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      in World Politics

      How Will Joe Biden Approach Iran?

      by

      Addressing months of speculation over the future of US policy toward Tehran, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on September 22 at the UN General Assembly, “We are not a bargaining chip in the US elections and domestic policy.” Earlier this year, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said if he is elected, the US will rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran nuclear deal — which the current administration withdrew from in May 2018. This set of the rumor mills about a major shift in Washington’s handling of Iran.

      The JCPOA was signed in 2015 by the P5+1 group — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — and the Iranians in a diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet today, the agreement is standing on its last legs. US President Donald Trump, who campaigned against the agreement during the 2016 presidential election, has imposed a policy of maximum pressure on Iran in order to force it to negotiate a better deal.

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

      READ MORE

      For the Trump administration, an improved agreement would address Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and its expansionist policies in the Middle East — two issues that the Obama administration and the European Union failed to incorporate in the JCPOA. This infuriated US allies in the Middle East, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which in particular has been on the receiving end of Iran’s destabilizing actions in the Gulf.

      With the presidential election on November 3, the question of whether US policy toward Iran will change should Biden win the keys to the White House is attracting the attention of pundits and policymakers in the Arab region. 

      Joe Biden’s Position on Iran

      Biden, who was vice president under the Obama administration, explained in a recent op-ed his proposed position regarding Iran. He said, “I have no illusions about the challenges the regime in Iran poses to America’s security interests, to our friends and partners and to [Iran’s] own people.” He listed four key principles as he outlined his approach.

      Embed from Getty Images

      First, he promised that a Biden administration would prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Second, he committed himself to rejoin the JCPOA if Iran returns to “strict compliance with the nuclear deal,” and only as “a starting point for follow-on negotiations.” In Biden’s words, these negotiations would aim at strengthening and extending the nuclear deal’s provisions and addressing “other issues of concern.” Third, he made a commitment to “push back against Iran‘s destabilizing activities” in the Middle East, which threaten US allies in the region. He also promised to continue to use “targeted sanctions against Iran‘s human rights abuses, its support for terrorism and ballistic missile program.”

      Finally, he said, if the Iranians choose to threaten vital American interests and troops in the region, the US would not hesitate to confront them. Despite this, Biden wrote that he is “ready to walk the path of diplomacy if Iran takes steps to show it is ready too.”

      But Will His Policy Be Any Different to Trump’s?

      In relation to Saudi Arabia, Biden issued a statement on the second anniversary of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in which he said, “Under a Biden-Harris administration, we will reassess our relationship with the Kingdom, end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.”

      Although Biden’s approach is a departure from Trump’s maximum pressure on Iran and with regard to Saudi Arabia in its intervention in Yemen, it is possible that Biden might end up — at least concerning Iran —applying Trump’s same tactics. This is partly because, according to Biden himself, Iran has stockpiled 10 times as much enriched uranium since Trump has been in office. This is further complicated by the fact there is no guarantee that Iran will surrender its stockpiles to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

      Additionally, Iran has repeatedly declared that it will not negotiate additional provisions to the JCPOA, which is in direct conflict with Biden’s intention to put enforce additional restrictions on Tehran. Moreover, putting pressure on Iran to end its destabilizing regional activities, as Biden has promised, would certainly lead to points of confrontation between the two countries, especially in Iraq and Syria. If any of these scenarios take place, a Biden administration would be forced to impose even tougher sanctions on Iran with the help of EU countries.

      Three Key Factors

      Biden’s decision to rejoin the JCPOA rests on three issues. The first is the balance of power within Congress between the Republicans and the Democrats. The second is how Iran fits into his overall policy toward China. Finally, the position of the Saudi kingdom and its allies regarding any future agreement with Iran would play a key role.

      First, it is well known that members of Congress from both parties resisted then-President Barack Obama’s policy of negotiating with Iran and insisted on reviewing any agreement before the US would ratify it. For this reason, a majority in Congress passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act in 2015, which forced the president to send any agreement he reaches with Iran to the US Congress for review.

