 | | Maxine Joselow | | In State of the Union, Biden plans to tout his climate agenda despite challenges in Congress and the courts |  President Biden at a Black History Month celebration in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 28. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg News) | | | While President Biden's first State of the Union address tonight will largely focus on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the president also plans to tout his plans to tackle another global threat: the climate crisis. But the major speech comes as Biden's climate agenda faces significant hurdles — both in Congress and at the nation's highest court. On Capitol Hill, the president's sweeping climate and social spending legislation remains stalled in the 50-50 Senate. And at the Supreme Court, some of the conservative justices on Monday signaled an interest in limiting the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to cut planet-warming pollution from power plants. Before you tune in to the speech, which will be delivered at 9 p.m. ET, here's some key climate-related context: | | After Russia invaded Ukraine last week, the Biden team revised his speech to highlight Moscow's aggression as a major crisis facing the West, The Washington Post's Annie Linskey and Tyler Pager report. But the speech will still feature a section on the president's economic plans at home, including the sweeping climate and social spending package formerly known as the Build Back Better bill, according to a White House fact sheet. | | "In his first State of the Union address, the President will call on Congress to deliver on a legislative agenda for clean energy and climate action that has overwhelming support from the American people — Republicans, Democrats and Independents," the fact sheet says. A senior administration official said that Biden will specifically urge Congress to pass "critical investments and tax credits for domestic clean energy manufacturing and deployment. He will also highlight how the investments and tax credits would cut energy costs for American families an average of $500 per year." However, talks over Build Back Better have evaporated since Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) came out against the measure in late December. And Biden aides briefing reporters on the speech yesterday would not say whether Biden would mention his onetime signature legislation by name. "It's not about the name of the bill. It's about the ideas," said one top Biden aide. Regardless of the name, a study released Monday found that the spending bill would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 billion tons, putting the United States within easy reach of Biden's 2030 climate goals. By contrast, the infrastructure law alone would leave the nation's emissions 1.3 billion tons short of Biden's 2030 target, according to the modeling by the REPEAT Project at Princeton University. Holly Burke, a spokeswoman for Evergreen Action, told The Climate 202 that Biden should use the State of the Union to detail how he still plans to achieve his climate goals through a combination of legislation and executive action. "Those goals are based on science and necessary to ensure a livable future for all Americans," Burke said, "and we need to see him prioritize the pathway to get there." | | Even if Democrats in Congress fail to pass ambitious climate legislation before the midterm elections, the EPA can wield broad regulatory authority to enact Biden's climate agenda. But some of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court yesterday appeared skeptical that the EPA can proceed with sweeping regulation of greenhouse gases from power plants without clearer directions from Congress, The Post's Robert Barnes reports. During two-hour oral arguments in West Virginia v. EPA, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. indicated that the EPA's plans implicated the "major questions" doctrine, which says that agencies must be clearly authorized by Congress to interpret questions of "vast economic or political significance," rather than relying on general language in federal laws such as the Clean Air Act. | | Alito said that the EPA is claiming "authority to set industrial policy and energy policy and balance such things as jobs, economic impact, the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, as well as costs." Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, arguing for the Biden administration, said the justices should dismiss the case because EPA has not yet issued a new climate rule for the power sector. "But she did not seem to be having much luck in convincing the court," Barnes writes. Pat Parenteau, an environmental law expert at Vermont Law School, told The Climate 202 that he expects the conservative majority to "put limits on the EPA's authority" to issue a rule similar to Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which sought to cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent by 2030. The conservative justices did not however indicate an interest in overturning Massachusetts v. EPA, the landmark 2007 case that established the EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. "None of the questions seemed aimed at undercutting Massachusetts v. EPA," Columbia Law School professor Michael Gerrard told The Climate 202. "And that was one of the worst-case scenarios that had received a lot of discussion." | | |  | International climate | | Decades after Chernobyl, war raises nuclear fears in Ukraine |  A confinement structure covers the damaged fourth reactor at Chernobyl on April 3. