A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 , 2021
going litigation from environ-
mental groups.
The president has also raised
the subject of oil prices with
world leaders, including in a vir-
tual summit last week with Chi-
nese President Xi Jinping, where
the two discussed the “impor-
tance of taking measures to ad-
dress global energy supplies,” ac-
cording to a White House account
of the conversation.
And just days before attending
the Glasgow conference, Biden
pushed the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries
and other oil-producing nations
to ramp up their supply, admit-
ting at the time that it might look
like he was sending mixed mes-
sages.
“On the surface it seems like an
irony,” Biden said. “It does on the
surface seem inconsistent.”
But, he argued, the shift from
carbon was never going to happen
overnight, and meanwhile fami-
lies urgently need a break on gas
prices. “The idea that we’re not
going to need gasoline for auto-
mobiles is just not realistic,”
Biden said. “But we will get to the
point... by 2050.”
Biden has been firm that he
does not want gas prices to get too
high, given the effect of such costs
on working Americans.
“They have to get to their
work,” Biden said. “They have to
get in an automobile, turn on the
key, get their kids to school. The
school buses have to run.”
[email protected]carbon dioxide into the atmos-
phere over its lifetime — equiva-
lent to operating more than
70 percent of the country’s coal
plants for a year, according to a
report from the Center for Ameri-
can Progress, a liberal think tank.
The auction was set in motion
by the Trump administration but
put on hold by the Biden adminis-
tration. A federal court ruled that
sales had to move forward.
“We believe the decision is
wrong,” White House press secre-
tary Jen Psaki said. “We’re re-
quired to comply with the injunc-
tion. It’s a legal case and legal
process. But it’s important for
advocates and other people out
there who are following this to
understand that it’s not aligned
with our view.”
Some environmental activists
are skeptical, saying Biden’s team
failed to exhaust all of its options
to stop the lease. The administra-
tion could have sough a legal stay,
said Brettny Hardy, a senior attor-
ney with Earthjustice, and the
Interior Department could also
have offered a much smaller slice
of the Gulf for lease.
Hardy noted that additional
leases on public lands are tenta-
tively set for the coming months,
including one off the Alaska shore
in the Cook Inlet. “This is not at all
compatible with the efforts to
move away from fossil fuels and
address climate,” she said.
Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesman
for the Justice Department, de-
clined to comment, citing the on-term issues — which might be
inflation, which might be reces-
sion, which might be a global
pandemic — that’s not necessarily
inconsistent,” said Robert
Stavins, director of the Harvard
Environmental Economics Pro-
gram.
But few dispute the notion that
it’s a tricky political message for
Biden to say that more oil is neces-
sary now, but less oil is vital later.
And there is little doubt that
ultimately cheap gas contributes
to global warming.
“Anything you do to lower the
price of fossil fuels — coal, petro-
leum — is not supportive of ad-
dressing climate change,” Stavins
said.
Biden has taken some signifi-
cant actions to move the U.S.
economy away from oil and gas,
and at the climate summit in
Glasgow, Scotland, he sought to
reestablish American leadership
on climate change. One of Biden’s
first acts in office was signing an
executive order requiring a “tar-
geted pause” of new oil and gas
leasing on public land.
But last week, under court or-
der, the Biden administration
auctioned leasing rights to more
that 80 million acres in the Gulf of
Mexico, which could generate as
much as 1.1 billion barrels of oil
and 4.42 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas in the coming dec-
ades, according to an administra-
tion analysis.
The lease has the potential to
emit 723 million metric tons ofmore important than any short-
term jump in supply, Brownstein
added.
“There’s the challenge over
what we do over the next three to
six months to try to tamp down
some of the froth in the market
that’s stressing the pocketbook of
American consumers,” he said.
“And then there’s the more sys-
temic solution to the problem.”
Biden’s Build Back Better pack-
age, which cleared the House on
Friday but faces turbulence in the
Senate, includes a $12,500 tax
credit to encourage consumers to
buy union-built electric vehicles.
Emissions from cars, trucks and
buses amount to about 30 percent
of the country’s greenhouse gas
output, according to the Environ-
mental Protection Agency.
Biden’s infrastructure plan,
which he recently signed into law,
includes $7.5 billion to fund a
national network of electric vehi-
cle chargers, a down payment on
Biden’s goal of 500,000 of them by
2030.
Some environmentalists sym-
pathetic to Biden say their real
worry is Congress, where cen-
trists like Sen. Joe Manchin III
(D-W.Va.) have been pushing to
scale back the administration’s
climate plans.
