Biden administration fails to track travel emissions despite executive order
A government oversight report last week found that the State Department has not been tracking the greenhouse gas emissions from official flights despite an executive order signed by Joe Biden to do so.
The EO enjoins federal agencies to “separately track energy used for vehicle charging and overall facility energy consumption” from air travel and otherwise to help achieve the Biden administration’s goal of “net-zero emissions” by 2050.
But according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the State Department did no such tracking when hundreds of officials from the Executive Branch flew to climate conferences. In 2021, Joe Biden and 191 officials flew to the 26th United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26). Last year, 259 members of the Executive Branch flew to the 27th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27).
In response to the report, State Department officials told the GAO that they did not track their emissions because they don’t know how.
“State officials told GAO that they did not have a systematic way to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. delegation travel to the United Nation's Conference of the Parties 26 and 27 or any past meetings of the Conference of the Parties. State is developing methods to estimate future travel emissions, according to State officials,” said the GAO in a press release.
The GAO report was requested by Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Joni Ernst (R-IA), who were aiming to see if the Biden administration was complying with its own climate mandates.
“Americans are tired of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. who don’t practice what they preach when it comes to protecting the environment,” Sen. Capito told Politico following the report.
“In the Biden administration, the same people who are closing down power plants across the country and forcing Americans to buy electric vehicles are also the ones flying to climate conferences and using fossil fuels without apology,” she added.