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      When the P5+1 hit a breakthrough with the JCPOA, Obama sent the draft agreement to Congress as per the act, but the nuclear deal was neither approved nor rejected. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly opposed the deal. Yet Republicans in the Senate could not block the agreement because they did not have a 60-vote majority to move forward with a vote against the JCPOA. In other words, almost half of Congress — which consists of the House and the Senate — were against the Iran deal.

      If Biden becomes the 46th US president and decides to rejoin the agreement, he will face the same dilemma as Congress will have to review the JCPOA yet again, a process that will create tension between the president and Congress. Though considering the president needs Congress to pass domestic reforms related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the US economy, Biden would most likely not be in rush to act on Iran.

      Second, Biden would link the deal with Iran with his policy toward China. As president, Biden will continue Obama’s Pivot to Asia policy of redirecting the US military presence from the Middle East and other regions toward East Asia to confront China’s growing influence in the region.

      Meanwhile, Beijing has expanded its position in the Gulf where it has established several strategic partnerships, which are essential to connect China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to markets in Europe. With Iran’s signing of a strategic comprehensive partnership agreement with China in 2016 and its move to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Iran is very much part of the BRI.

      Thus, a Biden administration will likely tie Iran to its China containment policy. That is to say, any US policy that aims to weaken China will have to incorporate some pressure on the Iranians to be effective, including maintaining existing sanctions on Iran. Further, Iranian ties with China will push the US under Biden’s leadership to strengthen its relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in order to prevent China from extending its influence into the Middle East. The Biden administration cannot do so without taking into consideration the interests of Saudi Arabia, which are linked to the kind of agreement the US may strike with Iran.

      Finally, while the US has become self-sufficient in terms of oil supply, the world economy is still reliant on Saudi oil exports. Saudi Arabia is also the heart of the Muslim world, and it maintains control over 10% of global trade that passes through the Red Sea. The kingdom’s significance as a stabilizing factor in the Middle East is also increased with the demise of Syria, Iraq and the domestic troubles in Egypt, not to mention the challenges that Turkey is causing for the US in the region.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Accordingly, a Biden administration cannot afford to turn its back on Saudi interests. Such a policy would force Saudi Arabia to diversify its security, which would undoubtedly include strengthening its relations with China and other US rivals like Russia. This is something the US cannot afford to happen if it wishes to effectively confront its main competitors — China and Russia.

      As for Yemen, there is no reason that prevents Saudi Arabia and a Biden administration from reaching an agreement. In 2015, the kingdom intervened in Yemen to prevent Iran from threatening its southern borders. Saudi Arabia wants the war to end sooner rather than later, and it wants the Yemenis to thrive in their own state. However, the Yemen conflict is connected to the Iranian expansionist policies in the Middle East, and Biden’s administration would have to address this in its approach toward Iran.

      When adding to these reasons the fact that the conservatives won the Iranian parliamentary elections in early 2020 and are poised to win the presidential election in June 2021, it is highly doubtful that Iran will accept a renegotiated nuclear deal with the US.

      For all these reasons, returning to the JCPOA is unlikely.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

      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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      in US Politics

      Behold Trump's pre-election secret weapon: Nigel Farage, 'king of Europe' | Marina Hyde

