WASHINGTON — Hours after Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., delivered a fatal blow to climate change legislation championed by Joe Biden, White House officials began making plans for the president to take matters into his own hands.
They wanted to act fast. Heading into the weekend, news of historic heat waves scorching cities from Phoenix to London seemed to underscore the urgency of the climate threat. And they had the perfect stage to announce bold action: In a few days, Biden would deliver a speech on clean energy in front of a shuttered Massachusetts coal plant.
His aides worked feverishly on a plan to show he was aggressively, and unilaterally, attacking climate change. They drafted a menu of options, including an emergency proclamation that would unlock sweeping executive powers allowing Biden to potentially block crude exports, fund clean energy construction and curtail offshore oil drilling.
