Civil society groups have called on the US to do its ‘fair share’ to curb climate change by phasing out domestic fossil fuel use and supporting developing countries’ own climate response efforts.
First published in *Third World Resurgence No. 347, 2021, pp 14-17
US civil society organisations (CSOs) are urging President Joseph Biden to do the US’ ‘fair share’ of global climate action – including significant international assistance – upon rejoining the Paris Agreement that former President Donald Trump dumped.
The US Climate Action Network (USCAN)’s 175 members assess, in conjunction with their international counterparts, that the US’ ‘fair share’ is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a total of 195% below 2005 levels by 2030, reducing at least 70% within the US, and the remainder through support to developing countries to enable them to reduce their emissions faster than they otherwise could.1 A broadening section of Biden’s base is now adopting the fair share figures.
Failure by Biden to choose equitable and ambitious targets will make it more difficult for the US – still the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases and now today’s top oil producer – to earn enough trust for much-needed breakthrough climate deals with other countries, which have repeatedly watched the US run from its responsibilities and avoid any accountability for its role in the climate crisis.
Working with allies internationally, new social movement forces aim to ensure that the domestic environmental justice champions whom Biden has appointed to his administration, and to direct government agencies, also aid in aligning his international climate agenda.
Bolstering Biden’s case for climate credibility
Following four years of Trump’s ‘American energy dominance’ as US foreign policy’s guidepost, young voters – and particularly women of colour2 – powered Biden to the presidency,3 stirring up some promising opportunities, although significant obstacles remain.
Building beyond Barack Obama’s original Paris pledge, Biden promised during televised debates to ‘transition from oil’ as Vice-President Kamala Harris called for a ‘managed decline’ of fossil fuels, the source of 89% of global emissions.4
While the UN’s 2020 Production Gap Report warned the world to reduce fossil fuel production by 6% per year, despite governments still planning to increase productive capacity by 2% per year,5 both Biden and Harris championed ‘environmental justice’.
As the COVID-19 pandemic started to spread, a Russia-Saudi dispute over oil pricing strategy, amid a dramatic drop in oil demand, plunged the industry into unprecedented panic and contraction. Oil demand has still not recovered to its pre-pandemic record levels and industry analysts forecast further uncertainty, even as renewable energy and electric vehicles expand rapidly.6
Biden’s case for climate credibility rests on how fast – and how fair – his pivot is from fossil fuels to generate enough good-paying, green jobs in constructing electric charging infrastructure and other climate-friendly industries, all while building substantial political support for significant international climate finance assistance as an ‘America first’ agenda festers.
Submitting a new Nationally Determined Contribution
Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad advances potential elements of a fair fossil fuel phasedown but he has yet to propose any comprehensive programme.7
Appointing John Kerry (who negotiated the Paris Agreement as Obama’s Secretary of State) as Special Climate Envoy, Biden announced he ‘will reconvene the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, beginning with the Leaders’ Climate Summit’, to ‘pursue green recovery efforts, initiatives to advance the clean energy transition, sectoral decarbonisation, and alignment of financial flows with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, including with respect to coal financing, nature-based solutions, and solutions to other climate-related challenges’.
Biden then declared the US would aim to submit its ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’ (NDC) under the Paris Agreement in advance of the summit, since set for 22 April 2021.
The oldest American president to ever take office (78 years) also ordered the Treasury and State Departments to develop a new international climate finance plan within 90 days.
Communities of colour mobilise for justice mandate
Much more detailed is Biden’s Executive Order’s domestic plan to engage the government in direct dialogue with energy workers and disadvantaged communities to ensure environmental justice and economic opportunity in the transition.
With every federal agency – except, strangely, the State Department – involved, Biden established the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization as well as the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council, both elaborating processes and relationships for community input.
Surprisingly strong appointments to top leadership positions in the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Interior, among other agencies, signal significant strides by environmental justice communities of colour in effectively organising political power among supporters surrounding not only Biden but the broader Democratic party leadership,8 save the State Department, but more on that below.
Defining and aligning a fair-share US NDC
The US fair share has been defined by a decades-long dialogue among global civil society actors to assess each country’s ‘common responsibilities and respective capabilities’, per commitments in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).9
Paris Agreement pledges (NDCs) assessed by the CSO Equity Review coalition found that so far only China had pledged to do its fair share, with most other countries’ targets far from pledging their fair shares.
