In an interview with the Washington Post Monday, climate activist Greta Thunberg slammed the Biden administration, saying that it’s “strange” to consider Biden a leader in the arena “when you see what his administration is doing.”
“The U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure,” Thunberg said. “Why is the U.S. doing that? It should not fall on us activists and teenagers who just want to go to school to raise this awareness and to inform people that we are actually facing an emergency.”
In November, Thunberg dismissed this year’s COP26 as “a PR event” and she accused world leaders of “greenwashing.”
“In such an emergency as we are in right now, everyone needs to take their moral responsibility, at least I think so, and use whatever power they have, whatever platform they have, to try to influence and push in the right direction, to make a change,” she told The Guardian in October. “I think that’s our duty as human beings.”
Axios’ Andrew Freedman reflected, “The Biden administration set out ambitious goals for reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, including reaching 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 and net-zero emissions by 2050.”
Freedman added, “However, Biden’s main tool for meeting these goals is bogged down in Congress, putting them in doubt. He also has been combatting an increase in gas prices related to the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and other factors. This has led Biden to call for a temporary increase in global oil production.”
The Biden administration “also has not followed through on a campaign promise to crack down on new oil and gas leasing on federal lands, instead aiming for reforming the process. Yet, it is also greatly expanding the areas open to renewables, such as offshore wind energy,” Freedman wrote.