Climate activist: Biden's plan the 'bare minimum'
"I don't think you can say in any serious way that [President Biden] is treating climate change like the emergency that it is," Evan Weber, the co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, told Politico, adding that the White House's plan to tackle the issue is not the "historic commitment" Biden describes it as. "It's scraps," Weber said. "It's the bare minimum."
Biden's climate adviser Gina McCarthy, along with senior White House adviser Anita Dunn, sent out a memo this week stating that while the bipartisan infrastructure deal the administration recently struck left out "critical initiatives on climate change" proposed by Biden, a future bill, which the White House aims to pass via budget reconciliation, will include them.
But, Politico notes, there's no guarantee that will happen, at least not without some serious infighting among Democrats and intense pressure from climate activists like Weber — who view this summer as the "tipping point" for climate change (there have indeed been several bouts of extreme weather across the United States and around the world in recent weeks) — on moderate Democratic lawmakers. Read more at Politico.
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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