Greenwashing Joe Biden

Trees and other plants may already be past their peak on their ability to absorb carbon dioxide. As Status Quo Joe gives little indication he'll even sign off on "the Squad's" weak tea Green Party-ripoff version of a Green New Deal, let alone what's really needed, this is serious.

So is the likes of a Mark Hertsgaard greenwashing Biden when he knows it ain't so. Or, if he doesn't, even for non-public consumption, know it ain't so, it's scary on his part.

As I Tweeted him: There is NOT "a climate realist now in the White House." Nor (which I missed originally) did Biden "dramatically strengthen his climate proposals" during last year's presidential campaign.

"We" who know such things know that his climate "plan" didn't even directly address fracking.

The rest of the piece, the non-Biden stuff, is decent.

But, we don't need to be greenwashing Joe Biden.

At least Hertsgaard didn't try to tell me the Paris Accords are real and not their actual Jell-o.

Ben Ehrenreich tells the truth, noting that Biden had issued drilling permits before the pause on them, and taken many other half-steps. It's in the larger framework of analyzing a paper co-written by 17 scientists about just how self-screwed we're getting. More in a separate post.

Update: That said, a new study from the Journal of Environmental Psychology says that people who have strong "national narcissism" (ie, big time American exceptionalism, Polish exceptionalism, etc.) are likely to believe greenwashing by/about their political leaders. A TL/DR summary is at Psy Post. The survey focused on Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative populist claiming to be an environmentalist, hence my use of "Polish exceptionalism." But, it did reference Trump twice, in indicating Duda is like him in some ways in general, and on this issue.

But, many neoliberal Dems (as in Dear Leader's new memoir) ALSO believe in American exceptionalism. And, with Obama, and now with Status Quo Joe, they tribally believe that their Dem leaders are great gunz on environmentalism.