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Biden Can't Reach His Own Climate Goals Without Banning Fracking – Trump tried—and failed—to ride fears about a fracking ban to a second term. Now Biden needs to confront fossil fuels.

Don­ald Trump’s des­per­ate attempt to turn fears of a frack­ing ban in Penn­syl­va­nia into a win­ning issue turned out to be a flop. One post-elec­tion tal­ly shows that the most heav­i­ly fracked coun­ties in the state were not only not swayed by Trump’s bliz­zard of frack­ing rhetoric, but he actu­al­ly lost ground in most of these areas.

Those of us who have spent a decade or more in the anti-frack­ing move­ment were not sur­prised that Trump’s brazen lies did not fool Penn­syl­va­ni­ans. While the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom has always held that vot­ers in the state would nev­er back anti-frack­ing polit­i­cal can­di­dates, the truth is that com­mu­ni­ties across the state that have seen the dam­age up close are already fight­ing to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent future.

While the Biden team — and some cen­trist Democ­rats — might feel like the whole issue of frack­ing was an unwel­come dis­trac­tion, the suc­cess of the president-elect’s cli­mate plan relies heav­i­ly on what he will do to rein in fos­sil fuel drilling. Biden’s cli­mate ambi­tions shift­ed remark­ably over the course of the cam­paign; he went from keep­ing activists at arms length — even telling pri­ma­ry vot­ers who opposed frack­ing or backed a Green New Deal to choose a dif­fer­ent can­di­date—to announc­ing a $2 tril­lion pack­age that sought to achieve car­bon-free elec­tric­i­ty by 2035 and ​net zero” car­bon emis­sions over­all by 2050.

While he should push those time­lines faster, we can­not real­is­ti­cal­ly hit those goals if we con­tin­ue to extract fos­sil fuels from the ground and burn them. That approach is like adding fuel to a fire while drip­ping a lit­tle water on it at the same time. Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion must work with the next Con­gress to stop the sup­ply of fos­sil fuels: No more drilling and fracked gas pipelines, and no new fos­sil fuel pow­er plants. This, in essence, is what it means to ban fracking.

Now there are some who argue that this is a dis­trac­tion. For them, Biden’s cli­mate plan will in effect make drilling more or less obso­lete, since the clean ener­gy tar­gets will prove incom­pat­i­ble with new oil and gas drilling, and the indus­try will, for lack of a bet­ter word, ban itself.

This is dan­ger­ous­ly naïve. For starters, most gas drilling in the Unit­ed States does not go to gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty; as the fos­sil fuel indus­try has des­per­ate­ly searched for ways to prop up the sta­tus quo, it has shift­ed its focus to sup­ply­ing the plas­tics and petro­chem­i­cals indus­tries, or even ship­ping fracked gas over­seas (what Trump offi­cials termed ​free­dom gas’). Domes­tic clean elec­tric­i­ty tar­gets are nec­es­sary, but they would not affect any of this drilling.

Fur­ther­more, there are ways that fos­sil fuel drilling could be essen­tial­ly re-brand­ed as cli­mate action. Take car­bon cap­ture, which enjoys bipar­ti­san polit­i­cal sup­port and the back­ing of cor­po­rate pol­luters. The indus­try spins out sce­nar­ios that are lit­er­al­ly too good to be true, imag­in­ing that emis­sions from coal min­ing and fos­sil fuel pow­er plants can be caught pri­or to enter­ing the atmos­phere, min­i­miz­ing or even elim­i­nat­ing their cli­mate impact. Yet despite being heav­i­ly sub­si­dized by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for decades, there is no evi­dence that car­bon cap­ture actu­al­ly works; most of the active projects sim­ply re-use cap­tured car­bon diox­ide to get more oil out of exist­ing wells.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many of Biden’s top cli­mate advis­ers — the very peo­ple who will help shape the country’s cli­mate pol­i­cy — have long careers pro­mot­ing fos­sil fuel inter­ests, and have cham­pi­oned frack­ing, car­bon cap­ture and export­ing fracked gas. Ernest Moniz, a close advis­er to Biden on cli­mate pol­i­cy who could be the next Ener­gy Sec­re­tary, lit­er­al­ly wrote the play­book on pro­mot­ing frack­ing as a cli­mate-friend­ly bridge to a clean ener­gy future. The announce­ment that Biden had tapped Rep. Cedric Rich­mond to play a lead­ing role on the administration’s cli­mate agen­da elicit­ed strong crit­i­cism from all cor­ners of the cli­mate move­ment, and for good rea­son: Rich­mond has con­stant­ly sided with the fos­sil fuel indus­tries — push­ing for more pipelines and fracked gas exports — while those com­pa­nies have show­ered him with cam­paign donations.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers who are rely­ing on car­bon cap­ture to meet ​net zero’ promis­es. In con­trast with car­bon account­ing gim­micks and sim­i­lar off­set schemes, the most effec­tive poli­cies are the ones that mark a clear break with fos­sil fuels. Dur­ing the cam­paign, Biden clar­i­fied that while he did not sup­port a frack­ing ban, he would phase out oil and gas drilling on pub­lic lands. While this is an absolute­ly nec­es­sary first step, it rep­re­sents just a frac­tion of the drilling hap­pen­ing in the Unit­ed States right now. 

