“For better or worse,” he wrote, “more Americans
respond to evocations of toughness in the face of a threat.” The label caught on — and “climate hawk” has since
become a badge worn proudly by a nucleus of politically savvy climate-action
advocates. And now, days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, leading climate
hawks sense that the moment is ripe to connect the war to their cause. “America is lining Putin’s pockets by buying billions
of dollars of Russian oil,” said Sen Ed Markey and an architect of the Green
New Deal. “The United States doesn’t need Russian oil any more than we need
Russian caviar.” Adding to the feeling of urgency: As the war began, a
United Nations climate panel issued a landmark report detailing the
catastrophic effects of global warming, which include floods, deadly heat waves
and extreme water scarcity that could affect millions. “This whole crisis points out the need for us to wean
ourselves and the rest of the world off fossil fuels,” said Tom Steyer, a
billionaire former presidential candidate and major Democratic donor. The climate hawks are in temporary alignment with
foreign policy hawks, who also worry about importing oil and gas from unstable
and undemocratic parts of the world — but for different reasons. The two groups
agree on cutting off Putin’s energy lifeline, but that’s about it. And it’s not
clear which way the Biden administration, with gasoline prices surging past $4
a gallon, will go. There are various ideas floating around Capitol Hill
for cutting off imports of Russian energy, all of which got a boost Monday when
lawmakers agreed on a legislative framework to do so. What happens next is where the agreement starts to
break down. To vastly oversimplify, Capitol Hill divides into two basic camps
on how to replace the Russian oil. On one side is a bipartisan group led by two senators
from fossil fuel-producing states: Joe Manchin III and Lisa Murkowski, who have
recruited Republicans and many moderate Democrats to their bill implementing
the Russian cutoff. On the other side are the climate hawks: Markey, Sen
Martin Heinrich and many progressive Democrats in the House. Last week, Markey
and Heinrich unveiled their alternate proposal for banning Russian energy
imports: the SPIGOT (Severing Putin’s Immense Gains from Oil Transfers) Act.
Unlike Manchin and Murkowski’s legislation, their bill requires the US to
replace Russian imports with renewable energy over time. Some quirkier ideas have emerged. Bill McKibben, an
activist close to the administration, is calling on President Joe Biden to use
the Defence Production Act to ramp up the manufacture of heat pumps — highly
energy-efficient, all-in-one heating and cooling units — and ship them to
Europe. “We could peacefully punch Putin in the kidneys,”
McKibben wrote in his Substack newsletter. WHITE HOUSES’S DILEMMA  The president has stacked his administration with
climate hawks, and has put forward ambitious policies to rein in carbon
emissions and move the country toward renewable, clean energy. But Ukraine’s crisis is testing that. White House officials say that over the long run, the
world needs to move past fossil fuels. But, with oil prices already touching
$130 a barrel, they don’t want to further roil the markets. So, administration officials are scouring the world to
replace Russia’s oil output. There are no easy choices: Iran (which is under
economic sanctions), Venezuela (also under sanctions) and Saudi Arabia (which
is angry with the US for various reasons) have been floated as possibilities. But as he worries about gas prices, Biden also has to
worry about the left. Progressives criticised him last week for saying little
about climate change in his State of the Union address. The bulk of his climate
agenda was blocked when Manchin and Sen Kyrsten Sinema, torpedoed the Build
Back Better Act, Democrats’ social policy bill. Democrats fear that could leave
young voters who turned out for Biden in 2020 demoralized in 2022. REPUBLICANS’ SQUEEZE PLAY  Even as Republicans urge the president to stop
importing Russian energy, they’re redoubling their political messaging blaming
him for high gasoline prices. And they’re demanding for him to “unleash” energy
production in the United States. Republicans’ arguments are hollow, experts tell us.
The surge in global economic activity as the coronavirus pandemic ebbs is the
main factor driving up gasoline prices, not Biden’s energy policies. Domestic
production of crude oil actually increased in 2021. The limits Biden has placed
on drilling on federal lands don’t affect current production. And, as White
House officials have pointed out, the industry is sitting on thousands of
unused drilling permits. Allies of the administration note, too, that even
though Russia may be a minor supplier for the US, it exports around 5 million
barrels of crude oil a day. Because oil prices are set globally, taking all of
that off the market would send prices soaring. “People think presidents have more control over the
price of oil than they actually do,” said Samantha Gross, an energy analyst at
the Brookings Institution. THE POPULISTS PLUG IN  Politically, high oil prices are a nightmare. They
make it difficult for Democrats to promote their stewardship of the economy. Climate hawks propose a way out of this jam: Democrats
should brand themselves as the party of future, not the past, they say. That
means unapologetically embracing new technologies like electric vehicles while
portraying oil as yesterday’s energy solution. “Instead of ‘Drill, baby, drill,’ voters should hear:
‘Plug in, baby, plug in,’ ” Markey said. Tom Matzzie, a former Washington campaign director for
MoveOn.org, who now runs a company that builds solar farms, suggested Biden go
after the oil companies. “They’re trying to take advantage of the situation in
Ukraine and pretend they have a solution when they don’t,” Matzzie said of the
companies that are calling on Biden to repeal a moratorium on drilling on
federal land. Others worry that high oil prices will push Americans
into embracing fossil fuels at the very moment they should be shifting away
from them as fast as possible. Facing the prospect of disastrous midterm
elections, Democrats could follow suit. “Mixing up the difference between a short- and a
long-term response would be an absolute failure for us intellectually,” Steyer
said. “And a horrible decision for us as a country.” © 2022 The New York Times Company