus package on the scale promised by Mr Biden’s campaign is unlikely to pass through Congress, with control of the Senate hinging on two undecided seats in Georgia. Conservative judges are a further roadblock. Legislation to limit emissions and punish polluters is certain to be challenged all the way to the supreme court. Fossil-fuel companies and other vested interests remain a formidable force. Nor can public support be taken for granted. Most voters are on board in principle, recognising the dangers of unchecked global heating. But the changes in lifestyle that will be needed to meet new targets, including reductions in meat-eating and flying, are challenging in the US as in other rich countries.
      Still, Mr Biden’s presence in the White House will be a huge opportunity, and one that the environmental movement and its supporters must seize with every hand they have. Global heating is a fact, not a hypothesis or ideology. It is not just the vast majority of Democrats who want their politicians to do more to tackle it, but also a sizable minority of Republicans. Younger people are the most anxious. Mr Biden will perform a valuable public service simply by doing the opposite of his predecessor, and telling the truth.
      Democrats have shown that climate can be a unifying force within their party. Mr Biden’s climate taskforce was chaired by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman and star of his party’s progressive wing. Now, if they are to create sufficient momentum, Democrats must look beyond the ranks of committed green supporters, as the writer Arlie Russell Hochschild did in her book Strangers in Their Own Land, about environmental politics in Tea Party-supporting Louisiana. Already, Mr Biden has signalled that the harm caused by pollution to poorer Americans will be among his priorities.
      In recent weeks China, South Korea and Japan have all announced net zero emissions targets. Rapid falls in the price of renewables have made the process of weaning away from fossil fuels far less painful than most experts predicted. Climate protesters have shown how effective they can be in mobilising support for strong action. Now that the election is over, they must keep pushing Mr Biden and other legislators as hard as they can. More

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      Scorching Tucson bucks US trend to put climate justice at centre of plans

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      It was another scorching summer this year in Tucson, Arizona, the second hottest city in the United States, where even plants adapted to the desert’s harsh conditions wilted amid record-breaking temperatures and scant rainfall.
      This summer was the state’s hottest on record, and in August the city clocked four days that were 43C (110F) or hotter and 26 that were over 37C (99F). Tucson temperatures are on average 2.5C (4.5F) warmer now than in 1970, a greater increase than in most other American cities, according to analysis of weather data by Climate Central.
      In September, Tucson’s hottest and driest on record, city officials declared a climate emergency, pledging to become a global leader by working “to promote an ecologically, socially and economically regenerative local economy at emergency speed”. They promised to come up with a bold climate action and adaptation plan that puts environmental justice and equity at the heart of its green transition.
      “We’ve been warned by scientists across the world and the US military that climate change is one of the greatest threats, not just to the environment but to the economic stability of our country,” Regina Romero, who was elected mayor in 2019 on a climate justice ticket, told the Guardian. “In Tucson, water resources and heat are urgent issues, we have to protect the liveability of our communities. This is an emergency and we had to ring the bell.”
      The action plan is a work in progress, but Romero said key goals would include upgrading city buildings to be 100% powered on renewables, electrifying public transport and investing in long-neglected urban communities to make them healthier, more liveable places, in order to curb urban sprawl, according to Romero, the first woman and first Latina to be elected mayor.
      Tucson is Arizona’s second largest city after Phoenix, with almost 1 million habitants. Its rapidly growing sprawl encroaches on precious desert landscape, increases traffic and depletes already limited water sources. Extreme heat isn’t new in Arizona, but it is getting worse as the planet gets hotter and hotter.
      As temperatures rise and rainfall declines, air pollution is increasing along with associated health conditions such as asthma. About half the population of Tucson are people of colour, mostly Latino communities, who are disproportionately affected by heat islands, drought and worsening air and water pollution.
      “Tucson is often referred to as the green alternative to Phoenix, but really it’s more like the less brown alternative,” said Vince Powloski, of the Tucson Climate Action Network. “After decades of bad planning and negative influences, we’ve had some positive incremental changes but not the radical transformational change needed. I hope the climate emergency declaration will help us, but it will require getting everyone onboard and depends on politics at the state and national level, too.”
      Joe Biden, who won Arizona by half a percentage point in last week’s US election, has promised to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on day one of his presidency. At the state level, votes are still being counted in some key races but it looks like the Democrats will not flip either chamber, despite a multimillion-dollar effort. This could lead to obstacles for Tucson and other cities and counties trying to implement climate mitigation plans.
      Tucson, a Democrat-leaning city, and the historically mostly Republican state of Arizona have since the 1990s come up with bold sustainability plans on water, public transport and renewable energy. Tucson was among almost 4,000 cities, states, tribal leaders, universities, faith leaders and CEOs to sign the We Are Still In declaration, committing to climate action after Donald Trump announced that the US would leave the Paris accord.
      Recent popular policies in Tucson have included an incentive-based reclaim and reuse water programme, an electric tram system connecting low-income black and brown communities, and a tree-planting initiative to mitigate some of the worst heat islands.
      But advocates say that over the past three decades, progress has been stalled and plans diluted as a result of corporate influence at local and state levels. For instance, a statewide policy requiring developers to have 100 years of water resources for new projects has been eroded by the state legislature, while strong commitments to phase out coal have ended up favouring natural gas rather than solar and other renewables. Without joined-up action across the region, activists fear that developers and farmers will simply move their water-guzzling ventures to outside the city limits.
      Nevertheless, Romero is adamant that the climate emergency declaration is not an empty political statement but will lead to action demanded by voters and fuel change nationally.
      “The most progressive federal climate actions started as city-led grassroots initiatives,” she said. “Climate action and environmental equity always starts from the bottom up.” More

