Biden must show how he arrives at his greenhouse gas target

President Joe Biden has joined world leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow to boast about what he calls his “historic” environmental agenda.

Exactly how the U.S. will cut its 2005 levels of greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030—as President Biden has already promised—remains to be seen. 

In a document submitted to the United Nations, the Biden administration stated that it had “conducted a detailed analysis to underpin this 2030 target, reviewing a range of pathways for each sector of the economy that produces CO₂ and non-CO₂greenhouse gases: electricity, transportation, buildings, industry, and the land sector.”

Those sectors impact nearly every facet of American life. 

Congress—along with the media, the international community, and the American people—is still waiting to see the administration’s detailed analysis. I have asked for it. Repeatedly. The administration refuses to provide it. 

I requested this information since the emissions reduction promise was issued in hearings, letters, and phone calls. Despite promises of transparency, administration officials have dodged those continued inquiries. Congress has yet to receive any data generated or used to determine Biden’s greenhouse gas target. 

When asked by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, of which I am the ranking member, to see the specific data, suddenly the White House can’t find—or refuses to turn over—its math. As any child can tell you, not showing your work is unacceptable even in elementary school arithmetic. It is absolutely unacceptable when it comes to the president making designs on Americans’ livelihoods.

The White House has said it used data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Energy, and outside liberal advocacy groups—by which they mean extreme environmentalist groups like the Sunrise Movement, the same organization that brought us the radical Green New Deal. 

By hiding its calculations, the Biden administration is avoiding tough questions about the policies that would be required to meet our climate pledge and how those policies would impact the lives of everyday Americans and small businesses.

I am concerned the policies they are plotting will increase home heating costs, kill jobs, make Americans pay more at the pump, and increase reliance on dirtier energy sources from our foreign adversaries, like Russia.

And those policies won’t make a meaningful impact on global climate while China continues to increase its emissions to support its own global competitiveness.

If the White House is proud of and confident in its climate goals, why won’t they share the details of how they intend to spend your money to achieve those goals with Congress and the rest of the world?

Don’t they want the United States’ plan to be a blueprint for other countries to lower their emissions? After all, climate change is a global issue.   

Perhaps the White House is keeping its cards close to the chest because it doesn’t want to admit to people in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and other energy-producing state what their analysis assumes.

Perhaps they do not want to be open that the green energy giveaways they have proposed will hit American families twice: first by wasting their tax dollars on utility fuel switching and then again by further raising their household energy costs at a time of already rapid inflation.  

Or perhaps the analysis admits that renewables won’t be able to keep up with the energy needed to fuel our economy and the effort is doomed to failure, accompanied by rolling blackouts.

All we can do is speculate because the administration won’t show their work.

Earlier this month, the Rhodium Group—an independent research provider—assessed whether or not the U.S. could meet its greenhouse gas emission target. The Rhodium Group concluded: “To achieve the 2030 target, the US will need to cut emissions at a pace of 230-240 million metric tons per year every year beginning in 2022. Putting this gap in context, that’s the same as zeroing out emissions from the entire state of Florida every year for the next nine years.”

If the Biden administration is planning to zero out Florida-sized emissions for the next nine years, American families deserve to know how it will impact their lives and pocketbooks.

Unfortunately, this lack of transparency is a common theme in President Biden’s environmental agenda.

He has empowered unaccountable domestic climate czar Gina McCarthy and private jet aficionado John Kerry with managing the administration’s environmental agenda—including these climate pledges—rather than Senate-confirmed officials. These unelected, un-nominated officials are making decisions entirely outside of the public eye. This deprives the public and Congress of the transparent process necessary for stakeholder input, oversight, and legislative decision-making.

For an administration supposedly so focused on climate change, the White House has yet to nominate anyone to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation—the primary regulator for greenhouse gas emissions.

Why go through the tedious trouble of a confirmation hearing and subject a nominee to scrutiny when Gina McCarthy can call the shots from her White House office without accountability?

Before President Biden gets up to defend his climate goals to the world, he needs to defend them to the American people and to those who represent them in Congress.

Without this transparency—making public the information President Biden used to make his greenhouse gas emission promise—this administration’s climate goals are just full of hot air. 

Shelley Moore Capito is ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.