Bulletins and News Discussion from March 4th to March 10th, 2024 - The Coalition of Losers - COTW: Pakistan

This spring was meant to bring a flowering of climate action by President Joe Biden’s administration. But the heat of the 2024 political season has scorched some of its most ambitious plans.

Facing pushback from political allies and vulnerable Senate Democrats, as well as the growing risk of reversal by a future Republican Congress, the Biden administration has abandoned some of the most controversial elements of its climate agenda. Instead, over the coming weeks, federal agencies are set to finalize some long-awaited climate regulations in much weakened form:

U.S. companies will be forced for the first time to disclose climate-related risks to investors, under rules that Wall Street’s top regulator is expected to approve Wednesday. But the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to drop its original plan to make businesses include climate-related perils up and down their supply chains.

The U.S. power industry will be required to rein in emissions from coal plants, as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revives an effort begun nearly a decade ago. But the EPA said it will delay action on the more than 2,000 existing natural gas plants that are now responsible for 43 percent of the sector’s greenhouse gas pollution.

Automakers will face new tailpipe emissions standards designed to drive an industry transition to electric vehicles. But reports indicate that the EPA will slow the implementation of the new rules, delaying a sharp ramp-up in EVs until after 2030.

Deeply unserious. Further down the article:

...The Biden team faces a more immediate deadline, thanks to the legacy of Newt Gingrich and his stint as House Speaker. The Congressional Review Act, passed as part of Gingrich’s 1996 Contract With America legislative package, provides Congress with a relatively easy path for overturning any regulation finalized within the last 60 working days of the previous Congress. All that is required is a simple majority, as long as the president agrees with the decision.

In practice, the law is only salient when an opposing party gains control of both Congress and the White House after an election. And for its first 20 years, the Congressional Review Act was only used once—in 2001, when the Republican Congress that swept in with President George W. Bush voted to kill the workplace ergonomic rules that were finalized late in President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Then came Trump. He signed off on Congressional kills of 16 regulations finalized in Obama’s final year in office.

A sole Republican in Congress—the late Sen. John McCain—saved Obama’s methane rules from the Congressional Review Act hammer. (He did the same with Obamacare.) That would have been a devastating blow to climate action efforts, since the Congressional Review Act essentially prohibits any future administration from resurrecting any rule the CRA kills.

Trump eventually did rescind Obama’s methane rules, along with about 100 other environmental regulations. But within months of Biden’s election, the Democratic-controlled Congress rescinded Trump’s rescission of the methane rules; it was one of three Trump actions lawmakers killed using the CRA. Since then, Biden has sought to strengthen the methane rules and others he has revived from Obama’s original climate plan, including rules on power plants and passenger vehicle tailpipe emissions.

Climate change really does reveal to what degree "liberal democracy" and things like term limits are unworkable in crises that cannot be solved without impacting capitalist profit-making. The Chinese democratic system is infinitely superior as you don't have to put so much effort into this back-and-forth bullshit between parties.