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WASHINGTON – In the past three weeks, President Biden’s administration has proposed regulations to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, a $1 billion commitment to help poor countries fight climate change and prepare for what could be the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. electric.
Still, many young voters worried about climate change remain outraged by Mr. Biden’s decision last month to approve Willow, an $8 billion oil drilling project on pristine federal land in Alaska. As the president prepares to announce his re-election bid, it’s unclear whether the voters who helped him win in 2020 because of his commitment to climate action will be seen again.
Alex Haraus, 25, said he and other young people feel betrayed by Willow’s decision, after Mr. Biden promised as a candidate to stop new oil drilling on public lands “period, period, period.”
Mr. Haraus, whose video on TikTok opposing Willow’s project has garnered hundreds of thousands of views, described the reaction as “crazy and frustrated and disappointed.”
About a dozen young climate activists interviewed said they were not convinced by the Biden administration’s other actions, even if they cut harmful greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Haraus said. What he wants, he said, is for the president to rein in the oil and gas companies, which made record profits last year.
“I don’t think anyone is advocating for people to forgive the Biden administration for a project like Willow,” said Mr. Haraus, who lives outside Chicago. “Young voters are seeing our future thrown out the window. We need Biden to take over the industry, otherwise there’s not much we want.
Young voters overwhelmingly — about 62 percent — favor phasing out fossil fuels altogether, said Alec Tyson, associate research director at the Pew Research Center. There is broad support among registered voters of both parties for transitioning to a future in which the United States no longer pumps carbon emissions into the atmosphere, Mr. Tyson said. But most are reluctant to ditch fossil fuels, he said.
From his earliest days in office, Mr. Biden has highlighted climate action as a top priority. Shortly after moving to the White House, he re-signed the United States to the Paris Agreement and set an ambitious goal of reducing the country’s emissions by about 50 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade.
He signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides $370 billion in incentives to expand wind, solar and other clean energy and electric vehicles. He has proposed rules to ensure that two-thirds of new cars and one-quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States by 2032 are all electric. In a few weeks, they will require coal and gas plants, which are responsible for 25 percent of the country’s greenhouse gases, to significantly reduce emissions.
But lawmakers and activists say they worry the regulatory move won’t capture voters’ imaginations and the Willow project will be a long shadow.
“He took a step forward with the IRA, and two steps back with the Willow project,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, who along with more than 30 other progressive lawmakers called on Mr. Biden to revoke the drilling permit.
Young voters are also angry that Mr. Biden allowed language in the climate law that facilitates drilling for offshore oil, and by agreement this month expanded the export of liquefied natural gas from Alaska. On Monday, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm applauded the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a pipeline partially built that will bring natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia but has been strongly opposed by environmentalists and repeatedly stopped by the courts.
In a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Ms. Granholm stopped short of endorsing the pipeline but said it “will improve the nation’s critical infrastructure for energy and national security.” The pipeline is a top priority for Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, a state that produces coal and gas.
“The Biden administration is trying to convince state Democrats like Senator Manchin that despite the new power generation rules that will take effect this week, natural gas will still play an important role in the clean energy transition,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton administration official. climate official who is now the Progressive Policy Institute. “The timing was accidental.”
But Mr Bowman said Mr Biden was sending a mixed message to young voters and they were rejecting it.
“Young people are plugged in and more aware of climate change,” he said. “Now he feels like he’s been stabbed in the back.” If Mr. Biden doesn’t reverse it, “young people will stay at home in 2024, that’s the result,” Mr. Bowman said.
Nationwide, 61 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, while 36 percent voted for Donald J. Trump, according to an analysis from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), a nonpartisan research center on youth engagement. at Tufts University. That’s higher than the level of youth support Hillary Clinton received from young voters in 2016.
A March poll from Data for Progress, a liberal research group, saw a 13 percent drop in Mr. Biden’s approval rating when it came to his climate agenda among voters ages 18 to 29 after the Willow decision.
But administration officials say there is no evidence the president has lost climate voters, or even young voters. He pointed to polls by YouGov and Morning Consult taken after Willow’s decision that showed roughly half of Americans supported it. A Morning Consult survey found about 30 percent of young voters had not heard of the Willow project.
“President Biden has delivered his most ambitious climate agenda with the support of labor groups, environmental justice and climate leaders, youth advocates, and others,” White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said in a statement.
The International Energy Agency has warned that countries must stop new oil and gas drilling to prevent the average global temperature from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. Beyond that point, the effects of catastrophic heat waves, floods, droughts, crop failures and species extinctions will become more difficult for humans to deal with. The planet has warmed by more than 1.1 degrees.
At the same time, the agency projected that global oil demand will continue to rise until it peaks and levels off somewhere around 2035.
John Holdren, who is the chief science adviser to President Barack Obama, opposes the Willow project. But he believes that reducing demand for oil and gas — as the Biden administration has done by expanding clean energy and encouraging electric vehicles — is more effective than curbing drilling. If everyone drove electric cars, less gas would be needed, the theory goes.
“The enemy is us,” he said. “Fossil fuel companies produce things that people want. We need to drastically reduce demand.
That thinking is part of the White House’s decision-making when it comes to the Willow project, several people familiar with the discussions said. Most administration officials feel strongly that the impact of aggressive regulations and investments in clean energy will outweigh the climate damage caused by Willow.
Oil burned from Willow is expected to release nearly 254 million metric tons of carbon emissions over 30 years. The Biden administration estimates that the 2021 climate and infrastructure legislation will reduce carbon emissions by more than one billion metric tons over the next 10 years.
There are other considerations, including suggestions from government lawyers that the Biden administration could face multimillion-dollar lawsuits if it denies drilling permits because the applicant, ConocoPhillips, has held leases in the area for more than a decade.
And finally, political advisers feel that if the White House blocks Willow, Republicans will be able to argue that the Biden administration is destroying America’s energy supply, after making demands with oil companies to increase production to lower gas prices. Russia’s war against Ukraine, according to people familiar with the decision process.
For years, the Willow project has remained on the public radar, even among environmental activists. When a social media campaign against Willow galvanized millions of activists earlier this year, it caught administration officials by surprise, several people involved in the campaign said.
Mark Paul, a political economist at Rutgers University, said that while the Biden administration has strong plans to reduce demand, it needs complementary policies that reduce production.
“We already have enough fossil fuels to meet our needs during the transition,” he said. “The government is afraid to use the bully pulpit against oil and gas. It is trying to play both sides.”
Michele Weindling, election director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led environmental group, said young people want to see Mr. Biden fight.
“This is a cultural moment for my generation,” said Ms. Weindling about Willow.
“This is a big moment to say ‘No’ to the oil and gas industry,” he said. “This is a moment for President Biden to show us, which side are you on? He chose the wrong side. This makes our job more difficult, to tell Generation Z and young voters that Biden will keep his climate promises.
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