President Biden Continues to Tackle Climate Crisis as Trump and 2024 Republicans Spew Climate Denialism

As President Biden continues to restore American leadership in tackling climate change while spurring record job creation and a domestic manufacturing boom, Donald Trump and 2024 Republicans are still holding onto climate change denialism and calling to roll back the historic progress President Biden and Democrats are making.

President Biden’s administration released a National Climate Assessment today – another reminder that he is laser-focused on combating climate change.

Vox: “Biden gives center stage to the climate report Trump tried to bury”

“The White House, in coordination with 14 federal agencies, today released the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA), a comprehensive report on the impacts of climate on the United States and what future warming may hold for ecosystems, the economy, and communities across the country.”

New York Times: “With the report’s release, Mr. Biden was also expected to announce on Tuesday $6 billion in investments to modernize America’s electric grids and support projects that address the unequal effects of environmental hazards on minority and tribal communities.”

Trump contradicted his own administration’s National Climate Assessment findings about the threat of climate change and even removed the scientist in charge of overseeing the assessments.

Axios: “Trump says he doesn’t believe his administration’s climate report”

New York Times: “Trump Administration’s Strategy On Climate: Try To Bury Its Own Scientific Report”

Associated Press: “Government climate report contradicts Trump, warns of worsening US disasters”

New York Times: “Trump Administration Removes Scientist in Charge of Assessing Climate Change”

“The White House has removed the scientist responsible for the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s premier contribution to climate knowledge and the foundation for regulations to combat global warming, in what critics interpreted as the latest sign that the Trump administration intends to use its remaining months in office to continue impeding climate science and policy.”

President Biden is tackling the climate crisis by spearheading the Inflation Reduction Act and recommitting the U.S. to the Paris Climate Accord. 

CNBC: “The [Inflation Reduction Act], which President Joe Biden signed into law in August, is the most aggressive climate investment ever taken by Congress and is expected to slash the country’s planet-warming carbon emissions by about 40% this decade and move the country toward a net-zero economy by 2050.”

Bloomberg: “Between last August, when President Joe Biden’s  landmark climate bill became law, and the end of January, companies have announced more than 100,000 clean energy jobs in the US, according to an analysis released Monday by the nonprofit advocacy group Climate Power.”

NPR: “In one of his first acts in the Oval Office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to have the United States rejoin the Paris climate agreement, the largest international effort to curb global warming. … Biden’s move to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement signals to the world that the U.S. is serious about addressing climate change again, and that it will have a seat at the table when world leaders meet in Glasgow to make new climate pledges later this year.”

Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement abdicated America’s role as a global leader in addressing climate change.

Reuters: “With Trump’s action, the United States will walk away from nearly every other nation in the world on one of the pressing global issues of the 21st century.”

Politico: “The U.S. under former President Donald Trump backslid in terms of international climate leadership, essentially standing still on carbon emissions when the world drastically needed to ramp up its climate-fighting efforts.”

Trump and 2024 Republicans have railed against the Paris Accord and have vowed to pull the U.S. out of the agreement again.

Trump: “We will again get out of Paris. … So, get those proposals ready now, because we are going to put thousands of Americans to work building the power plants, pipelines, grids, ports, refineries, and shipping terminals of tomorrow.”

DeSantis: “We are not going to enforce net zero commitments or things like the Paris Climate Accord.”

New York Times: “[Haley] defended, for example, leading the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord while at the United Nations.”

Ramaswamy in his book Capitalist Punishment: “This is the fundamental problem with international agreements such as the Paris Accords, which aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions to constrain warming to within a target such as 2°C or even 1.5°C; that looks at only one side of the equation.”

2024 Republicans have not only denied the existence of climate change but also have records of supporting policies that would bring us backward in our efforts to combat it. 

New York Times: “Over four years, the Trump administration dismantled major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals.”

The Guardian: “Ron DeSantis has been accused of a ‘catastrophic’ approach to the climate crisis after he launched his campaign for US president by saying he rejects the ‘politicization of the weather’ and questioning whether hurricanes hitting his home state of Florida have been worsened by climate change.”

The Hill: “As U.N. ambassador during the Trump administration, Haley played a key role in the former president’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which she touts on her campaign website.”

HuffPost: “When asked by Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ on Tuesday whether he believes climate change is occurring and man-made, the New Jersey governor replied, ‘The climate has been changing forever and it will always change and man will always contribute to it. It’s not a crisis.’ … Scarborough pointed out that recent years have been uncharacteristically hot, shattering temperature records, but Christie was skeptical. ‘I don’t buy that, Joe. … I don’t see any evidence that it’s a crisis,’ Christie said. When asked what scientific data he was relying on for evidence, Christie pointed not to specific studies or charts but to his own intuition. ‘That’s my feeling,’ he said. ‘I didn’t say I was relying on any scientist.’”

Kaitlan Collins, CNN: “North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum doesn’t say whether he believes humans are to blame for global warming as a new analysis finds extreme heat waves were made significantly more likely by the human-caused climate crisis.”

Reuters: “The governors of five Republican states are ready to fight Democratic President-elect Joe Biden if he tries to require the power sector to slash greenhouse gas emissions. … ‘Our power companies have voluntarily embraced sources of alternative energy without heavy-handed regulation from

government,’ Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said in a statement.”