In a development that feels less like genuine policy and more like a desperate exercise in virtue signaling, President Biden’s administration has announced an ambitious new climate target under the Paris Agreement. According to Reuters, the goal is to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 61% to 66% below 2005 levels by 2035—a lofty aim announced just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office, promising to undo much of Biden’s climate agenda.
This move is being sold as “durable” and “achievable” by the administration, with officials touting the supposed permanence of measures embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act and infrastructure bill. John Podesta, Biden’s senior climate advisor, even claimed the administration’s investments would “continue to pay dividends for our economy and our climate for years to come”. Of course, whether these “dividends” will materialize—or whether the whole scheme is more likely to drain the treasury—is another question entirely.
“Our investments under this administration are durable and will continue to pay dividends for our economy and our climate for years to come, allowing us to set an ambitious and achievable 2035 target,”
said John Podesta, Senior Advisor to Biden for international climate policy.
The Numbers Don’t Add Up
To hear the administration tell it, this target is ambitious but within reach. However, independent assessments paint a less rosy picture. The U.S. is already behind its earlier target of reducing emissions by 50%-52% by 2030, according to the Rhodium Group. Even under current policies, a reduction of only 46% by 2035 is projected—far short of this new goal. In plain terms, the Biden administration has promised the environmental equivalent of a moonshot without a rocket.
And let’s not forget that the Paris Agreement itself is little more than a grand diplomatic stage play. Countries submit “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) based on aspirational goals, often without credible pathways to achieve them. If this agreement were a college group project, the U.S. just volunteered to write the entire report while everyone else quietly heads to happy hour.
State-Level Action: A Patchwork of Activism
The administration insists that even if Trump guts federal climate policies—as he’s all but promised—states will pick up the slack. California, New York, and other reliably left-leaning states are part of an alliance pledging to align with Paris Agreement goals. But this patchwork approach is riddled with inefficiencies, contradictions, and regional resistance. States like Texas and Wyoming are unlikely to play along with a policy framework that disproportionately penalizes their economies while prioritizing the whims of coastal elites.
Moreover, the idea that states will collectively meet these lofty goals is laughable given the uneven enforcement mechanisms and wildly differing political climates. The administration is essentially hoping that states will voluntarily carry out a federally abandoned mandate, a strategy as coherent as hoping cats will organize themselves into a marching band.
Trump’s Plan: Fossil Fuels and Energy Dominance
Enter Donald Trump, who campaigned on an unapologetic platform of “energy dominance.” His transition team is reportedly planning measures to roll back support for electric vehicles, impose tariffs on battery materials, and ramp up fossil fuel production. These policies stand in stark contrast to Biden’s approach, prioritizing economic pragmatism over ideological purity.
Love him or hate him, Trump’s energy policies resonate with a significant portion of the electorate, particularly in energy-producing states. For these voters, Biden’s climate targets are not only unattainable but also actively harmful—sacrificing American jobs and energy independence on the altar of globalist climate orthodoxy.
The Global Context: America Overpromises, Others Underperform
Even if Biden’s climate plan weren’t headed for the chopping block, it’s worth questioning the wisdom of making grand commitments in a global framework where compliance is uneven at best. As of now, only the UAE and Brazil have announced new NDCs ahead of the February deadline. Meanwhile, major emitters like China and India continue to expand their coal-fired power plants, all while delivering sanctimonious lectures about climate justice.
This is the fatal flaw of the Paris Agreement: it requires Western countries to hobble their economies while letting developing nations off the hook. Biden’s new climate target effectively signals to the world that the U.S. is willing to bear the brunt of emissions reductions while other nations take a free ride.
Virtue Signaling Meets Political Reality
Let’s not mince words—this new target is not a serious policy proposal; it’s political theater. The Biden administration knows full well that Trump will likely withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement (again), rendering this target meaningless. But in the waning days of Biden’s presidency, it seems the administration is more interested in leaving behind a symbolic legacy than in crafting policies that will survive the next administration.
And symbolic gestures, while satisfying to the climate activist crowd, won’t keep the lights on. Biden’s climate policies have already contributed to rising energy costs, supply chain disruptions, and an erosion of America’s industrial base. The idea that these same policies will now deliver us to some renewable-energy utopia is the kind of magical thinking that belongs in a fantasy novel, not in government policy.
