Jerome Foster, Julia Jackson and Alexandria Villaseñor write:

How much more unpredictability must the American people endure as a result of our reliance on fossil fuels before we finally cut ties with Big Oil and build a stable, affordable clean-energy economy? It seems like President Biden is out of options, given the intransigence of the fossil fuel–friendly Congress. But he has one: use his authority as president to invoke the Defense Production Act to dramatically scale up production of clean energy, while simultaneously protecting national security.

In the past six months alone, we’ve seen how fossil fuels fund Russia’s brutal war crimes against Ukrainians. Many of that war’s victims are younger than us (17, 20 and 34). Yet the initial US response was to cut ties with Putin by pursuing oil purchases from other petro-state dictators known for their own human rights abuses.

We have also seen the US Department of Defense warn the White House that continued reliance on fossil fuels poses a major threat to national security by accelerating the climate emergency. Wildfires are currently burning earlier and hotter than ever before in California and New Mexico, tearing through dry vegetation at a pace 71 percent above the average for this time of year. This crisis demands urgent action from Congress and the White House, yet the US response has been to simply increase domestic drilling. [Continue reading…]