Two senior attorneys from the Center for Biological Diversity discuss what it would mean for Biden to declare climate change a national emergency, what kind of new statutory powers it would give him, & the many powers he already has at his disposal.
Thanks for this, especially to Jean and Maya for showing us all what might be possible with executive action. Since my work at SEI was mentioned on dynamics of oil supply, I'm linking below to a 2016 article that describes the dynamics, like how Jean and Maya described how decreasing US oil supply does not translate 1 to 1 to an increase in supply from elsewhere.
(This article has been cited several times by the courts, including the DC District Court ruling earlier this year re: Lease Sale 257 for the Gulf of Mexico. Also, this article describes the situation for an increase in oil supply, not a decrease, but the dynamics are the same, just in reverse).
The catch is that, like I describe in the article, the net effect on global oil consumption and therefore global GHG emissions from decreasing US oil production does come from increasing long-term (not so much short term) oil prices. So, the point in the comments here, i.e. from Adam, that stopping fossil fuel infrastructure will not effect "tomorrow's gas prices" is only true if accompanied by equally bold action to reduce oil demand. Hence, as I think Jean and Maya emphasized, supply- and demand-side strategies are complementary.
THANK YOU, DAVID, FOR YOUR REMARKS JUST NOW ON THE PBS NEWS HOUR. Your voice is so necessary and I really appreciated your focus on not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good (as in, the doable!!!) People need to understand the necessity of compromise or NOTHING! Also, the Democrats could suffer terribly in the midterm elections without this kind of a win. Changing leadership in the Senate and House has drastic consequence which some people are NOT acknowledging (or just don't understand). The possibility of going backward is too high to split hairs at this point. Thanks again and I pray for your health everyday
As an after-thought to my earlier comment, if Biden does not declare a climate state of emergency, then we can install as much solar and wind power as we can, as fast as we can. It is already happening nation-wide, accelerating and is getting cheap enough to compete with oil and gas. Installing more will Force the demise of oil and natural gas.
The frustrating thing is all of these are non starters because of scare mongering about gas prices.
However, stopping the financing of fossil fuel infrastructure abroad is possible if democrats are willing to be uniformly on message saying that not funding future fossil fuel infrastructure will not effect today or tomorrows gas prices. Since republicans will scream that it will raise gas prices, regardless of the reality, I expect democrats would fold within eighteen hours of attempting to implement it.
If democrats did try to implement it with a single executive action covering the whole world the Supreme Court would immediately strike it down as being a major action that vastly over stepped the statutory bounds.
So if democrats were to implement this, they would need to implement a separate action for every single country in the world (so only a bit more than 200 unique actions) this makes each individual one tailored specifically and within the scope of prior utilization and authorization of the power
Additionally each of those 200+ Actions need language that says they are wholly severable and unique and must be reviewed individually if challenged in US courts—and that the stoking down of any similar action does not cause any other action to also be struck down, because every country is unique. The legal rationalization is that national defense requires they not be combined. In general the courts are deferential to anything argued from this principle. the courts don’t want to make us vulnerable to China or Iran or Russian because the courts combined those countries with England and France and Mexico into one big case.
In other words: legal language to inoculate the actions from republicans suing all of the actions and planning to have a friendly Republican judge combine them into one lawsuit so the Republican Supreme Court can strike them all down in one fell swoop.
The Supreme Court has extremely limited docket and review capacity and are extremely vulnerable to flood the zone tactics. They could very well review 200+ of these in a year but it would severely limit their capacity to enact evil on other fronts.
Yes, I hope that Biden does declare a climate state of emergency. Then he would invoke the War Powers Act and other executive orders concerning climate. I agree with the two women that this is truly our only hope to save the planet. We would ramp up renewable power production at the same time as eliminating fossil fuel use.
Thanks for this, especially to Jean and Maya for showing us all what might be possible with executive action. Since my work at SEI was mentioned on dynamics of oil supply, I'm linking below to a 2016 article that describes the dynamics, like how Jean and Maya described how decreasing US oil supply does not translate 1 to 1 to an increase in supply from elsewhere.
https://www.sei.org/perspectives/us-co2-impact-oil-supply/
(This article has been cited several times by the courts, including the DC District Court ruling earlier this year re: Lease Sale 257 for the Gulf of Mexico. Also, this article describes the situation for an increase in oil supply, not a decrease, but the dynamics are the same, just in reverse).
The catch is that, like I describe in the article, the net effect on global oil consumption and therefore global GHG emissions from decreasing US oil production does come from increasing long-term (not so much short term) oil prices. So, the point in the comments here, i.e. from Adam, that stopping fossil fuel infrastructure will not effect "tomorrow's gas prices" is only true if accompanied by equally bold action to reduce oil demand. Hence, as I think Jean and Maya emphasized, supply- and demand-side strategies are complementary.
THANK YOU, DAVID, FOR YOUR REMARKS JUST NOW ON THE PBS NEWS HOUR. Your voice is so necessary and I really appreciated your focus on not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good (as in, the doable!!!) People need to understand the necessity of compromise or NOTHING! Also, the Democrats could suffer terribly in the midterm elections without this kind of a win. Changing leadership in the Senate and House has drastic consequence which some people are NOT acknowledging (or just don't understand). The possibility of going backward is too high to split hairs at this point. Thanks again and I pray for your health everyday
As an after-thought to my earlier comment, if Biden does not declare a climate state of emergency, then we can install as much solar and wind power as we can, as fast as we can. It is already happening nation-wide, accelerating and is getting cheap enough to compete with oil and gas. Installing more will Force the demise of oil and natural gas.
The frustrating thing is all of these are non starters because of scare mongering about gas prices.
However, stopping the financing of fossil fuel infrastructure abroad is possible if democrats are willing to be uniformly on message saying that not funding future fossil fuel infrastructure will not effect today or tomorrows gas prices. Since republicans will scream that it will raise gas prices, regardless of the reality, I expect democrats would fold within eighteen hours of attempting to implement it.
If democrats did try to implement it with a single executive action covering the whole world the Supreme Court would immediately strike it down as being a major action that vastly over stepped the statutory bounds.
So if democrats were to implement this, they would need to implement a separate action for every single country in the world (so only a bit more than 200 unique actions) this makes each individual one tailored specifically and within the scope of prior utilization and authorization of the power
Additionally each of those 200+ Actions need language that says they are wholly severable and unique and must be reviewed individually if challenged in US courts—and that the stoking down of any similar action does not cause any other action to also be struck down, because every country is unique. The legal rationalization is that national defense requires they not be combined. In general the courts are deferential to anything argued from this principle. the courts don’t want to make us vulnerable to China or Iran or Russian because the courts combined those countries with England and France and Mexico into one big case.
In other words: legal language to inoculate the actions from republicans suing all of the actions and planning to have a friendly Republican judge combine them into one lawsuit so the Republican Supreme Court can strike them all down in one fell swoop.
The Supreme Court has extremely limited docket and review capacity and are extremely vulnerable to flood the zone tactics. They could very well review 200+ of these in a year but it would severely limit their capacity to enact evil on other fronts.
Yes, I hope that Biden does declare a climate state of emergency. Then he would invoke the War Powers Act and other executive orders concerning climate. I agree with the two women that this is truly our only hope to save the planet. We would ramp up renewable power production at the same time as eliminating fossil fuel use.