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By Rachel Koning Beals and Victor Reklaitis
In a Rose Garden announcement, Biden is expected to pledge new policies toward environmental justice and attack Republican plans to strip green initiatives from the IRA as part of debt-crisis fight
President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order to create a White House Office of Environmental Justice, his response to a growing library of data that shows people of color are at much greater risk to the negative health and economic impacts from a warming Earth and concentrated pollution.
And Biden, who is seen as likely to run for another presidential term in 2024 although he has yet to officially state his intentions, used Friday’s event to argue that a Republican push for cutting back climate-minded spending and their preference to boost U.S. fossil fuel production is favoring the oil and gas industry and leaving out the interests of too many Americans.
“The MAGA Republicans in Congress want to repeal climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. They’d rather threaten to default on the U.S. economy … rather than get rid of $30 billion [in] taxpayer subsidies to an oil industry that made $200 billion last year,” Biden said from the Rose Garden.
Republicans advanced their updated priorities earlier this this week. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy unveiled a sweeping package Wednesday that would raise the nation’s debt limit by $1.5 trillion into next year while imposing a long list of Republican initiatives.
McCarthy proposed a one-year debt ceiling increase tied to spending cuts and policy changes, including the repealing of tax incentives for lower-emitting electric vehicles(TSLA) and for wind, solar and other clean energy(ICLN) that were a feature of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
McCarthy and other Republicans want expanded fossil fuel production, saying it is key to U.S. energy independence and national security. Republicans and some Democrats, mostly from energy-producing states, have said a diversified energy portfolio that includes traditional sources is necessary for holding down energy costs for businesses and homes.
The 320-page “Limit, Save, Grow Act” released by House Republicans has almost no chance of becoming law, but McCarthy is using the legislation as a strategic move, a starting point to draw Biden into negotiations that the White House has, so far, been unwilling to have over the debt crisis.
Further, energy is expected to be a prime talking point of the 2024 election, but so is the U.S.’s role on climate change as a leading polluter in the world. The U.N. and the U.S.’s trading partners have said Americans must lead by example in an effort to slow global warming to the targets set out nearly 10 years ago in Paris.
Related: Republican House OKs pro-drilling energy bill that’s unlikely to pass Senate. It’s still a rebuke of Biden’s climate agenda and a 2024 weapon
Annually, the U.S. oil and gas industry, a leading contributor to man-made climate change, releases about 9 million tons of carbon dioxide, methane gas and other toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
With the order, Biden makes environmental justice a focus of every federal agency and requires those agencies to develop plans to address the disproportionate impact of pollution and climate change on minority and tribal communities, and to report their progress, the White House said.
Biden will also direct agencies to address gaps in science, data and research regarding the cumulative effects of pollution on communities of color, among other things.
“In two years, we’re making real progress on the most ambitious environmental justice agenda in history. With this executive order, we’ll go even further,” Biden said Friday.
Because of historical biases in real estate and financial markets , Americans of color disproportionately live in neighborhoods and communities with more exposure to air pollution from industry and traffic than their white counterparts, the American Lung Association said this week in its annual State of the Air report. The release is only the latest public-health report to denote the gaps.
Out of the nearly 120 million people who live in areas with unhealthy air quality, more than 64 million, or 54%, are people of color, the Lung Association says.
African American and low-income communities are disproportionately affected by air pollution in the country, agree researchers at Princeton University. For example, more than one million African Americans live within a half-mile of natural gas facilities, over one million African Americans face a “cancer risk above EPA’s level of concern” due to unclean air, and more than 6.7 million African Americans live in the 91 U.S. counties with oil refineries, the Princeton report says.
What’s more, systemic factors make communities of color more vulnerable to climate change. According to the American Public Health Association (APHA), communities of color are more likely to experience pre-existing health conditions and poor living conditions than their white counterparts.
Read: Is it safe to live near recycling centers? Questions surge after Indiana plastics site burns
And: America’s ports have a pollution problem. All-electric short-haul trucking is one fix
-Rachel Koning Beals
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
04-21-23 1510ET
Copyright (c) 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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