Quebec forest fires caused severe air pollution on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard earlier this month. Although the cause of the fires is subject to debate, many have blamed climate change. Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon said, “We ought to treat it like the emergency it is.” Representative Ro Khanna of California urged President Biden to “declare a climate emergency.” The call for a climate emergency is not new; in July 2022, some House members wrote a letter to the President, asking him to declare a climate emergency.
What is a climate emergency? Mirriam-Webster defines an emergency as “an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action.” Over the last three decades, countries have made progress on decarbonization, though much more needs to be done quickly. Many are frustrated by policy sluggishness and even reversal. But are emergency declarations the appropriate route to address chronic policy shortfalls? If so, America could become an “emergency country” because it faces policy failure across issue areas – economy, education, inflation, housing, health, crime, and so on.
U.S. Presidents have tended to use national emergency declarations to bypass Congress, although the Congressional Research Service notes that the 1976 National Emergency Act was enacted “out of concern that Presidents had accrued too many extraordinary statutory powers available during a national emergency and that Presidents were using national emergencies to invoke powers that were originally intended to be available only during wartime.” Since 1976, Presidents have declared 58 national emergencies, and 31 are still in effect. Emergency measures were invoked for illicit drug trade, the border wall, and have been demanded for gun violence. While many emergencies had bipartisan support, a climate emergency will be perceived as a way for President Biden to bypass Congress to enact climate policy.
Although there is gridlock at the federal level, many Republican states have installed significant utility-scale solar and wind generation capacity. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that in 2023 more than half of the new U.S. electricity generation capacity will be solar, with Texas in the lead position. The reality is that the climate policy dialogue has shifted in the last 10 years or so. Although historically, climate skeptics constituted an influential group, in 2023, few prominent politicians dispute that the climate challenge is real and caused by human actions. The political problem is that climate change has become a “trigger phrase,” symbolizing cultural wars.
Tackling impediments to energy transition are predominantly around issues such as grid connectivity and the availability of critical minerals to support the electrification of the economy. Thus, permitting reforms are required so that new energy infrastructure can come up quickly. This may involve revisiting iconic environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which imposes procedural requirements for major federal projects.
In sum, Quebec forest fires have caused massive air pollution problems for East coast cities. Climate change certainly contributes to forest fires along with chronic forest mismanagement and human carelessness. However, forest fires do not justify the use of climate emergency to enact system-wide policy changes. Critical impediments to climate policy are now at the implementation stage such as grid connectivity and infrastructure permitting. This is where political efforts should be directed instead of virtue signaling over Twitter.
Original Story at www.forbes.com – 2023-06-17 22:53:43