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      Boris Johnson phones to congratulate Joe Biden and discuss 'close' relationship

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      Boris Johnson has spoken to Joe Biden to congratulate him on his victory over Donald Trump and allay fears Brexit could damage the Northern Ireland peace process, as world leaders lined up to speak to the US president-elect.Johnson was the second world leader to reveal he had spoken to Biden, after the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, did so on Monday. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, French president, Emmanuel Macron, and Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said they had also received a call on Tuesday.“I just spoke Joe Biden to congratulate him on his election. I look forward to strengthening the partnership between our countries and to working with him on our shared priorities – from tackling climate change, to promoting democracy and building back better from the pandemic,” Johnson tweeted.Johnson and Biden are understood to have spoken for around 25 minutes from 4pm on Tuesday in a wide-ranging conversation on trade, Nato and democracy.Biden’s transition team said he thanked the prime minister for his congratulations and expressed his desire to “strengthen the special relationship” and “reaffirmed his support for the Good Friday agreement”.Downing Street said Johnson “warmly congratulated” Biden on his victory and “conveyed his congratulations to vice-president-elect Kamala Harris on her historic achievement”, but the official account did not specifically mention Brexit. However, a No 10 source said: “They talked about the importance of implementing Brexit in such a way that upholds the Good Friday agreement, and the PM assured the president-elect that would be the case.”Biden, who has Irish ancestry, has criticised Johnson’s intention to renege on parts of the EU withdrawal agreement in new Brexit legislation, and said that a US-UK trade deal was contingent on upholding the Good Friday agreement.Theresa May was 10th in line when Trump was elected in November 2016, after Ireland, Turkey, India, Japan, Mexico, Egypt, Israel, Australia and South Korea. Trump told May casually that “if you travel to the US you should let me know” – far short of an official invitation.Downing Street said the president-elect had been invited to attend the Cop26 climate crisis summit the UK was hosting in Glasgow next year, and the G7 Summit, also being hosted by the UK next year.Johnson and Biden have never met, although Biden allies have been disparaging about the prime minister. They include a former aide to Barack Obama, who said Democrats had not forgotten about Johnson’s suggestion the “part-Kenyan” former president held an “ancestral dislike of the British empire”.However, Downing Street has emphasised that the two leaders have much in common, in particular a commitment to tackling the climate emergency, which was not shared with the Trump administration.Over the weekend, Johnson said there was “far more that unites the government of this country and government in Washington any time, any stage, than divides us”. He added: “I think now, with president Biden in the White House in Washington, we have the real prospect of American global leadership in tackling climate change. And the UK, as you know, was the first major country to set out that objective of net zero by 2050.“We led the way a few years ago. And we’re really hopeful now that president Biden will follow and will help us to deliver a really good outcome of the Cop26 summit next year in Glasgow.”Senator Chris Coons, a close friend and ally of the president-elect, said he hoped Biden would look beyond the caricature of the UK prime minister. “In my meetings with the prime minister, he’s struck me as someone who is more agile, engaging, educated and forward-looking than perhaps the caricature of him in the American press would have suggested,” he said. “I found an engaging person to meet with and speak to and it’s my hope that president-elect Biden will have a similar experience.”The UK foreign office permanent secretary, Sir Philip Barton, rejected claims that Britain was trying to have it both ways by congratulating Biden but saying that some processes were “still playing out” in the US, a reference to Trump’s refusal to accept the election result.The Labour MP Chris Bryant, a member of the committee, accused Barton of relying on inertia and presiding over a half-hearted and incompetent congratulation. He said he did not see any of the necessary flair coming from the Foreign Office to build the personal relationships on which successful diplomacy rested.PA Media contributed to this report More