      by

      How poignant to see KentgaragisteNigel Farage interfering in the US election, much in the way a drop interferes in the ocean. Farage is appearing at the odd rally for his emotional support president, Donald Trump, which tells its own story about where the US leader is at, psychologically speaking, for the final days of his campaign. On Wednesday, Trump gibbered to a crowd: “I’m glad I called him up.” So is Nigel’s agent.
      Nigel was brought on stage in Arizona by Donald, where the latter introduced him as “the king of Europe”. In fairness, he could just as easily have got away with passing Farage off as the duke of Ruritania or the sultan of Jupiter. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound, and Trump went on to hazard that Farage was “one of the most powerful men in Europe”, even though Nigel’s an unemployed radio DJ and has spent a good part of the past four years hanging round the old US-of-A hoping to get a 40-minute 6pm “dinner” invitation to eat a well-done steak with a self-confessed sex offender.
      By way of recompense, Farage rubed his way on to the rally platform and took the microphone to declare Trump was “the single most resilient and bravest person I have ever met in my life”. That is probably the only truthful thing to have been said on stage that night. Yes, Trump received five draft deferments – first for college, then for something called “heel spurs” – and once described the business of avoiding STDs in Manhattan during the 1980s as “my personal Vietnam”. But you have to remember that Nigel is himself a wildly overemotional nervous Nellie who would have been interned for spreading panic during the second world war he self-owningly fetishises. There is no one more histrionic, more whiny, and – let’s face it – more willing to make alliances with far-right German politicians. We simply couldn’t have risked him failing to keep calm or carry on among the general populace.
      Anyway, this week, he was giving it his best Lord Haw-Haw, informing Trump’s crowd: “You’ll be voting for the only leader in the western world with the real courage to stand up to the Chinese Communist party.” Stand up to them? He pays more tax to them than he does to the US. Later, Nigel justified his media credentials by explaining to Daily Telegraph readers that Trump had “what Americans call ‘the big M’ – momentum”. Is that what Americans call momentum? We’ll have to take this latterday Alistair Cooke’s word for it, I suppose.
      Then again, engaging with Farage on his own terms is like trying to debate a fart or conduct a symposium with cystitis. Though operationally pointless and redundant now, he somewhat horrifyingly endures – a vestigial tail on our body politic. It is increasingly accepted that Nigel will always be with us, like far-left antisemitism or a mutating respiratory virus.
      It is probably more helpful to step back and see him for what he represents in this case, which in some ways is nothing particularly new. British politicians have always nursed a certain desperation to be noticed by Washington power.
      The trouble for Boris Johnson’s government of superforecasters is that they seem not to have forecast in time that it was at least a remote possibility this Joe Biden guy could win the presidency instead of Trump. Thus, with no meaningful bonds forged at all with the current favourite, the omens for the UK should Biden prove victorious are not what you’d file under encouraging. Any appearance of Farage within a restraining order’s distance of Trump simply serves as a reminder to Biden’s Democrats of their long-held conviction that Brexit and Trump are of a piece.
      Furthermore, Johnson’s government still fails to understand that there IS a special relationship, it’s just that it’s between the US and Ireland. So when Biden last month warned that the Good Friday agreement must not become “a casualty of Brexit”, there was a very urgent need for the Conservative administration to do and say precisely nothing. As so often, alas, Iain Duncan Smith failed to get the memo, or certainly to understand the words crayoned on it, and consequently could be found across the airwaves honking that Biden shouldn’t be lecturing the UK, but should be trying for “a peace deal in the US” to stop “the killing and rioting” in cities following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. Quite what power Duncan Smith thought Biden would have at that point to strike a “peace deal” is unclear, but details aren’t exactly Iain’s strong point.
      Nor are they Farage’s. It was during the EU referendum campaign, you’ll recall, that Nigel lost his rag about Barack Obama “interfering”, after the US president announced that Britain would be “at the back of the queue” for a trade deal. This didn’t go down enormously well at the time, it must be said, but has regrettably increased in accuracy as we near the conclusion of the Brexit process, a full four-and-a-half years after the event and without a trade deal lined up. Unless any agreement with the US is signed by April, the legislation allowing it to speed it through Congress will have expired, meaning we will be at the back of a queue of queues. Already, our ability to strike a deal has by all accounts been hampered by the failure to put the NHS on the table, while the need to have anything at all on the table means the table is now heaving with heavily chlorinated chicken shit. Ah well. Perhaps Britain has had enough of exports.
      Speaking of chickenshits, you can be sure Nigel Farage will be a million miles away from that queue and all the other queues when they come to pass. What does he care? He’s a wrecker, not a builder. Perhaps the UK will live up to a vision “the king of Europe” couldn’t even be bothered to sketch on the back of one of his fag packets – or perhaps it won’t. Perhaps our chlorinated chickens will come home to roost.
      • Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Donald Trump Jr and father play down Covid deaths as daily toll nears 1,000

      by

      As coronavirus deaths in the US approach 1,000 a day in the current record surge of infections, Donald Trump and his son, Don Jr, appear intent on publicly disputing the lethality of the outbreak at repeated opportunities.
      Don Jr sat for an interview with Fox News on Thursday night during which he called critics of the Trump administration’s approach to the pandemic “truly morons” and said that deaths from Covid-19 in America right now are “almost nothing”.