Conclusion: A Legacy of Hubris
In announcing this new climate target, Biden’s administration has offered a masterclass in virtue signaling: bold promises with no teeth, grounded in shaky assumptions, and doomed to collapse under the weight of political and economic realities. It’s a final act of defiance before Trump takes the reins and charts a radically different course.
The Biden team may believe their efforts will endure, but the reality is clear: Trump’s policies, grounded in economic realism and energy pragmatism, will quickly dismantle this house of cards. The rest of us would do well to buckle up—2025 is shaping up to be a wild ride.
H/T Steve Milloy
The USA needs the unwritten rule that some other countries have: in the run-up to a new government taking over, the old government operates in caretaker mode. In Australia, it’s a written rule.
Or you could just do what the UK does: the new government usually takes over the day after the election.
That makes sense.
Bush 43 pretty much did exactly that when Obama was elected. He pretty much turned over the reins of power immediately.
Of course, his policies and Obama’s were pretty much aligned. There could not be too much government and bureaucracy.
Our constitution was written in a time when communication and transport was by wagons and carriages drawn by horses or oxen. For faster communication you used a rider on horseback. The constitutions writers had to leave plenty of time for ballots to be hand counted, and the results forwarded to state capitals. Then they needed time for the electors to assemble in Washington. Then finally the winner had to be informed and time needed for him to travel to Washington. Obviously this could all happen faster today (except the counting part, that seems to take even longer)
Unfortunately, it will take a constitutional amendment to move inauguration day up.
It could be worse, inauguration used to be on March 4.
What’s important is how much he will be allowed to do? Trump wanted to reboot NASA, too, and now it’s down to useless “reform”.
Willing to promise, anyway. But hey, maybe these cats will organize themselves into a marching band.
The net result is that the countries Energiewende hits the hardest are those most loyal to the Circus World, who bend with the Party Line fastest and deepest rather than paying lip service.
Much the same way as it went with that Plandemic nonsense: the opposition refused and resisted, the thimble-riggers perhaps skipped quietly, the ninjaz and other gangstas did not care… but the clowns in spotlights and the nodding sheeple collected all 99 Euthanasepam Retard™ booster shots.
Looks like there’s a… selection pressure.
This reminds me of old movie footage of a big airship coming in to dock. The rope hanging from its nose was to be grabbed by ground crew and tied to a post. A sudden wind gust interrupted this by lifting the nose higher. More and more people rushed in to hold the rope down, but they weighed too little and the airship and tether rope kept getting higher, until people could hold on no longer. They started dropping off, to death or injury or lucky escape.
The point is that the people most loyal to the cause – docking the airship – were the first to volunteer for the rope, were the people who were taken up highest. They were the people facing most serious harm. Loyalty extracted a price.
I see similarities to the climate change cause. The most loyal, the early adopters, have been drawn in the most and have the most to lose. I feel sorry for them, being not clever enough to drop off early or to choose a path that means something more than poor science, exaggeration of data and ideas and reputational loss, while making whole countries poorer. It is all so sad, to now feel the wrecking ball of primitive dogma. Geoff S
“By 2035″…I remember a time when 2035 was still in the distant future. When I graduated from high school in 1995, that may as well have been a year in the setting of a Star Trek episode. These guys do realize that 2035 is only ten years from now, right?
I never imagined that Las Vegas would become the U.S. investment capitol.
I was a bit earlier, a couple of decades before, when George Orell’s “1984” was a distant future dystopia. No one ever thought it would become the Democrat Party strategy for the next century.
And playbook.
States with dispatchable generation need to take a close look at Norway’s and Sweden’s current plight contending with Germany;s intermittence.
The only possible benefit of absorbing intermittent generation is if there is a hydro system with perched water constraints. And then there needs to be tight limits on internal pricing so the price volatility is not being imported as presently occurring.
Free power appears a good deal but the downside of the occasional low price is occasional very high price.
Coal plants produce the lowest unit cost when operated at or near to rated output continuously. If they are ramping up and down in response to intermittent generators then their unit cost quickly skyrocket due to combustion stability and added wear and tear due to thermal cycling.
There is no Free power, PV panels, Wind Turbines and Dams all need capital investment and use land for which a $ return needs to be generated to repay the investment. Hydro is a lot more useful than PV or Wind but it still needs to be paid for.