Most recently, USCAN’s adopting the figures from the international assessment increased US targets to contribute its fair share, as agreed by CSO advisers, analysts and activists.
As Members of Congress ask climate campaigners what international measures must be included, global justice groups are advancing ideas and proposing policies for legislators to consider for delivering the US fair share.
US climate campaigners increasingly underline that the only way to deliver the US fair share is by rapidly reducing fossil fuel use through a science-aligned phasedown that is both fast and fair.
An NDC drafting process is now under way while faith and especially environmental justice groups are asserting there that the fair share also includes elements their international allies have been advising, including ingredients listed below as intended deliverables the US can include in its NDC.
Domestic demands from the frontlines of fossil fuel expansion: Phaseout fast and fair
Going beyond Obama’s old agenda, which centred around executive actions at electric power plants, Biden also advocates emissions-free electricity by 2035 and, now, net zero by 2050. Such slogans are easy to advance from the campaign trail but translating them into policy takes an epic effort.
Several sophisticated grassroots articulations of equitable and ambitious climate agendas explain in detail what US civil society is demanding President Biden do. Among the most compelling with broad support and impacting policy are ‘Climate President’,10 the ‘Build Back Fossil Free Executive Action Blueprint’11 and the ‘Frontlines Climate Executive Action Platform’.12
For frontline communities fighting fossil fuel extraction, meaningful action on climate change mitigation means full fossil phaseout with immediate measures to end expansion, fair phasedown of production, and support for just transitions for communities and countries, including:
• End the expansion
– Cancel oil pipelines like Line 3 and the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) for not only failing the climate test but also violating indigenous peoples’ rights and even territories under existing treaties. Biden duly denied the Keystone XL pipeline its federal permit on his first day in office, but now he has additional actions to take. In the Line 3 project, a Canadian company aims to drill an oil pipeline through the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Northern Minnesota, the continent’s largest river running through the heartland, to send almost a million barrels a day of tar sands crude to tidewater in Lake Superior and global markets beyond. Indigenous communities organising against the pipeline are calling on Biden to cancel the construction permit and respect the treaties protecting indigenous territories. He also has to decide on the DAPL, which had been cancelled by Obama and then approved by Trump, which would more competitively connect fossil fuels from the shale fields of North Dakota to more markets globally. Indigenous youth from these communities are leading a national week of action with events in Washington DC to tell Biden to cancel permits.
– Reject new fossil fuel facilities, especially for expanding export infrastructure. Two massive oil export terminal projects proposed for the Texas Gulf Coast face rising community opposition: 1) Bluewater Terminal LLC (a partnership of Phillips 66 and scandal-ridden top oil trader Trafigura) ‘wants to build a massive oil export terminal for very large crude carriers near Port Aransas, Texas’, where ‘giant carriers would take crude oil from Texas and Oklahoma to burn in other countries’. 2) Texas GulfLink (Sentinel Midstream) is a proposed massive crude oil storage facility and oil export terminal off the coast of Brazoria County, Texas, south of Houston, just seven miles away from the proposed Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT), which has been delayed due to strong local opposition and environmental concerns amid intensifying extreme weather due to climate change. The GulfLink project would load very large crude carriers (VLCCs) – massive tanker ships – with two million barrels/day of oil.
– Reinstate the ban on crude oil exports. Biden is also being called upon to declare a Climate Emergency under the National Emergencies Act to reinstate the crude oil export ban on an annual basis. A 2020 report14 found that US oil exports have increased by 750% since December 2015, when the Obama-Biden administration, in the final days of the Paris talks, ended the crude oil export ban in exchange for a budget deal (including $1 billion for the Green Climate Fund (GCF)) from a Congress then in thrall to the oil billionaire Koch brothers. As of October 2019, 24% of all crude extracted in the US was exported.
• Phase down production
– Permanently phase out the oil leasing programme from federal lands. This was ‘paused’ by Biden’s Executive Order and is still being assessed but leasing public land must be ended.
– End fossil fuel subsidies, starting with the perverse tax incentives for investors that are found nowhere else in the tax code.15
– Enforce existing laws to their fullest extent, especially the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Presidents can also order the EPA to issue a strict pollution prevention rule for the oil and gas sector, effectively ending harmful energy extraction such as fracking.16
• Support just transitions in all communities and countries
– Engage energy communities in dialogue to envision economic revitalisation plans, prioritising the application of the Just Transition Principles,17 Feminist Green New Deal Principles18 and other authentic articulations of global climate justice.