      Bill Maxwell 😷 #NeverTrump
      (@Bill_Maxwell_)
      Don Jr. falsely claimed on Thursday that the number of Americans dying from the coronavirus amounts to “almost nothing.”An average of 1,000 Americans a day are dying from Covid-19 right now.pic.twitter.com/oHNzQtfDOS

      October 30, 2020

      Meanwhile, having said at a rally last weekend that “you don’t see death” at this stage of the pandemic in the US, Donald Trump reiterated in a tweet on Friday morning that deaths are “WAY DOWN” in the US, mass testing is exaggerating the numbers of infections and hospitals are coping.

      Donald J. Trump
      (@realDonaldTrump)
      More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN. Hospitals have great additional capacity! Doing much better than Europe. Therapeutics working!

      October 30, 2020

      In fact, many hospitals across the US, especially the midwest and upper midwest heartland and Texas are on the brink of being overwhelmed and are setting up field hospitals and calling in the military and assistance from state governors.
      On Fox News, Don Jr said: “If you look at, I put it on my Instagram, I went through the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] data because I kept hearing about the new infections, [but] why aren’t they talking about deaths? Oh, oh, because the number is almost nothing, because we have gotten control of this thing.”
      Public health experts, such as the top public health official on the White House’s own coronavirus taskforce, Anthony Fauci, just this week warned that the US was in for “a whole lot of pain” this winter because it is not controlling the pandemic, and that life probably will not return return to normal until late 2021 or 2022, even with a successful vaccine likely to emerge in the coming months.
      Nearly 90,000 new coronavirus infections were reported in the US on Thursday, the highest single-day total in the country since the pandemic began, or about one new case every second.
      In the recent surge deaths can lag cases by several weeks. But already deaths are increasing in about half of states, the New York Times reported.
      And in the past month, about a third of US counties hit a daily record of deaths in the pandemic. More

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      in US Politics

      Facebook leak reveals policies on restricting New York Post's Biden story

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      Facebook moderators had to manually intervene to suppress a controversial New York Post story about Hunter Biden, according to leaked moderation guidelines seen by the Guardian.The document, which lays out in detail Facebook’s policies for dealing with misinformation on Facebook and Instagram, sheds new light on the process that led to the company’s decision to reduce the distribution of the story.“This story is eligible to be factchecked by Facebook’s third-party factchecking partners,” Facebook’s policy communications director, Andy Stone, said at the time. “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform. This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We temporarily reduce distribution pending factchecker review.”In fact, the documents show, the New York Post – like most major websites – was given special treatment as part of Facebook’s standard process. Stories can be “enqueued” for Facebook’s third-party factcheckers in one of two ways: either by being flagged by an AI, or by being manually added by one of the factcheckers themselves.Facebook’s AI looks for signals “including feedback from the community and disbelief comments” to automatically predict which posts might contain misinformation. “Predicted content is temporarily (for seven days) soft demoted in feed (at 50% strength) and enqueued to fact check product for review by [third-party factcheckers],” the document says.But some posts are not automatically demoted. Sites in the “Alexa 5K” list, “which includes content in the top 5,000 most popular internet sites”, are supposed to keep their distribution high, “under the assumption these are unlikely to be spreading misinformation”.Those guidelines can be manually overridden, however. “In some cases, we manually enqueue content … either with or without temporary demotion. We can do this on escalation and based on whether the content is eligible for fact-checking, related to an issue of importance, and has an external signal of falsity.” The US election is such an “issue of importance”.In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said: “As our CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified to Congress earlier this week, we have been on heightened alert because of FBI intelligence about the potential for hack and leak operations meant to spread misinformation. Based on that risk, and in line with our existing policies and procedures, we made the decision to temporarily limit the content’s distribution while our factcheckers had a chance to review it. When that didn’t happen, we lifted the demotion.”The guidelines also reveal Facebook had prepared a “break-glass measure” for the US election, allowing its moderators to apply a set of policies for “repeatedly factchecked hoaxes” (RFH) to political content. “For a claim to be included as RFH, it must meet eligibility criteria (including falsity, virality and severity) and have content policy leadership approval.”The policy, which to the Guardian’s knowledge has not yet been applied, would lead to Facebook blocking viral falsehoods about the election without waiting for them to be debunked each time a new version appeared. A similar policy about Covid-19 hoaxes is enforced by “hard demoting the content, applying a custom inform treatment, and rejecting ads”.Facebook acts only on a few types of misinformation without involving third-party factcheckers, the documents reveal. Misinformation aimed at voter or census interference is removed outright “because of the severity of the harm to democratic systems”. Manipulated media, or “deepfakes”, are removed “because of the difficulty of ‘unseeing’ content so sophisticatedly edited”. And misinformation that “contributes to imminent violence or physical harm” is removed because of the security of imminent physical harm.The latter policy is not normally applied by ground-level moderation staff, but a special exception has been made for misinformation about Covid-19, the document says. Similar exceptions have been made to misinformation about polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to misinformation about Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Facebook also has a unique policy around vaccine hoaxes. “Where groups and pages spread these widely debunked hoaxes about vaccinations two or more times within 90 days, those groups and pages will be demoted in search results, all of their content will be demoted in news feed, they will be pulled from recommendation systems and type-ahead in search, and pages may have their access to fundraising tools revoked,” the document reads.“This policy is enforced by Facebook and not third-party factcheckers. Thus, our policy of not subjecting politician speech to factchecking does NOT apply here. If a politician shares hoaxes about vaccines we will enforce on that content.” More