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters) | | | The International Atomic Energy Agency announced it would convene an emergency meeting Wednesday as fighting neared some of Ukraine's largest functioning nuclear plants, The Post's Steven Mufson reports. Both sides vied for control on Monday of Ukraine's biggest nuclear power complex in Zaporizhia. The IAEA said that Russian forces were "operational near the site but had not entered it." | | While a direct attack on Ukraine's nuclear infrastructure seems unlikely, experts warned that an inadvertent strike by a missile or air attack could trigger the release of radioactive materials. "It is extremely important that the nuclear power plants are not put at risk in any way," IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said. Without naming the catastrophic Chernobyl accident of 1986, which caused 28 deaths in four months and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, Grossi said that "an accident involving the nuclear facilities in Ukraine could have severe consequences for public health and the environment." | U.N. plastic treaty to tackle production, packaging |  A man in Nairobi carries plastic bottles on Dec. 5, 2018. (Ben Curtis/AP) | | | United Nations delegates on Monday settled on a roadmap for a global plastics treaty that would legally bind nations to address pollution from plastic extraction and packaging, according to a draft resolution seen by John Geddie and Joe Brock of Reuters. Previous talks suggested the treaty would only be focused on improving waste management and recycling. U.N. member states are meeting this week in Nairobi to begin talks on the first global agreement to tackle plastic pollution, which degrades marine life and contaminates the food chain. A full treaty is set to be agreed upon within the next two years. | | |  | Climate in the courts | | | |  | Pressure points | | The midterm primary season begins in Texas, with climate on the hot seat |  Jessica Cisneros at an early vote kickoff event in San Antonio on Feb. 22. (Matthew Busch/Bloomberg News) | | | The 2022 midterm election season opens today in Texas, one year after the state was slammed by a winter storm that crippled the electric grid and left millions of people without power for days. In one of the most closely watched races, 28-year-old immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros is challenging incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.), the House Democrat most friendly to the U.S. oil and gas industry. Cisneros and her supporters feel confident that she can prevail in the wake of an FBI raid into Cuellar's home and campaign headquarters on Jan. 19. The congressman has maintained his innocence and vowed to remain in the race but has not specified why he's under investigation. The Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate group, announced yesterday that it exceeded its phone-banking goal of 300,000 dials for Cisneros. Sunrise also threw its support behind Greg Casar, who is running for a new seat representing the Lone Star State's 35th Congressional District and also supports the Green New Deal, the progressive proposal to wean the nation off fossil fuels in a decade with a government-led jobs program. | | |  | Agency alert | | The EPA's new Science Advisory Board process will strengthen peer review in decision-making |  Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan in Hawaii on Feb. 24. (Caleb Jones/AP) | | | The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a new process by which the Science Advisory Board reviews the science that informs the agency's decision-making. "The new process will restore opportunities for peer review and strengthen the independence of the board," the agency said in a news release. EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who visited Hawaii last week to tour a Navy fuel facility that has contaminated drinking water on Oahu, said in a statement that "everything we do as an agency must adhere to the highest standards of scientific integrity, and today's action is a major step towards stronger, independently reviewed science." Regan has purged more than 40 outside experts appointed by President Donald Trump from the Science Advisory Board and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee — an unusual move that he said would reduce industry influence over environmental regulations. | | |  | Ask a climate reporter | | The Post answered readers' questions about the U.N. climate report | | In case you missed it, our colleagues Brady Dennis and Sarah Kaplan answered readers' burning questions about the more than 3,500-page U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released yesterday. Here were their responses. | | |  | Viral | | | More cute animals to counter your climate anxiety: |  | | | | | |  | Extreme events | | | |  | On the Hill | | | |  | Environmental justice | | | |  | Corporate commitments | | | |  | The power grid | | | |  | (Multi-use) | | |