And they said they recognize
that no president can simply wave
off social needs like affordable
fuel.
“Trying to address climate
change for the long term, while
recognizing that you have short-recent actions suggest his im-
mediate goal is the opposite.
“Politically, it’s easier to say
‘we’re going to make things
cheaper for you’ than ‘we’re going
to make things more expensive
for you,’ ” said one senior White
House official, speaking on the
condition of anonymity to discuss
internal dynamics.
White House officials also note
that gas prices are rising largely
because the country is opening up
after the pandemic, and demand
has increased faster than produc-
tion.
Some signs suggest the im-
mediate cost crunch is easing, but
prices at the pump remain high
for now. The average price of gas
in the U nited States as of Monday
was $3.41 per gallon, according to
AAA. In some politically impor-
tant states the costs are even high-
er, with prices at $3.60 per gallon
in Biden’s native Pennsylvania
and nearly $4 in Nevada.
Biden opponents have slapped
stickers on some gas pumps
showing the president’s face and
his hand gesturing to the total
along with the words, “I did that.”
Mark Brownstein, a senior vice
president at the Environmental
Defense Fund who is in frequent
touch with the administration,
said Biden’s push for more oil
supply is “bad optics” but that he
believes the moves are only tem-
porary. The president’s commit-
ment to electric vehicles, and to
weaning U.S. transportation from
fossil fuels more broadly, is fargovernment auction last Wednes-
day of oil drilling rights in the
Gulf of Mexico — are prompting
warnings from environmental
advocates that Biden’s push to
lower energy prices is undercut-
ting his lofty goals on climate,
which he sees as a centerpiece of
his legacy.
“There is a huge contradiction
right now in their actions,” said
Jean Su, who directs the Energy
Justice Program at the Center for
Biological Diversity, which has
sued to stop the oil rights auction.
“It’s really all hands on deck right
now for climate.... Right now is
not the time for more oil and gas
production.”
The president himself has ac-
knowledged some measure of
“irony” in his campaign for more
production of fossil fuels — and
lower prices that would let Ameri-
cans burn more of them — as his
administration has set a course
for net zero greenhouse emis-
sions by 2050.
Biden and his aides say that
helping Americans who face an
immediate threat from high fuel
prices does not undermine his
longer-term plans. Biden officials
also contend that the short-term
measures would not drastically
increase emissions. And he, along
with his boosters, points to a leg-
islative agenda that includes his-
toric investments in clean energy.
But the president’s immediate
conundrum illustrates the chal-
lenge facing the U nited States and
other countries trying to shift
away from fossil fuels: The near-
term needs of their economies,
and the pressures of domestic
politics, still require cheap oil and
gas.
That dilemma was on full dis-
play at the White House on Mon-
day, when Biden announced he
was nominating Federal Reserve
Chair Jerome H. Powell for an-
other term. In his remarks, Biden
stressed that Fed policy should
take note of climate change, but
also noted that high energy prices
are a concern, saying, “We know
it’s tough for families to keep up
with the rising cost of gasoline.”
Republicans have been relent-
lessly hammering Biden over gas
prices, and Democrats inside and
outside the White House fear that
inflation could be a devastating
factor in next year’s midterm elec-
tions.
Last Wednesday, as the presi-
dent traveled to Michigan to pro-
mote his infrastructure plan,
House Minority Leader Kevin Mc-
Carthy (R-Calif.) blasted out an
email noting the high fuel costs in
that state and accusing Biden of
“kneecapping American energy
production.”
Republican senators recently
held a news conference to high-
light the issue, with some of them
accusing the White House of pur-
posely stoking the jump in prices
to accelerate the transition to re-
newable energy.
“People for several weeks now
have been dealing with the shock
of what happens at the gas pump
where, every time you go fill your
car up with gas, you wonder if
you’re going to set your own per-
sonal high that day: ‘Is this going
to be more than I’ve ever paid for
gas before in my life?’ ” Sen. Roy
Blunt (R-Mo.) said.
Such attacks are likely to ramp
up as winter weather increases
the need for heating fuel.
But while Republicans say
Biden’s long-term policies, such
as restricting new oil and gas
leases, will raise costs, Biden’s
BIDEN FROM A
message saying the operation was
not possible because it was “a
violation of relevant laws and
regulations.”
