CO-DEPENDENT NO MORE:

"This moment is a clarion call for the urgent need to transition to domestic clean energy so that we are never again complicit in fossil-fueled conflict," said Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the senator who helped devise the Green New Deal platform.

The climate measures in Biden's moribund Build Back Better legislation may now be resurrected, Democrats hope, with several of the party's senators unveiling a flurry of bills to ensure renewable energy replaces the banned Russian oil imports and to tax oil companies enjoying a financial bonanza from oil prices that have soared due to the crisis in Ukraine.

More than 200 environmental and indigenous organizations have signed a letter demanding he use the Defense Production Act, normally used in times of war to compel companies to churn out tanks, aircraft, and other weapons, to force businesses to produce solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, and other climate-friendly material.

"Biden is in the ideal position to declare a national climate emergency and use his existing emergency powers to push the accelerator on renewable energy," said Jean Su, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the signatories.

"There's a war with a fossil fuel oligarch and we are in a climate war, so we need to attack this on a wartime footing. The best thing we can do is defend the world from the violence of fossil fuel combustion. This is the defining moment of the Biden presidency and of the climate emergency itself."

Biden has said that the fallout from the Ukraine war "should motivate to us accelerate to a transition of clean energy". But he has also jarringly boasted that more oil is now being pumped in the US than during Donald Trump's tenure, in order to counter accusations that not enough is being done to tamp down the spiraling cost of gasoline for drivers.

The conflict has underscored the volatile grip fossil fuels continue to have over geopolitics and people's everyday lives, causing a reckoning for Europe, which relies upon Russia for 40% of its gas supply, and dealing painful gasoline price increases to low-income people in car-dependent America.

The burning of fossil fuels also directly kills nearly 9 million people around the world each year from toxic air pollution and is the primary driver of global heating that scientists warn will acutely harm half of the planet's population. The International Energy Agency has warned no new fossil fuel projects can commence if the world is to avoid disastrous climate change.

"We live in a world where a product we rely on to function is subject to the actions of dictators and a cartel," said Robbie Orvis, senior director of energy policy at Energy Innovation. "We have to decide if we want to continue that way."

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