Even as Biden Pushes Clean Energy, He Seeks More Oil Production

GLASGOW — President Biden told a global climate summit on Monday that “we only have a brief window before us” to reduce the emissions from burning oil, gas and coal that pose an “existential threat” to humanity. But only days earlier, he was urging the world’s largest oil producers to pump more of the fossil fuels that are warming the planet.

The incongruity was on center stage both at the global climate summit currently taking place in Scotland, and in Rome this past weekend during a gathering of leaders from the 20 largest economies. The president’s comments highlighted the political and economic realities facing politicians as they grapple with climate change. And they underscored the complexity of moving away from the fossil fuels that have underpinned global economic activity since the Industrial Age.

“On the surface, it seems like an irony,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference Sunday. “But the truth of the matter is — you’ve all known; everyone knows — that the idea we’re going to be able to move to renewable energy overnight,” he said, was “just not rational.”

Mr. Biden’s words have drawn fire from energy experts and climate activists, who say the world cannot afford to ramp up oil and natural gas production if it wants to avert catastrophic levels of warming. Environmental groups are intensely watching to see how the president intends to meet his ambitious goal of halving the nation’s emissions, compared to 2005 levels, by the end of this decade.

A recent International Energy Agency report found that countries must immediately stop new oil, gas and coal development if they hope to keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 Celsius above preindustrial levels, the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth faces irreversible damage. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius.

“We are in a climate crisis. There is no room for the left hand and the right hand to be doing different things,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director at Greenpeace International. “It’s not credible to say you’re fighting for 1.5 degrees while you’re calling for increased oil production.”

With gasoline prices rising above $3.30 a gallon nationwide, Mr. Biden over the weekend urged major energy producing countries with spare capacity to boost production, part of a larger effort to pressure OPEC countries and Russia to increase the supply of oil. He was joined by Emmanuel Macron of France, whose country hosted the 2015 meeting in Paris where 200 countries agreed to collectively tackle global warming.

At the conclusion Sunday of a Group of 20 summit that ended with lofty rhetoric on climate but fewer concrete actions than activists had hoped, Mr. Biden addressed the irony head on. The transition to lower-emission sources of energy would take years, and in the meantime, it was important to ensure that people can afford to drive their cars and heat their homes, he said at a news conference.

“It does, on the surface, seem inconsistent,” the president said, “but it’s not at all inconsistent in that no one has anticipated that this year we’d be in a position — or even next year —…