UNDER THE BUS — In a press call with reporters on Sunday night, a White House official told a tale of Biden climate heroism. In negotiating with Republicans on a deal to raise the debt ceiling, the story went, the president’s emissaries girded against GOP efforts to repeal huge swaths of Democrats’ 2022 climate law and defang environmental statutes in place to protect vulnerable communities from pollution. “This agreement,” the official said, “[is] a direct result of President Biden’s leadership and commitment to environmental protection, to bold climate action.” The call ended at 7:21 p.m. One minute later, an email hit reporters’ inboxes from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who was taking a victory lap of her own. She had, with help from the state’s other senator, Democrat Joe Manchin, helped secure a provision in the debt limit bill to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a contentious natural gas project through Appalachia that’s been tied up in environmental litigation for years. Greenlighting the pipeline — a nonstarter for climate activists and their progressive allies — blindsided environmental groups and Democrats in Congress and undercut the administration’s talking points. That’s why, despite the Biden administration’s best efforts to spin the deal as a win, environmentalists aren’t buying it. Democrats had to give something to secure GOP support for legislation to prevent economic disaster — and those concessions were costly. It wasn’t just the glidepath to completion for the fossil fuel pipeline. Another big piece of it came in the form of industry-friendly permitting changes designed to speed up the process for energy projects. While the administration billed those changes as a boon for building renewable energy, many environmental advocates immediately saw it as a blunt-force climate attack mirroring Trump-era directives. All of it left climate advocates, who helped put Biden in office and will be critical to his 2024 reelection bid, feeling like they were thrown under the bus. The whiplash has been playing out all week in Washington, where members of the Biden team have been browbeaten by lawmakers or protested by activists. Biden energy and climate adviser John Podesta took heat from his own party on Capitol Hill when he went to pitch members on the agreement before the big House vote. Democrats openly vented to reporters in basement hallways about their frustrations with the climate provisions and attempts to cast them as a victory. Even mild-mannered Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, a Biden ally, openly raged that the White House didn’t even give him a heads up before agreeing to advance the pipeline through his state. Environmental bigwigs blasted out angry tweets and press releases. “The debt ceiling deal is a bad one for our clean air and water, our communities, and for workers and families already struggling,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous wrote on Twitter. And climate activists stormed into a conference in downtown DC where a White House economist was speaking. “Dirty Deal, MVP, Biden you are killing me,” they chanted before they were whisked out by security. Making matters worse, it comes on the heels of the administration’s approval in March of a massive oil-and-gas drilling project in Alaska that critics called a “carbon bomb” and decried as the single biggest “betrayal” on climate of the Biden presidency. As a result, the White House has been doing damage control — and doubling down. Their counterpoint to critics is that the climate and clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act went unscathed in the negotiations. That fact has not been lost on Democrats or environmentalists. The deal “preserves the largest investment in climate protection that we have seen in history,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters this week, pivoting after she was asked about widespread opposition to the pipeline inside the Democratic base. “Not everyone gets what they want,” she said of the deal. Still, Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said this week he was left feeling raw. “It’s pretty cold comfort to tell progressives and environmentalists and [environmental justice] advocates, and millions of young people that care about the climate crisis, that it could have been worse,” he said. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s authors at edumain@eenews.net and rbravender@eenews.net or on Twitter at @Emma_Dumain and @rbravender.
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