“It’s past time to declare a climate emergency.”

Democratic progressives introduce legislation to mandate action by Biden.

2/4/2020 – Special Alert

Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, introduced legislation today that would mandate President Biden to declare a “climate emergency.”

The bill compares the action needed on the climate crisis to the wartime mobilization during World War II and urges Biden to declare an emergency under the National Emergencies Act, thus enabling more than 100 additional presidential powers to tackle the crisis.

The National Emergencies Act would give Biden enormous new powers, for example, to, reinstitute a ban on crude oil exports, send emergency aid packages to states, or redirect billions of dollars of funding away from defense projects and toward the production of renewable energy.

“It’s past time that a climate emergency is declared,” Blumenauer said in a statement. “This bill can finally get it done.”

The filing of the bill is something of a symbolic figleaf and a nudge from Congressional progressives because the President can invoke emergency powers without authorization from Congress. On February 15, 2019, President Trump declared a national emergency and announced that he would divert $6.7 billion from military construction, pay, pension, and other accounts to build a border wall that Congress had denied.

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