Michael Smolens: Biden spreads federal climate funds amid ... - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Column: Biden spreads federal climate funds amid worsening global - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Michael Smolens: Biden spreads federal climate funds amid worsening signs of global warming

On California trip, president says he protected climate priorities in debt-ceiling deal. But White House didn’t get the electric grid reforms Rep. Scott Peters and some other Democrats sought.

President Joe Biden came to California last week and announced a $600 million effort to help coastal communities deal with rising sea levels.

Just days before, a report was released about a big spike in ocean temperatures that startled scientists, who were uncertain how much the increase is the result of natural phenomena and how much from global warming.

The president also talked about $2.3 billion aimed at making the nation’s electric grid more resilient, including $67 million for California to help protect power lines from extreme weather and natural disasters.

That came on the heels of an unsuccessful bid to include a sweeping permitting overhaul in the deficit-ceiling agreement to speed up expansion of energy transmission lines.

Advocates for the proposal, including Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, say without expedited grid construction, it will be difficult — maybe impossible — to get increased clean energy generated at remote wind and solar farms to populated areas in the future.

In another climate-change warning, scientists said that Himalayan glaciers are melting faster than ever before due to global warming. No, the president did not announce any glacier-protection funding on the trip.

Grim news about global warming is constant. The timing of these latest developments may have been a coincidence with the president’s visit, but they underscore the huge challenge facing Biden, Gov. Gavin Newsom and others seeking to slow the trajectory of climate change.

Biden appeared with Newsom at the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center and Preserve in Palo Alto on Monday, before heading off to various campaign fundraisers.

“Resiliency matters,” Biden said in announcing the coastal funding. “I’ve toured many sites across the country that clearly show climate change is the existential threat to humanity.”

He talked about climate-related investments in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — and how he fended off Republican efforts to scuttle them during the recent debt-ceiling negotiations.

“We didn’t just protect some of the climate money and clean-energy provisions. We protected every single, solitary one,” Biden said.

But the White House was unable to reach agreement with Republicans to amend environmental regulations to streamline the permitting process. Some environmental groups also were opposed to the changes, especially those proposed for the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

The debt deal did include provisions to speed up some infrastructure projects under NEPA, but did not clear the way for expediting construction of transmission lines on a large scale.

That was the goal of the BIG WIRES Act, which had been part of the debt-deal discussions, but was left out at the end. The legislation was authored by Peters and Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.

“Our work to reform the outdated way in which we approve and build energy projects has only just begun,” Peters said in a statement after the agreement was reached without his bill. “This debate has shown a spotlight on our climate reality: we cannot hit our climate and clean energy goals without comprehensive permitting reform.”

Newsom has his own permitting overhaul proposal for California, but has expressed frustration at opposition from dozens of environmental groups. Many are normally his allies, but criticize his plan to speed up the approval process under the California Environmental Quality Act.

“This is ridiculous,” Newsom told The New York Times. “These guys write reports and they protest. But we need to build. You can’t be serious about climate and the environment without reforming permitting and procurement in this state. . .”

“I did the climate bills last year, and these same groups were celebrating that. But that means nothing unless we can deliver. That was the what; this is the how.”

Without such changes, Newsom said, California could lose out in competing with other states for hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds for clean-energy programs.

Despite years of talk, efforts to substantially change CEQA have gone nowhere. Even some who support goals of the state’s bedrock environmental law say it drags out the approval process and has been misused to stymie development, gain leverage in contract negotiations and block competitors’ projects.

But CEQA has also been used to stop plenty of harmful projects.

While advocates of the streamlining proposals say they include adequate environmental protections, critics aren’t buying it.

Biden’s broad permitting push irked some environmentalists, but they were outraged that the debt agreement allows for expedited processing of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a gas-carrying pipeline pushed by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

Nor were climate activists happy about the earlier approval in March of ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil project in Alaska.

Nevertheless, the week before his California trip, Biden received early re-election endorsements from four of the nation’s largest environmental groups — the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and NextGen America.

“They have done more than any administration in history by far to address the climate crisis and advance clean energy solutions and environmental justice,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, told CNN.

Biden has enacted sweeping climate legislation, pouring at least $370 billion into clean energy and electric vehicles, the Times noted. His administration has also proposed strict regulations on pollution from automobiles, trucks and power plants that are designed to slash the nation’s emissions to their lowest levels in decades.

That apparently made it easier for environmental leaders to swallow the fossil fuel trade-offs.

Tweet of the Week

Goes to Carla Marinucci ( @cmarinucci) former political writer for Politico and the San Francisco Chronicle.

“(Justice) Kagan worried about ethics of free bagels as (Justice) Thomas accepted lavish trips from billionaire: report| Salon.com. (May 11)”

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