Almost 3 years ago, right after Jan 6, Chuck Schumer proposed we declare a “climate emergency”;
Just a week into his term, President Joe Biden is already under pressure to act more swiftly on climate change. On Monday night, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that the newly inaugurated president should declare climate change a “national emergency,” unlocking over a hundred additional presidential powers to tackle the overheating planet. “If there ever was an emergency, the climate crisis is one,” Schumer said.
The push for a “climate emergency” has been building for some time. In December, more than 380 environmental groups sent a letter to Biden’s transition team, urging him to issue an executive order invoking the National Emergencies Act.
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The concept of a “climate emergency” is part of a broader trend in activism, one that attempts to accelerate the normally sluggish timeline of action. It’s what drives Greta Thunberg, the teenage Swedish climate activist, to tell the world’s economists that “our house is on fire,” or pushes Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York to say that if humanity doesn’t address climate change by 2030, “the world is going to end.”
More recently I diaried about what Bernie Sanders said recently;
Bernie Sanders and AOC take on the climate crisis that may destroy human civilization
The Federalist Society, the brains behind Trump and the GOP, disagrees;
Right-Wing Think Tank's Climate 'Battle Plan' Wages 'War Against Our Children's Future'
The document would essentially serve as a policy blueprint for the first 180 days if Trump—or another Republican—were to gain control of the White House in January 2025, as E&E News explained. Climate and environmental rollbacks in the document include
. Axing the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations; .S topping the focus on "grid expansion for the benefit of renewable resources or supporting low/carbon generation" and instead expanding natural gas infrastructure and overall fossil fuel use; . Downsizing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA offices including the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, and the Office of Public Engagement and Environmental Education; . Preventing other states from adapting California's stricter environmental standards for greenhouse gases; and . Banning the use of scientific studies including private health data in setting EPA regulations.
The #1 goal of the Climate Emergency should be to stop burning fossil fuels ASAP, way before the 2050 “net-zero” recently proposed;
Are we on track to reach net zero by 2050?
No, commitments made by governments to date fall far short of what is required. Current national climate plans – for 193 Parties to the Paris Agreement taken together – would lead to a sizable increase of almost 11% in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared to 2010 levels. Getting to net zero requires all governments – first and foremost the biggest emitters – to significantly strengthen their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and take bold, immediate steps towards reducing emissions now. The Glasgow Climate Pact called on all countries to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their NDCs by the end of 2022, but only 24 new or updated climate plans were submitted by September 2022.
IMO declaring a climate emergency would help Biden get re-elected and would decrease the global climate anxiety.
As climate changes, climate anxiety rises in youth
In the survey, 59% of youth and young adults said they were very or extremely worried about climate change and more than 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.
