President Joe Biden praised his administration’s efforts to tackle climate change as “the most aggressive climate action ever” during a speech at the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center and Preserve in Palo Alto, California. The President criticised Republicans in Congress for attempting to block the administration’s efforts. Last week, four major environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the NRDC Action Fund, endorsed Biden’s re-election bid for president, citing his commitment to climate change.
Biden’s speech comes after his administration’s approval of a major Alaska oil project earlier this year. Some groups have expressed frustration over this decision, but Biden has heavily courted climate and environmental justice groups during his presidency.
During his speech, Biden outlined a series of new initiatives aimed at building climate resilience across the United States. These initiatives include the $575 million “Climate Resilience Regional Challenge” launched by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which will help coastal and Great Lakes communities become more resilient to extreme weather. The Department of Energy will receive $2 billion in funding, including $67 million for California alone, to modernize the electrical grid and make it more climate resilient. A White House Climate Resilience Summit will also be held.
The funding for these initiatives is provided through the Inflation Reduction Act, a signature health care and climate legislation passed by the Biden administration. However, congressional Republicans are attempting to repeal some of its provisions.
Biden criticised these efforts, saying, “some of our MAGA Republican friends in Congress are continuing to try to undo all the progress we’ve already made in the first two and a half years”. He added that Republicans had attempted to “gut the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act” during talks over the debt limit, but ultimately failed to do so. “We protected every single solitary one”, Biden said.
Biden has made the climate crisis central to his governing agenda, with new announcements over the last couple of months on environmental justice initiatives and aggressive new rules to regulate planet-warming pollution from natural gas power plants. The President has previously toured sites across the country that show the impact of climate change, including wildfire damage in California. Last year, natural disasters caused $165 billion in damages across the United States.
Original Story at www.cnn.com – 2023-06-19 21:15:00
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