The Battle Lines Are Forming in Biden’s Climate Push

The administration needs to do “much, much more,” said Randi Spivak, who leads the public lands program at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Also on Wednesday Mr. Biden is expected to elevate climate change as a national security issue, directing intelligence agencies to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on climate security, and telling the secretary of defense to do a climate risk analysis of the Pentagon’s facilities and installations.

He will create a civilian “climate corps” to mobilize people to work in conservation; create a task force to assemble a governmentwide action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and create several new commissions and positions within the government focused on environmental justice and environmentally friendly job creation.

The real action will come when Mr. Biden moves forward with plans to reinstate and strengthen Obama-era regulations, repealed by the Trump administration, on the three largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse emissions: vehicles, power plants and methane leaks from oil and gas drilling wells.

It may take up to two years to put the new rules in place, and even then, without new legislation from Congress, a future administration could once again simply undo them.

Legislation with broad scope will be extremely difficult. Many of the same obstacles that blocked President Barack Obama a decade ago remain. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, will very likely oppose policies that could hurt the coal industry in his state, Kentucky.

So will Senator Manchin, who campaigned for his seat with a television advertisement that featured him using a hunting rifle to shoot a climate change bill that Mr. Obama had hoped to pass. In the decade since, he has proudly broken with his party on policies to curb the use of coal.

“I have repeatedly stressed the need for innovation, not elimination,” Senator Manchin said in a statement. “I stand ready to work with the administration on advancing technologies and climate solutions to reduce emissions while still maintaining our energy independence.”

Senator Manchin also opposes ending the Senate filibuster. But, to change Senate rules, Democratic leaders would need every Democratic vote. Without Senator Manchin, Mr. Biden would need significant Republican support.

“There is wide scope for the executive branch to reinstate what Obama did and go beyond,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

But, he added, “if you want something that will stick, you have to go through Congress.”

To Mr. Biden’s advantage, some corporations have turned to friend from foe.

Mr. Biden’s team is also drafting plans to reinstate Obama-era rules on methane, a planet-warming gas over 50 times more potent than carbon dioxide, though it dissipates faster. Last summer, when Mr. Trump rolled back those rules, the oil giants BP and Exxon called instead to tighten them.

The new president has also found broad support for rejoining the Paris Agreement, a global accord under which the United States pledged to cut greenhouse emissions about 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Rejoining the accord means honoring commitments. Not only must the United States meet its current target (right now it’s about halfway to that goal) but it will soon also be expected to set new and more ambitious pledges for eliminating emissions by 2030.

ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron all issued statements of support for Mr. Biden’s decision to rejoin. So did the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, which once supported a debunked study claiming the Paris Agreement would lead to millions of job losses.

“As policy is being developed by the administration, by members of Congress, we want to have a seat at the table,” said Neil Bradley, executive vice president and chief policy officer at the chamber of commerce.

Other energy industry executives said action by Congress on climate change was long overdue, with many pressing for some kind of tax on oil, gas and carbon emissions to make climate-warming pollution less economical.

“Having a clear price signal that says ‘Hey, it’s more cost efficient for you to buy an electric car than another big truck’ is exactly what we want happening, not somebody in government deciding that they’re going to outlaw something,” said Thad Hill, the chief executive of Calpine, a power generating company based in Texas that also supports the Paris Agreement goals.

The Democrats’ razor-thin majority is no guarantee of action. In the Senate, Democrats are 10 votes short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster that would almost certainly come with legislation that would replace coal and oil with power sources such as wind, solar and nuclear energy, which do not warm the planet.

In a Monday night interview on MSNBC, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, acknowledged how difficult a strong legislative response will be.

Instead, he called on Mr. Biden to declare climate change a “national emergency.”

“Then he can do many, many things under the emergency powers of the president that wouldn’t have to go through — that he could do without legislation,” Senator Schumer said. “Now, Trump used this emergency for a stupid wall, which wasn’t an emergency. But if there ever was an emergency, climate is one.”

Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, the nation’s largest coal-producing state, fired back, “Schumer wants the president to go it alone and produce more punishing regulations, raise energy costs, and kill even more American jobs.”