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      Can Joe Biden and Kamala Harris unite America after Trump – video explainer

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      When Joe Biden formally takes over the presidency in January he will face some of the greatest crises to hit the US in recent history: a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans, a devastated economy, a rapidly overheating climate and a deeply fractured nation.
      The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino looks at how Biden and the vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris, plan to ‘heal’ the country after four years of Trumpism – and the challenges they will face with the prospect of having to navigate these times without a majority in the Senate
      How Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in the fight for America’s soul – video More

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      Why Republican control of US Senate would kneecap climate action

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      Climate advocates rejoicing at Joe Biden’s presidential victory are also quietly absorbing the blow of Republicans possibly keeping control of the US Senate – which would kneecap significant efforts to fight globe-heating pollution.
      If Joe Biden is president and Congress is still divided, there will probably still be large-scale spending on green infrastructure, like renewable power, electric vehicles and transit. But any hopes for climate requirements for businesses, like a clean energy standard, would feel much farther off.
      Publicly, environmental groups have claimed success, saying this election was the most focused on climate of any in history and that Biden’s plan is solid. Privately, they know that much hinges on the two undecided Senate seats in Georgia, which will decide whether Republicans or Democrats have a majority.
      “Even though there might be obstructionism coming from Republican leadership in the Senate, we think that there will be many opportunities for Democrats and Republicans to come together to pass strong legislation,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.
      “Everything doesn’t start and stop with the US Congress. In order to win on climate change we will need to continue to see leadership everywhere across society, in our schools, in our private sector, in our states across the country,” he added.
      If Biden could convince Congress to spend $1.7tn on a green recovery, that would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes, avoiding a temperature rise of 0.1C by 2100, according to the Climate Action Tracker. That may seem small, but it could significantly lessen the harms of the climate crisis and also encourage pollution reductions in other nations. Already the world is more than 1C hotter than before industrialization. International agreements aim to keep that to 1.5C to 2C.
      Outside of Congress, Biden could pursue climate progress with agency regulations – stopping new oil and gas drilling on public lands, tightening air pollution rules that will also help with climate change and backing out of Donald Trump’s fight with California over standards for cars.
      But those measures are likely to be challenged by industry and could ultimately make their way to a final decision by the conservative supreme court, which Trump and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, were able to lock in weeks before the election. Plus, the new president could for some time have his hands full just reversing Trump’s cuts to environmental protection.
      Pushing for emissions reductions through executive authority could also make moderate Republicans less likely to support bipartisan efforts.
      Even some Democrats could be hesitant to significantly increase the federal deficit for the purpose of climate stimulus spending, said Ben Pendergrass, senior director of government affairs for Citizens Climate Lobby.
      While a progressive Green New Deal is not in the cards, inaction also won’t be tolerable for most lawmakers, Pendergrass said. He believes people who care about climate change “should view this as an opportunity”.
      Under a moderate president who is concerned about climate change, Republicans could have more space to support the expansion of renewable energy and green infrastructure, even if they won’t vote to penalize fossil fuels.
      “We really need bipartisan dialogue and cooperation on climate to create lasting solutions,” Pendergrass said.
      Biden’s first climate work will be through stimulus funds aimed at lifting the economy out of the pandemic downturn. Climate change is one of four crises spotlighted on his government transition website, along with the pandemic, the economic recovery and racial equity. The focus of the Biden climate plan is to “create union jobs by tackling the climate crisis,” the website says.
      Rhiana Gunn-Wright, climate policy director at the liberal thinktank the Roosevelt Institute, said every dollar of stimulus funding will either help or hurt climate action.
      “Even things that are very good for people are not necessarily carbon neutral because they’re going to spend that money on gasoline, on power that’s coal-fired and natural-gas-fired. And that’s not their fault,” Gunn-Wright said.
      Fossil fuel companies have sought and claimed about $5.8bn in pandemic assistance, according to her group. Easy-to-fund, shovel-ready projects like expanding highways threaten to lock in emissions.
      Wright said although a stimulus package will not include big decarbonization measures, like additional legal authorities for agencies, it will be a significant start.
      “There are a number of big new laws we’re going to need,” she said.
      Kate Larsen, a director at the economic research firm Rhodium Group, said a Democratic majority in the Senate would be critical to getting a good portion of the way toward the goals the US agreed to in the international Paris climate agreement, but without that majority, stimulus spending is the “fastest way a Biden administration can jumpstart clean energy efforts”.
      The firm found the US spent just 1.1% of its stimulus dollars on green measures. The EU and its member countries, by comparison, spent 18.8% on pro-environment efforts.
      Many states and businesses too will be trying to reduce their climate footprints, although some are clinging to a fossil-fuel based economy. Democrats saw losses in state legislatures that will probably hamper climate efforts.
      A Biden administration could aim to help states cut emissions, but the pandemic has critically injured already weak state budgets and resources.
      A group representing state clean air officials in October stressed the importance of getting “significant increases in federal grant funding” to protect public health. The National Association of Clean Air Agencies represents the state departments that regulate the pollution that makes people sick and also causes climate change.
      Paula DiPerna, a special adviser to CDP (the Carbon Disclosure Project), said businesses are more likely to be on board with climate action because they have suffered from the lack of regulatory continuity and certainty that comes from the pendulum swing of American elections.
      “If you marry the climate change challenge with the infrastructure improvement, I think you have a trigger for economic recovery. That’s Biden’s strength,” DiPerna said. More

