While climate catastrophes mount, the Biden administration continues what appears to be its trademark combination – bold climate investments on the one hand, and support for Big Oil on the other. In its first year, the Biden administration approved more than 3,500 oil and gas drilling permits, 35 percent more permits than the Trump administration during a similar time period. Biden has ordered US agencies to stop financing carbon intensive overseas projects, but has engaged in a range of practices here at home that show an unwillingness to fight hard to reduce fossil fuel extraction. A few examples: defending coal leases in court; declining to reinstate the Obama Administration’s coal moratorium; allowing drilling on the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska; using flawed climate economic analyses to justify offshore oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico; and actively increasing subsidies to coal companies. While bad federal law and unfavorable court decisions have required some hard choices, the Biden administration is acting tepidly instead of with urgency – it is failing to take bold positions, failing to resist and slow the implementation of destructive requirements, and failing to fight vigorously in court.  

These failures have real human costs that are being felt right now.  Whether it is oil spills poisoning waters and threatening tribal treaty rights, neighborhood oil drilling exposing families to toxic fumes and higher cancer risks, the air quality impacts of heavy trucking on communities hemmed in by freeways, or refinery emissions and explosions, Black, Brown, and low-income communities bear the brunt.  And anger is mounting.  Sha Ongelungel, media coordinator for the Indigenous Environmental Network, said, “We’re tired of waiting for you to put people and the planet before fossil fuel corporations.”   

Why isn’t Biden acting to implement his climate campaign promises? The hope of appeasing coal enthusiast Senator Manchin and achieving legislative successes was formerly a motivation – but as Bill McKibben has compellingly written, with that hope incinerated, it’s time for Biden to aggressively go after oil and gas using the executive powers that are at his disposal. Biden’s current wishy-washiness appears to be driven by fear of attacks by conservative politicians and oil and gas. But successful climate strategies will not be structured around keeping Big Oil quiet – quite the opposite. Indigenous, environmental justice, and climate leaders ramped up the pressure in February 2022, demanding that Biden use executive powers boldly. The costs of inaction need to become current political pain.