Norway often gets paid to take German wind energy. It is low cost to Nrway but the German’s pay for and the Norwegians pay dearly when Norwegian export to Germany is high.
Noat only that, most of the “perched hydro” in the US is reserved for irrigation, not for flushing out into the Pacific to save California’s butt when the wind doesn’t blow.
The biggest reason why unit costs go up when the output of the plant is reduced is that most of the costs are fixed. Labor costs are the same, capital costs are the same, even fuel costs only go down a little. The plant is selling a lot less electricity, but it’s costs are essentially the same. That means the cost per unit of electricity has to go up. A lot.
This is not from Biden, he is totally incapable of forming a single rational sentence.
It is from the green activists in the deep state.
I can hardly wait for the tell-all books from the Biden White House insiders.
Who were the puppet masters? And just what was the role played by Biden’s family
[and for what quid pro quo]?
A very sad time for US democracy. And please don’t forget the role the main stream
media played in the fiction of Biden’s competence & mental capacity.
You mean like refusing to report the fact that Biden had already had two major brain surgeries in 1988?
Thomas Eagleton was forced to withdraw as the Vice Presidential selection of McGovern because he was hospitalized for depression. The media was all over that one for weeks until he withdrew.
In a development that feels less like genuine policy and more like a desperate exercise…
2TK is sending the Prince of Darkness to be the new UK ambassador to the US
Enjoy!
We now know for certain that that Biden was incapacitated by senility from the start and therefore that his presidency was unconstitutional, because decisions must have been taken by un-elected people, and thus illegal. Everything his administration has done is therefore tainted and can be discarded on January 20 at once.
“California, New York, and other reliably left-leaning states are part of an alliance pledging to align with Paris Agreement goals.”
And, of course, Wokeachusetts- which shows no sign of being aware of the coming storm of the Trump administration. I see no backing off their net zero plans- yet, there is resistance to any more solar and wind farms on land. The enviros won’t mind a few thousand wind turbines at sea- they now claim that they can accomplish the net zero fantasy just by covering every building and parking lot with solar panels. There is also now- resistance to industrial scale battery systems. Nobody wants them. I was at a hospital the other day in the town of Gardner- directly across the street are 2 wind turbines. They are to me, FUCKING hideous- monsters stalking the landscape.
you wonder who in the administration is doing this. It can’t be Biden, he’s well beyond analytical thinking.
Article in today’s London Times shows how Biden will be seen by history. Not good. Ie. Devastating
“California, New York, and other reliably left-leaning states are part of an alliance pledging to align with Paris Agreement goals.”
Don’t think states can enter into any international agreements ….
they are just yapping .
California’s Newsom is very good at yapping.
More absurdities masquerading as momentous matters. None of the “targets” or “policies” have the weight of law. They’re just proclamations by the President and his minions in various federal bureaucracies. Even if they come up with rule changes, they are undone with the stroke of a Presidential pen in the next administration. Only if Congress passes an actual law or approves a treaty which has the force of law does this have any consequence. Since they haven’t, it doesn’t. Let the gibbering virtue signalers babble all they want. Their proclamations are just tales “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Very nice Charles.
American voters may have stopped listening to Biden and the Democrats even before the election, so now the their proclamations and actions are even more likely to be ignored. The reality is that people don’t care whether emission-reduction targets are met. They don’t want anything to interfere with their lifestyles and financial well-being, and if fossil fuel use and the resulting emissions support this belief, that will be the price they’re willing to pay. In addition, this sentiment is hardly restricted to the US because global surveys show people continue to consider climate action to be a low priority.
“…a symbolic legacy…”
No, the current outgoing administration is engaged in the wholesale malicious sabotage of the system, to make it as difficult as possible for the incoming President to fulfill his promises.
When “Debya” moved into the White House, the “W” key on all the keyboards had been removed. A childish prank. What is being done today – personal opinion – qualifies as treason, pure and simple.
this post gives the biden administration too much credit. their only goal is to hamstring america. environmentalism is just the vehicle.
The UK’s NDC announced at COP29 by the PM is 81% reduction by 2035 compared to 1990 levels. I don’t know if this better or worse than that of the US.Our enery minister is determined to reduce our electricity bills by making sure we use less of it by transitioning from reliable, affordable hydrocarbon fuels to expensive chaotically intermittent renewables.