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      in Elections

      This election isn't about the next four years. It's about the next four millennia | Bill McKibben

      by

      All American elections determine the character of the country for the next four years. And they have a lot to say about what the world will feel like too – that’s what it means to be a superpower. But this election may determine the flavor of the next four millennia – maybe the next 40. That’s because time is the one thing we can’t recover, and time is the one thing we’ve just about run out of in the climate fight. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2018 report made it clear that we had until 2030 to make fundamental transformations in our energy system – which they defined as cutting by half the amount of carbon that we pour into the atmosphere. Read that sentence again. Because it carries deep political implications. Very few of the problems that government deals with are time limited in quite the same fashion. Issues like housing or education or healthcare last throughout our lifetimes, and we take bites out of them when we can, hopefully moving two steps forward for every one we retreat.
      But climate change isn’t like that. If we don’t solve it soon, we will not solve it because we will move past tipping points from which we have no retreat. Some we’ve passed already: the news that Greenland is now in an irreversible process of melt should remind us that the biggest things on our planet can shift in the course of a very few human years.
      Electing Donald Trump the first time cost us dearly. The momentum coming out of the Paris climate accord was completely undercut by the administration’s insistence on rolling back environmental laws, favoring the oil industry, and removing the US from international negotiations. But at least for the moment some of that momentum still exists: in the last few weeks we’ve watched the Chinese make new pledges and the state of California announce a prospective end to the era of internal combustion. A Biden administration can join in those efforts; indeed it can lead them. Vice president Kamala Harris has announced that one of her first acts would be to convene a meeting of high-emitting nations, perhaps spurring more of them to ratchet up their ambition in anticipation of the next UN meetings in Scotland in 2021.
      [embedded content]
      But four more years of Trump and all-out climate denial? If the world’s largest economy is acting as a brake on climate progress, rather than accelerator, progress will be lurching at best. There will be no way to put any kind of pressure on leaders like Russia’s Putin or Brazil’s Bolsonaro. The effective chance to halt the rise in temperature at anything like the targets envisioned in the Paris Accords will slip by forever. And the job of future presidents will increasingly involve responding to disasters that it’s no longer possible to prevent. The one degree celsius that we’ve already increased the planet’s temperature has taken us into what is effectively a new geological era, one markedly less hospitable to human beings. But it still bears some resemblance to the world that our civilizations emerged from. If we value those civilizations then a vote for Joe Biden isn’t really about the next four years. It’s about the long march of time that stretches out ahead of us. And about every creature and human being that will live in those misbegotten years.
      Bill McKibben is an author and Schumann distinguished scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College, Vermont. His most recent book is Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? More

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      in US Politics

      Climate crisis breaks open generational rifts in US families

      by

      The climate crisis lingers in the back of Gemma Gutierrez’s mind, a gnawing anxiety that blossoms fully when she reads about wildfires, flooding or other climate-related disasters. It’s a nagging concern that clouds how the 16-year-old sees her future.“I have a sense of dread,” says Gutierrez, who lives with her parents in Milwaukee. “I dread that in my lifetime the clean water I have now or the parks I’m lucky enough to be able to go to won’t be there any more. It weighs on my mind.”Like a growing number of young people in the US, Gutierrez sees climate change casting a long shadow over her adult years. She has been inspired by Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, and has contacted her local elected representatives to raise her concerns.The looming US presidential election has only sharpened her fears, as well as underlining a generational rift in her family. In a scenario playing out in many American families, a sense of despair and outrage among young people over global heating is being met with indifference and even dismissal among some of their older relatives. More