The new year's barely underway, and already it's a make-or-break moment for our precarious climate—and the U.S. role in saving it.
Last year was by far the hottest in recorded human history. Yet the United States produced more climate-heating gas and oil during that time than any country in the world—in fact, more oil than any nation in history.
When it comes to why the Biden administration needs to lead the charge to phase out fossil fuels, four reasons stand out.
Going to Extremes
Last year's record-shattering heat and its climate harms left a wake of death, destruction and heartbreak from Lahaina to Libya, Arizona to the Antarctic.
Every month since June has blown out temperature records by such huge margins that one scientist called the numbers "gobsmackingly bananas."
Now experts are saying 2024 may be even worse. That's in part because sustained fossil-fueled climate change is being supercharged by the planet-warming El Niño weather pattern.
The "era of global boiling" has arrived. Without dramatic action, annual heat-related deaths are expected to rise 370 percent by 2050, with 525 million more people facing food insecurity. In the coming decades, 1 million animal and plant species could be lost to extinction.
Out-Polluting Progress
The United States plays the pivotal role in the fight against the climate emergency, for better or worse.
In December, as past heat records were melting into oblivion, the U.S. set a record for the most oil produced by any country ever and maintained its role as the world's largestgas producer. It also hit a record for exports of liquified natural gas and became the world's largest LNG exporter.
The Biden administration boasts about enacting bold climate law through the Inflation Reduction Act. But oil and gas projects approved by the administration threaten to entirely erase emissions cuts from the act, as a recent analysis by my colleagues at the Center for Biological Diversity shows.
The U.S. is also leading the world's largest planned expansion of oil and gas production through 2050. But for a fair transition, the U.S. has to end all oil and gas production by 2034 for a viable chance of limiting temperature rise to the Paris Agreement's 1.5-degree Celsius target.
Expanding both dirty and clean energy makes no sense. Renewable energy must displace fossil fuels to prevent an apocalyptic future.
Global Fossil Fuel Pledge
Last month at the COP28 climate summit, I sat in the room where the world agreed for the first time to "transition away from fossil fuels." That agreement should spur swift action to remake the global energy system without oil, gas, and coal—with the United States at the leading edge.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry sent some promising signals as the summit closed.
"Clearly we would have liked to have seen ever greater ambition," he said, nodding to the demands of the 75,000-strong March to End Fossil Fuels in New York in September, "as called for by these organizers and frontline communities around the world."
Kerry vowed that the country "will continue to press for a more rapid transition."
No Time to Waste
The planet is fractions of a degree away from the Paris Agreement's target limit of 1.5 degrees increase—a threshold above which scientists say increasingly intense and widespread heatwaves, flooding, and wildfires will occur.
To keep to 1.5 degrees, a United Nations climate report warns, carbon dioxide emissions must peak by 2025 at the latest and reach net-zero by the early 2050s. Big cuts in fossil fuels are the only way to get there.
So, the United States needs to act fast—and fairly, since historically it's been the largest source of climate-killing emissions.
First, the Biden administration must stop approving new fossil fuel projects, a matter of legal discretion.
It should deny permits for projects like new LNG export terminals, including the carbon-bomb Calcasieu Pass 2, or CP2. That project would spew up to 190 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year and choke the already overburdened, majority Black Louisiana shoreline community with pollution.
The Biden administration is reportedly considering good changes to its approval process that could tap the brakes on LNG exports' rampant growth. But far more is needed.
The president should phase out oil and gas production on public lands and waters and declare a national climate emergency.
The Inflation Reduction Act's benefits must be fully and quickly implemented, prioritizing community and rooftop solar opportunities for low-income families.
It's also "go time" for the Biden administration to enact bold climate rules by May, before they risk being overturned by a hostile Congress. These include stronger automobile and heavy-duty truck standards and a power plant rule free of greenwashing scams like carbon capture.
On the global stage, this is the year the United States and all parties to the Paris Agreement are on the hook to develop new climate action plans to submit in 2025 to collectively address the emergency for the next 10 years. The Biden administration needs to submit a credible fossil fuel phaseout plan for the early 2030s.
To keep the world from constant chaos, every degree counts. The Biden administration has the legal authority and moral imperative to speed the end of fossil fuels in this critical year. All the administration needs is the will to take lifesaving action before it's too late.
Jean Su is director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Energy Justice program.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