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      in Elections

      Why the US military would welcome a decisive 2020 election win

      by

      Federal laws and longstanding custom generally leave the US military out of the election process.
      But Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated warnings about widespread voting irregularities and exhortations to his supporters to become an “army for Trump” as uncertified poll watchers have raised questions about a possible military role next week.
      If any element of the military were to get involved, it would probably be the national guard under state control.
      These citizen soldiers could help state or local law enforcement with any major election-related violence, especially in the event of a contested result.
      But the guard’s more likely roles will be less visible – filling in as poll workers, out of uniform, and providing cybersecurity expertise in monitoring potential intrusions into election systems.
      Unlike regular active-duty military, the national guard answers to its state’s governor, not the president.
      Under limited circumstances, Trump could federalize them, but in that case, they would generally be barred from doing law enforcement.
      A contested vote could stir the kind of wild speculation that forced America’s top general to assure lawmakers the military would have no role in settling any election dispute between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
      A decisive result could allay such concerns by lowering the risk of a prolonged political crisis and the protests it could generate, say current and former officials as well as experts.
      “The best thing for us [the military] would be a landslide one way or another,” a US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters, voicing a sentiment shared by multiple officials.
      A week before the election, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll showed Biden leading Trump nationally by 10 percentage points, but the numbers are tighter in battleground states that will decide the election and gave Trump his surprise 2016 win.
      The coronavirus pandemic has added an element of uncertainty this year, changing how and when Americans vote.
      The president, who boasts about his broad support within military ranks, has declined to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he believes that results coming in on election day next Tuesday or, more likely with postal ballots still being counted, a day or days thereafter, are fraudulent.
      He has even proposed mobilizing federal troops under the 200-year-old Insurrection Act to put down unrest, and his tendency to be provocative on Twitter adds an extra element of tension, which caused discomfort among some military top brass.
      “Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send them in and we do it very easy,” Trump told Fox News in September.
      For his part, Biden has suggested the military would ensure a peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses and refuses to leave office after the election.
      US army general Mark Milley, selected last year by Trump as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has been adamant about the military staying out of the way if there is a contested ballot.
      “If there is, it’ll be handled appropriately by the courts and by the US Congress,” he told National Public Radio this month.
      “There’s no role for the US military in determining the outcome of a US election. Zero. There is no role there,” he added.
      Peter Fever, a national security expert at Duke University, cautioned that America’s willingness to look to the military when there is a crisis could create a public expectation, however misguided, that it could also help resolve an electoral crisis.
      “If things go poorly and it’s November 30 and we still have no idea who the president is … that’s when the pressure on the military will grow,” Fever said, imagining a scenario where street protests escalate as faith in the democratic process erodes.
      Steve Abbot, a retired navy admiral who has endorsed Biden, said the danger that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act “undoubtedly concerns those who are in uniform and in the Pentagon”. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in World Politics

