Fossil fuels directly harm our communities – especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other communities of color, as well as low-wealth communities, all of whom are more likely to be on the frontlines of pollution and environmental disaster.
Historic investments in renewable energy can help speed the transition to a just clean energy system. But at a time when oil and gas companies hold enormous economic and political power to protect their interests, investments and tax credits aren’t enough. We need to address the leading cause of the climate crisis and environmental injustices: fossil fuels.
Officially declaring the climate crisis a national emergency would unlock the tools needed to steer us away from fossil-fueled climate catastrophe toward a sustainable, just future. Biden needs to hear from you. Write to the White House now.
The climate emergency is an existential threat to people and the planet. Every public official must act to protect the public from climate chaos. As our president, Biden has the biggest role of all in stopping fossil fuels.
Biden can use national climate emergency powers to immediately reinstate the crude oil export ban. Restoring the ban would be the climate equivalent of shuttering up to 42 coal plants. By declaring a climate emergency, the president can also halt exports of coal and petroleum products that are the primary drivers of climate emergency, threatening U.S. security and its economy. He can also halt the hundreds of billions of private dollars that fund coal, oil, and gas projects abroad.
With national climate emergency powers, Biden can direct disaster relief funds toward building back with more resilient distributed renewable energy, prioritizing the frontline communities hit hardest by climate disasters, and marshal companies to fast-track renewable transportation and clean power generation, creating millions of high-quality union jobs.
Biden can issue an Executive Order to stop the approval of any new fossil fuel infrastructure projects – including but not limited to pipelines, import and export terminals, storage facilities, refineries, and petrochemical plants – and instruct federal agencies to deny all permits and approvals for fossil fuel infrastructure consistent with federal law. Biden can issue an Executive Order finding that natural gas exports are not in the public interest due to their climate harm, and direct the Department of Energy to stop approving new applications for export terminals. He can also end the use of nationwide permits, which are used to expedite the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines.
Biden promised on the campaign trail that there would be no more drilling on federal lands and waters. He can fulfill that promise by using his existing powers to implement a steady and managed decline of the production of oil and gas on public lands and waters. Additionally, after declaring a national climate emergency, the president can suspend operations of all offshore leases. This would stop extraction in the more than 11 million acres of federal waters currently subject to active oil and gas leases and complement ordinary executive powers for offshore oil and gas extraction.
With his ordinary presidential powers, Biden can direct the Environmental Protection Agency to establish national limits for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, requiring states to enforce them. Biden can also use his executive authority to direct the EPA to set steep reductions in climate pollution from cars and trucks, as well as airplanes, ships, and trains.
Biden has called climate change an “existential threat.” But he’s failed to act on the primary driver: fossil fuels.
He has a wide range of presidential powers – separate from what Congress can do – to protect the future of life on Earth. Using both traditional presidential powers and emergency powers, Biden can live up to his promise to address the climate crisis and deliver enormous benefits for the environment, wildlife, communities, and future generations.
Learn how Biden can use his full powers to tackle the climate emergency, end fossil fuels, and build a renewable and just energy future.
As the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute and Energy Justice Program, we wage innovative legal and grassroots campaigns to protect people, wildlife and ecosystems from climate change and the dirty and dangerous fossil fuel industry. We work to eliminate greenhouse pollution and speed the just transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy.
