Biden may announce climate emergency: Report

Washington, July 25 (Agency) US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry has said that President Joe Biden was considering to declare a “climate emergency”, media reported on Sunday. According to BBC, the move would give him additional powers to push his renewable energy agenda, which has been held up by lack of support in Congress. Kerry told the BBC that it was “less than ideal” that Congress was not “full-throatedly” in favour. However, he said nobody was “more committed than Biden” to replace carbon-based energy.

Recent Supreme Court rulings restricting the government’s environmental policies had not helped, he was cited as saying. Climate change raises the risk of a hot and dry weather, which could likely cause the incident of wildfires. Since the industrial era started, the world has warmed by about 1.1 degree Celsius. The report said that temperatures would keep rising unless governments around the world make “steep cuts to emissions”. BBC report said that tens of millions of people in the US, across more than two dozen states, have been living “under heat warnings” during the past week. On Wednesday, Biden announced 2.3 billion dollars in a bid to help build infrastructure that could withstand extreme weather and natural disasters.

Biden, however, stopped short of formally announcing “a climate emergency,” despite mounting pressure to do so from fellow Democrats and environmental groups, according to the report. Biden on Saturday in a tweet said, “When it comes to fighting climate change, I won’t take no for an answer.” He said that in the coming weeks, he would use the powers he has as the US President “to turn promises into formal, official government actions.” Biden had said that he would do everything in his power to “win the clean energy future.”