Joe Biden’s climate legacy is already complicated. His administration helped pass two laws that put unprecedented funding toward clean energy, electric vehicles, and climate technology—the most consequential climate legislation ever passed in the US. Since the start of his presidential race, the Biden administration has tried to frame climate change as an economic opportunity—a kind of climate nationalism that attempts to use clean reindustrialization as a bridge across ideological divides.
Yet the administration has not left behind the old way of doing things. Oil and gas production has never been higher. Biden’s approval of the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska draws into question the country’s commitment to a