– Establish national employment programmes to restore abandoned oil wells, repair water pipes, construct clean energy charging infrastructure, and retrofit schools, residences and big buildings.19
– Extend just transition principles and programmes from domestic to diplomatic action by supporting – with funding and staffing – other countries’ efforts to exit fossil fuels while developing their economies and adapting to climate change.20
Increased international support for developing countries
Too few organisations active in the US focus on delivering international policy changes and the diplomatic agenda required for meeting the US responsibilities, yet coordination among global justice groups allows policy demands to be developed for delivering fair shares as defined by global civil society’s post-Paris process for equity indicators.
• Finance
Complications in calculating contributions to the GCF continue but some say it could be between $6 billion and $12 billion by 2025. Biden’s upcoming infrastructure bill is potentially one important opportunity to deliver new climate finance. His bigger challenge is shifting broader private capital flows to be climate-friendly by using public financing, tax incentives, subsidies, standards and other policy tools. Dealing with growing public debt especially in developing countries is key to facilitating climate action since government spending can become severely constrained even in the wealthiest of developing countries. The US should somehow support the several ongoing initiatives addressing the debt and climate crises, especially the rising risks of stranded assets.
• Technology
The US has so far not offered meaningful technology cooperation, too few climate advocacy groups prioritise the issue, and it remains to be seen what new approaches can be created to address outstanding questions about how to scale up and speed up deployment of climate-friendly technologies. It continues to be challenging to develop dialogue in the US on international action without concerns about China dominating the discussion, so new ways of approaching the issues are needed as endless opportunities exist if political will can be created, including open-source patents (unlimited, non-exclusive licences to be granted by a patent holder), cooperative sourcing of supplies, and research and development (R&D) partnerships.
• Adaptation
It appears any funds for adaptation would be included in the above amounts of GCF funding. US CSOs advancing a fair-share US NDC are asking the US to acknowledge that its fair share of adaptation finance is in the range of $52 billion-112 billion per year by 2030, based on estimates in the Adaptation Finance Gap Report of developing countries’ adaptation needs.21
• Loss and damage
Organisations advocating fair shares are currently trying to calculate potential ranges of reparations along the lines of loss and damage, and also face an uphill battle of even getting the US government to recognise its responsibilities when all it needs to do is stop blocking.
US diplomatic action must align with domestic justice agenda
When Biden hosts his Leaders’ Climate Summit to urge other countries to up their ambition for climate action, US CSOs will have been demanding that the US do its fair share, a definition which has been carefully calculated in conjunction with the CSO Equity Coalition, duly adopted by USCAN, and currently advocated by a broadening coalition of civil society that demands global climate justice.
Victor Menotti is a Senior Fellow at the US-based Oakland Institute.
Notes
1 https://usfairshare.org/
2 https://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/youth-vote-significantly-2020-young-people-color-pivotal
3 https://www.businessinsider.com/young-voters-record-voting-turnout-biden-trump-presidential-election-2020-11
4 https://www.clientearth.org/latest/latest-updates/stories/fossil-fuels-and-climate-change-the-facts/
5 http://productiongap.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/PGR2020_FullRprt_web.pdf
6 https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-2021
7 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/27/executive-order-on-tackling-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad/
8 https://ajustclimate.org/index.html#platformSign
9 https://usfairshare.org/
10 https://www.climatepresident.org/
11 https://buildbackfossilfree.org/biden-executive-action-blueprint/
12 https://www.demos.org/policy-briefs/frontlines-climate-justice-executive-action-platform
13 https://p2a.co/StopBluewater
14 https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/research/crude-export-ban-carbon/
15 https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/oil-tax-break.asp
16 https://www.climatepresident.org/
17 https://climatejusticealliance.org/just-transition/
18 http://feministgreennewdeal.com/principles/
19 https://www.bluegreenalliance.org/resources/new-report-card-on-infrastructure-shows-dire-need-to-build-back-better/
20 https://stanleycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CCAI-FourDsOfOilsJustTransition92820.pdf
21 https://unepdtu.org/publications/the-adaptation-finance-gap-report/
*Third World Resurgence No. 347, 2021, pp 14-17
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