New framework bolsters Biden’s hand as climate summit begins
Associated PressWASHINGTON — President Joe Biden heads to a United Nations climate conference Monday energized by a new legislative framework that, if enacted, would be the largest action ever taken by the United States to address climate change. Biden called the plan “the most significant investment to deal with the climate crisis that ever happened, beyond any other advanced nation in the world.” While far from certain to pass in a closely divided Congress, the new framework reassured nervous Democrats and environmental leaders that a president who has made climate action a key focus of his administration will not arrive in Glasgow empty-handed. He called Biden’s goal, set at a virtual climate meeting at the White House in April, “ambitious” but said it’s “better to aim high and push as hard as you can when the science is telling you that’s literally what’s required.’' The climate target is a key requirement of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which Biden rejoined on his first day in office. Biden is “leaning into climate more than any previous president, and it looks like he is prepared to continue to make this a top priority for his entire first term, which would be the first time an American president has done something like that,’' said Larsen, who worked in the Energy Department under President Barack Obama. “Because of Joe Biden’s radical anti-energy agenda, people in every corner of this country are paying higher prices for energy,″ hurting struggling families, older adults and those on a fixed income, said Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.