      Trump, Biden and the Climate: A Stark Choice

      by

      While the economy and COVID-19 may dominate discussions around the coming US election, environmental issues and climate change, mainly due to the recent wildfires in the state of California, may also be a differentiating factor between the two presidential candidates. Back in January 2017, in my article titled “Trumping the Climate,” I lamented the uncertainties and questions ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, particularly relating to climate change policy. As we approach the 2020 election, what can we say about the legacy of the Trump administration and its stated future policies, and what of Biden’s policy directions as presented in the party platforms?

      360˚ Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

      READ MORE

      The contrast between the alternative policies couldn’t be starker. The most baffling aspect is the Republican decision to adopt the same platform the party used in 2016. It would have been logical to update the document and delete sentences such as “Over the last eight years, the Administration has triggered an avalanche of regulation that wreaks havoc across our economy and yields minimal environmental benefits.” The next sentence states that “The central fact of any environmental policy is that year by year, the environment is improving.” Did someone in the Republican camp actually review this document?

      Trumping the Climate

      But before comparing the Republican and the Democratic platforms, it would be useful to recap the actions of the current administration relating to the environment and climate change. Based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, more than 70 environmental rules and regulations have been officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Trump. Another 26 rollbacks are still in progress. Here are some of the most significant rollbacks introduced.

      Paris Climate Agreement. The formal notice given by the Trump administration to withdraw from the 2015 Paris accords was a clear signal of its intent to not only cease its cooperation in global actions to address climate change but also to question the science behind it. By doing so, the US became one of only three countries not to sign on to the Paris Climate Agreement. The pulling out of any major player from international climate accords has to be seen as a huge setback — and it is. Perhaps more importantly, such action also undermines US involvement and leadership in other UN and international forums. It may also strain US trade and other relationships with the EU and other nations.

      Clean Power Plan. As one of President Barack Obama’s key environmental policies, the plan required the energy sector to cut carbon emissions by 32% by 2030. It was rolled back by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2017 citing “unfair burdens on the power sector and a ‘war on coal.’” The GOP platform states that “We will likewise forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide, something never envisaged when Congress passed the Clean Air Act.” It can be argued that the energy sector is already heading toward low-carbon alternatives, and clean energy is no more a war on coal than a healthy diet is on junk food. Admittedly, the transition to low-carbon energy will nevertheless require government initiatives and incentives, at least in the short term.

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      Air pollution regulations. The control of hazardous air pollution has been significantly diminished through the weakening of the Clean Air Act, whereby major polluters such as power plants and petroleum refineries, after reducing their emissions below the required limits, can be reclassified and can emit dangerous pollutants to a higher limit. Using my earlier analogy, this is like having a single healthy meal, then continuing to eat junk food.

      Methane flaring rules. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than, say, carbon dioxide. The rollback of EPA standards for methane and other volatile organic compounds that were set back in 2012 and which resulted in significant reductions in methane emissions. Relaxing those regulations gives states control of their own standards, creating discrepancies in flaring rules between states.

      Oil and natural gas. The move to encourage more oil and gas production clearly works against clean air initiatives. Apart from greenhouse gas emissions, the burning of fossil fuels emits significant amounts of other pollutants into the environment. Admittedly, there are economic and international demand-and-supply factors for consideration here. No doubt, US self-sufficiency in oil and gas supply is an important and appropriate dynamic.

      Fuel economy rules. The weakening of the fuel economy rules reduced the previously set target of 54 mpg by 2025 for cars made after 2012 to 34 mpg. The fuel efficiency of road vehicles is an important aspect of economic transport and air pollution and its health impacts.

      Overall, the fundamental direction of the above changes in policy pulls back progress made by the Obama administration toward cleaner air and mitigating climate change, giving a higher priority to oil and gas, as well as assumed economic growth. More broadly, it ignores the importance of the global agreement and action on climate change and significantly undermines scientific consensus. Ironically, it could also be seen to be contrary to current and future market and economic forces, and as defiance of science in general. Furthermore, it’s intriguing that the establishment of a low-carbon economy, with its technology-driven projects and the building of more resilient infrastructure, isn’t seen as job-creating.

