Den stora samlingstråden om Joe Biden

Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocking Biden's climate agenda

Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver

The president’s ambitious climate agenda has so far been whittled down by a recalcitrant Congress.
President faces challenges to reassert US credibility after Trump but critics say Biden’s actions have yet to match his words

With no major climate legislation firmly in hand and international allies still smarting after four bruising years of Donald Trump, Joe Biden faces a major challenge to reassert American credibility as he heads to crucial UN climate talks in Scotland.

his domestic climate agenda whittled away by a recalcitrant Congress and a barrage of criticism from climate activists who claim Biden’s actions have yet to match his words.

Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who was a key architect of the Paris agreement:

US had a “historical climate credibility problem” and that other leaders fret about its domestic political dysfunction and long-term commitment.

“We do worry, because it has happened before and could happen again,” she said. “The US is the world’s largest historical emitter and never passed a significant climate bill.

Joe Manchin is in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry

Saleemul Haq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, based in Bangladesh, which faces looming devastation from flooding:

Biden’s agenda is stuck in Congress with his own senators and he hasn’t delivered anything near what the US should deliver. It’s just words. His actions are woefully inadequate.”

Progressives argue, however, that the Biden administration has done little to curb the fossil fuel industry, most notably in allowing two controversial oil projects, the Dakota Access pipeline and the Line 3 pipeline, to proceed. Just a week after the end of Cop26, the administration will auction off 80m acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, an area larger than the UK.

The US has also declined to set an end date for the coal sector, unlike countries such as the UK and Germany.

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