(Headline USA) Leftists are pushing President Joe Biden to declare a national climate emergency in the wake of a devastating wildfire in Maui, which would allow him to unilaterally pass a radical environmentalist agenda.
Despite overwhelming evidence that the fire in Maui was sparked by the island’s electric utility and exacerbated by a poor response from government officials, climate activists have blamed extreme weather for the tragedy and demanded that Biden use it to his advantage.
“Even when I talk about this issue, I tend to say things like, ‘I want to make sure my children have clean air and water — that they have running water. That they have a livable planet when they’re my age.’ But that’s not right,” Kaniela Ing, the national director of the Green New Deal Network, told Politico.
“Tomorrow, you could wake up and your whole community could be ashes. That’s the urgency we’re operating under, so if there was ever a moment to declare a climate emergency, it is right now.”
A handful of Democrat lawmakers have also pushed Biden to use his executive authority to declare a state of emergency.
“The devastation in Maui is a clear sign that the president must declare a climate emergency — now. While FEMA is providing resources to the local heroes on the ground fighting for the lives and livelihoods of Hawaiians, the underlying climate-driven conditions of drought, extreme heat, environmental injustice, and non-resilient infrastructure will remain,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in a statement.
Markey is one of several leftists in Congress who has been pushing Biden to take this drastic step since he took office. In July 2022, he and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., penned a letter to the president admitting that the only way to pass radical climate policies through the legislature is if Biden “put[s] us on an emergency footing and aggressively use[s] your executive powers to address the climate crisis.”
Earlier this month, Biden was asked whether he intended to make such a declaration, and he falsely claimed he had already made one, “practically speaking.”