      The Trump administration made numerous other environmental policy changes dealing with water and wildlife management and opening of public land for business. Clearly, the Trump administration does not see climate change as a national emergency or an area of priority for policy direction, nor does it see a low-carbon economy as an economic opportunity.

      The continuing increase in wildfire frequency and severity as well as other extreme weather events alongside Trump’s persistent denial of climate change impacts continues to intrigue and frustrate experts in the field. On the one hand, the GOP platform asserts that “Government should not play favorites among energy producers” and on the other, appears to ignore renewable energy sources even though these are just as much “God-given natural resource” as oil and gas.

      The Biden Plan

      Now let’s look briefly at the Democratic Party Platform for the environment and climate change. In summary, the stated initiatives in the Biden plan are as follows.

      Climate change. The platform is unequivocal in its acceptance of climate change and its social, economic and environmental impacts, pledging a $2-trillion accelerated investment in “ambitious climate progress” during his first term. It is also unambiguous in the measures it plans to take to reduce inequities in how climate change affects low-income families, and the importance of building “a thriving, equitable, and globally competitive clean energy economy that puts workers and communities first and leaves no one behind.” Economists agree that due to advances made in clean energy and its economics, net-zero emissions are not only achievable, but are now cost-effective and provide a cleaner environment in a world with a growing population and the inevitable increase in the consumption of resources.

      Paris Climate Agreement. The platform is once again clear in its intent to “rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and, on day one, seek higher ambition from nations around the world, putting the United States back in the position of global leadership where we belong.” This would help recalibrate the global efforts and provide a boost to the international impetus for progress on climate change. The importance of binding global agreements and actions cannot be overstated if the world is to significantly mitigate climate change.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Toward net-zero emissions. The platform commits to “eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 through technology-neutral standards for clean energy and energy efficiency.” It further commits to the installation of 500 million solar panels, including 8 million solar roofs and 60,000 wind turbines and to turning “American ingenuity into American jobs by leveraging federal policy to manufacture renewable energy solutions in America.” Reading the platform’s language and overall framework and knowing what I know about renewable energy and low-carbon technologies, I can’t help feeling that the Democratic platform must have accessed credible and comprehensively developed scientific and economic analyses.

      Auto industry. The Democrats pledge to “inform ambitious executive actions that will enable the United States to lead the way in building a clean, 21st century transportation system and stronger domestic manufacturing base for electric vehicles powered by high-wage and union jobs … and accelerate the adoption of zero-emission vehicles in the United States while reclaiming market share for domestically produced vehicles.” Numerous other initiatives include transitioning the entire fleet of 500,000 school buses to American-made, zero-emission alternatives within five years and to support private adoption of affordable low-pollution and zero-emission vehicles by partnering with state and local governments to install at least 500,000 charging stations.

      Sustainable communities. The platform is ambitiously broad in its coverage of sustainable initiatives across all communities including agriculture, marginalized communities, climate resilience, disaster management, planting of trees for reduction of heat stress, education and training, public land management, energy efficiency and sustainable housing, sustainable energy grids in remote and tribal communities — all with job creation and economic growth in mind.

      How the above differences in policy and direction in the US election are likely to play out in November are difficult to ascertain. Whichever way America votes will considerably affect the nation’s future in addressing not only its own climate change responses, but will carry a significant impact for the rest of the world.

      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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      in US Politics