While searches for Peng’s name
returned no hits on Chinese so-
cial media platforms earlier this
month in the wake of her allega-
tions, some older state media
articles about her could be found
Monday with the comments sec-
tions disabled.
In some corners of the Chinese
Internet, users made cautious
comments about her return Mon-
day.
“Hope that a thorough investi-
gation will give the people an
explanation,” one reader re-
marked.
Outside of China, there have
been increasingly loud calls for
proof of her safety, with an Olym-
pics official telling Reuters that it
could affect the Beijing Winter
Olympics scheduled to take place
in February. WTA Chairman
Steve Simon said Thursday that
the organization is willing to pull
out of China, potentially losing
hundreds of millions of dollars, if
Peng’s allegations are not proper-
ly investigated.
Tennis stars such as Serena
Williams and Naomi Osaka have
called for information about her
well-being. A rally to raise aware-
ness about Peng was held in a
New York City park S unday after-
noon.
[email protected]Alicia Chen in Taipei, Taiwan,
contributed to this report.BY EVA DOUAfter an international outcry
over her disappearance, tennis
player Peng Shuai has officially
reappeared in China — but with
silence surrounding her sexual
assault allegations against a sen-
ior government official.
Over the weekend, Peng began
reappearing in a carefully curat-
ed way on the Chinese Internet
after blanket censorship of news
about her since Nov. 2, when she
alleged in a social media post that
she was sexually assaulted by
China’s former vice premier
Zhang Gaoli.
China’s Foreign Ministry also
reversed course on Monday and
confirmed that Peng had attend-
ed public events recently after
maintaining for three weeks that
it was not aware of the situation.
News of the controversy re-
mains almost universally cen-
sored within China. A rare excep-
tion was a Chinese-language
statement posted by the French
Embassy in China on the social
network Weibo on Monday,
which expressed concern for Peng
and called on China to uphold its
pledge to combat violence against
women.
“We express our concern over
the lack of information regarding
tennis player Peng Shuai’s situa-
tion,” the French Embassy state-
ment said.
The embassy called Peng a
“tennis athlete who rose to prom-
inence due to the French Open.”
Peng and her partner won a wom-
en’s doubles title at the French
Open in 2014 and at Wimbledon
in 2013.
The tennis star’s reemergence
came after heavy international
pressure and seemed aimed pri-
marily at assuaging outrage from
prominent overseas sports au-
thorities and fellow players con-
cerned about her safety. Chinese
state media outlets used Twitter,
which is blocked in China, to
announce that Peng was free and
doing well, with photos and video
of her at a restaurant and a youth
tennis event.
She also spoke by video on
Sunday to International Olympic
Committee President Thomas
Bach, though the Women’s Tennis
Association (WTA) said that did
not alleviate concerns about herTennis player Peng
reappears in China
Concerns remain about
well-being amid silence
on sex assault allegationswell-being and her ability to com-
municate without censorship or
coercion.
Notably absent from these offi-
cial appearances has been any
mention of her sexual assault
allegations against Zhang, the re-
tired senior official, who has
maintained a public silence. Chi-
na’s State Council Information
Office did not reply Monday to a
faxed question about whether
Chinese prosecutors would inves-tigate her allegations and has not
responded to requests to make
Zhang available for interview.
Several other prominent #Me-
Too cases in China’s business and
academic circles have resulted in
police investigations and trials.
But Peng’s allegations are the first
against such a high-level official
in China, and it’s unclear how
Beijing will respond.
Within China, Peng’s return
has been cryptic, with nearly allmention of her allegations
against Zhang remaining under
official blackout. Some photos of
her surfaced without explanation
on domestic websites over the
weekend, such as the China Open
posting close-up shots of Peng at a
youth tennis event without men-
tioning her name.
On Monday, it remained im-
possible to post a message on
Weibo containing both Peng’s and
Zhang’s names, with a pop-upGREG MARTIN/INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE / REUTERS
International Olympic Committee P resident Thomas Bach has a video discussion with Chinese tennis
player Peng Shuai in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Sunday.Biden admits ‘irony’ of his oil campaignSTEFANI REYNOLDS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
President Biden and his aides say that helping Americans who face an immediate threat from high fuel prices does not undermine longer-term plans.
They say the short-term measures would not drastically increase emissions and tout a legislative agenda that includes investments in clean energy.“There is a huge contradiction right now in their actions.... Now is not the time for more oil and gas production.”
Jean Su, who directs the Energy Justice Program at the Center for Biological Diversity