Most Americans seem to disapprove of President Joe Biden’s environmentalist policies.
A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted in July found that 57% of adults do not approve of how the president is handling climate change.
In an interview with The Weather Channel, Biden said he had already declared a national climate emergency “in practice.” He echoed Secretary of State Antony Blinken by calling climate change an “existential threat” to humanity.
Biden is facing pressure from environmentalists to declare an official emergency, but he has been hesitant. Such a declaration would enable the president to exercise powers, including funding anti-fossil fuel initiatives.
“Biden has, in fact, failed to declare a climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act, failed to harness his executive powers, and failed to take lifesaving action to end fossil fuels,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, reported The Hill.
Biden, however, touted the environmentalist policies he has implemented so far.
“We’ve conserved more land. We’ve … rejoined the Paris Climate Accord,” said Biden during his interview with The Weather Channel.
According to an NPR poll, 80% of Democrats would like to see policies to curb climate change implemented even if the economy suffers. In comparison, 72% of Republicans would not find that an acceptable trade-off and instead would prioritize the economy.
NPR noted that the percentage of Republicans who feel this way is up 13 points since 2018, even as extreme weather events allegedly caused by climate change are on the rise.
As The Dallas Express reported, the administration has proposed a new rule to allow for public land to be leased for conservation.
The Dallas Express spoke to Brent Bennett, policy director of Life:Powered at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, about President Biden’s approach to climate change.
Bennett said Biden was “triangulating,” or trying to appease the left without adopting their most radical policy demands. Bennett said the administration is likely reading the political winds in Europe, where some countries that had adopted more aggressive anti-fossil fuel policies have walked them back. He noted that in Great Britain, the government is pulling back from its carbon net-zero strategy and its aggressive timeline for adopting electric vehicles.
Still, Biden is pushing ahead with new regulations that Bennett believes will do more harm than good. They include more stringent fuel economy standards for vehicles and new carbon rules for power plants.
Paraphrasing Biden’s own rhetoric on climate change, Bennett called the policies a “whole-of-government assault on fossil fuels” and an “assault on low energy prices.”
Bennett also pointed to data highlighted by Bjorn Lomborg that rising temperatures have resulted in fewer global deaths due to temperature since more deaths are attributable to cold weather than extreme heat by a factor of 10.
What this means, Bennett said, is that “fewer people are dying from temperature than ever before. Death from temperature-related causes have been declining for a long time.”