      Despair or denial – are these the only options in the run-up to election night? | Emma Brockes

      by

      Four days out from the US election, and everyone is feeling tired and emotional. It is hard to focus, easy to agonise, and soothing – if the volume of pain on social media is anything to go by – to share with the group one’s inability to function. This is not limited to people living in the US, but – as with the recent death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and ascent of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court – is felt by plenty of observers abroad as acute and very personal pain. People are, by their own admission, weeping, paralyzed, grief-stricken, terrified, frozen, nauseous and bingeing. You can’t turn it off. There is no escape.
      At least this is the impression one gets after spending too long online. How we live psychologically in relation to the news is something we are assumed not to have much control over. You can be an ostrich and happy or that guy trapped in a feedback loop of conspiracy theories on Facebook – but nobody wants to be him. Or you can be informed and miserable, on which count not feeling completely dismantled at the moment is a dereliction of civic duty. Who runs the US affects the rest of the world, and it is not outlandish for Brits – or, say, affluent New Yorkers, insulated from the worst effects of a Trump re-election – to be emotionally disturbed ahead of the election. What remains curious is whether the sheer levels of reported distress are to any degree optional, or entirely related to the trauma at hand.
      If I put down my immediate worries, I can, within about three mental leaps, get from Trump’s re-election to the ship sailing on climate breakdown, to the end of human civilisation, taking my descendants with it. The same goes for the domino run of panic around Coney Barrett’s confirmation on the supreme court, bringing with it the threat of reversals on abortion and marriage equality. These planes, always idling at the end of the runway, require a small amount of energy to get airborne, however, and with a bit of effort – staying off social media; narrowing my range of vision to the next 45 minutes – I can usually stop the thing taking off.
      The question is whether I should want to. Distress as a form of empathy is imagined to be a precursor to action, the necessary spur to political activity. Denial, meanwhile, is imagined only ever to foster apathy. I’m sure this is true in lots of contexts, and yet when we are powerless to do anything, as we are at this stage of the election, anxiety itself feels like a proxy for Doing Something, and a useless one at that. Fretting on Twitter might offer solace, but it risks exacerbating the very thing it seeks to remedy.
      And it’s an unreliable measure of anything much beyond one’s own temperature. The two sharpest responses I’ve had to an election were in 1997, when Tony Blair became prime minister, ending a Tory run that had lasted all but three years of my life, coinciding with the elation of graduating and the dawn of adult life, and seven years later, when George W Bush won a second term by defeating John Kerry. I was in Britain in 2004: the US election had nothing to do with me – or rather, it was less my concern than it would be in 2016, when Donald Trump became president of the country I lived in. But while Trump’s election was a terrible shock, I felt the disappointment of the Bush re-election more keenly. I was less politically jaded then, more inclined to believe things would turn out OK, and still recovering from the death of my mother. As in 97, my response to the election was more life than politics.
      There are broader injuries that perhaps can’t be dodged. For Americans, Trump has delivered a psychological blow in the form of besmirching the very idea of their country, an injury over-arching all others. And while, for reasons of self-preservation, it might make sense to skirt Twitter for a few days, you can’t entirely avoid these things. I used to sleepwalk – or sleep-bolt – something I haven’t done for 10 years. I am calm during the day, but one night this week, I woke up at 2.30am in my living room, eyes on the clock, heart racing, trying to figure out how I got there and why.
      • Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      in US Politics

      'He's a salesman': why rallies are Trump's last best hope of clinging to presidency

      by

      For Donald Trump, surviving coronavirus has become just another punchline on the campaign trail.
      “I had so many doctors and each one of them studied different parts of the body,” the president told supporters in Waukesha, Wisconsin, last weekend.
      A roar of laughter.
      “And I had a moment where almost every one of them was touching me simultaneously.” More laughter. “I didn’t like it!”
      More laughter.
      “I said, ‘Doc, I wanna to get out of here, I’ve gotta campaign, I’m in the midst of a campaign against ‘Sleepy Joe’. Can you imagine losing to this guy!?”
      Cries of “No!” followed by Trump parodying the voice of a doctor, comparing himself to Superman and referencing “Barack Hussein Obama” – cue a chorus of boos.
      Opinion polls suggest that Trump could be a dead man walking, hurtling towards a psychologically crushing defeat like one-term president Jimmy Carter against Ronald Reagan in 1980.
      Yet on the trail he continues to project the image of a happy warrior cruising to re-election, regaling big crowds with selective poll numbers, bogus conspiracy theories and his own brand of humor. And his base remains loyal to the end with cheers, merriment and chants of “Four more years!”, “Lock him up!” and “Build that wall!”
      If Trump does lose next week – and the polls have been wrong before so that remains a big “if” – he will go down with all guns blazing. More