The fact that Trump tried — and failed — to ride fears about a frack­ing ban to a sec­ond term should be encour­ag­ing to those of us who want to see real cli­mate action before it’s too late. Now Trump’s obsti­na­cy and igno­rance is no longer an obsta­cle; it is time for Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers to fight for the kind of bold cli­mate poli­cies the world needs right now. 

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Wenonah Hauter | Radio Free (2020-11-23T12:30:00+00:00) Biden Can't Reach His Own Climate Goals Without Banning Fracking – Trump tried—and failed—to ride fears about a fracking ban to a second term. Now Biden needs to confront fossil fuels.. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/11/23/biden-cant-reach-his-own-climate-goals-without-banning-fracking-trump-tried-and-failed-to-ride-fears-about-a-fracking-ban-to-a-second-term-now-biden-needs-to-confront-fossil-f/

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" » Biden Can't Reach His Own Climate Goals Without Banning Fracking – Trump tried—and failed—to ride fears about a fracking ban to a second term. Now Biden needs to confront fossil fuels.." Wenonah Hauter | Radio Free - Monday November 23, 2020, https://www.radiofree.org/2020/11/23/biden-cant-reach-his-own-climate-goals-without-banning-fracking-trump-tried-and-failed-to-ride-fears-about-a-fracking-ban-to-a-second-term-now-biden-needs-to-confront-fossil-f/
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Wenonah Hauter | Radio Free Monday November 23, 2020 » Biden Can't Reach His Own Climate Goals Without Banning Fracking – Trump tried—and failed—to ride fears about a fracking ban to a second term. Now Biden needs to confront fossil fuels.., viewed ,<https://www.radiofree.org/2020/11/23/biden-cant-reach-his-own-climate-goals-without-banning-fracking-trump-tried-and-failed-to-ride-fears-about-a-fracking-ban-to-a-second-term-now-biden-needs-to-confront-fossil-f/>
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Wenonah Hauter | Radio Free - » Biden Can't Reach His Own Climate Goals Without Banning Fracking – Trump tried—and failed—to ride fears about a fracking ban to a second term. Now Biden needs to confront fossil fuels.. [Internet]. [Accessed ]. Available from: https://www.radiofree.org/2020/11/23/biden-cant-reach-his-own-climate-goals-without-banning-fracking-trump-tried-and-failed-to-ride-fears-about-a-fracking-ban-to-a-second-term-now-biden-needs-to-confront-fossil-f/
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" » Biden Can't Reach His Own Climate Goals Without Banning Fracking – Trump tried—and failed—to ride fears about a fracking ban to a second term. Now Biden needs to confront fossil fuels.." Wenonah Hauter | Radio Free - Accessed . https://www.radiofree.org/2020/11/23/biden-cant-reach-his-own-climate-goals-without-banning-fracking-trump-tried-and-failed-to-ride-fears-about-a-fracking-ban-to-a-second-term-now-biden-needs-to-confront-fossil-f/
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" » Biden Can't Reach His Own Climate Goals Without Banning Fracking – Trump tried—and failed—to ride fears about a fracking ban to a second term. Now Biden needs to confront fossil fuels.." Wenonah Hauter | Radio Free [Online]. Available: https://www.radiofree.org/2020/11/23/biden-cant-reach-his-own-climate-goals-without-banning-fracking-trump-tried-and-failed-to-ride-fears-about-a-fracking-ban-to-a-second-term-now-biden-needs-to-confront-fossil-f/. [Accessed: ]
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» Biden Can't Reach His Own Climate Goals Without Banning Fracking – Trump tried—and failed—to ride fears about a fracking ban to a second term. Now Biden needs to confront fossil fuels. | Wenonah Hauter | Radio Free | https://www.radiofree.org/2020/11/23/biden-cant-reach-his-own-climate-goals-without-banning-fracking-trump-tried-and-failed-to-ride-fears-about-a-fracking-ban-to-a-second-term-now-biden-needs-to-confront-fossil-f/ |

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