Joe Biden, touted as the US’s first climate president, is presiding over the quiet weakening of his two most significant plans to slash planet-heating emissions, suggesting that tackling the climate crisis will take a back seat in a febrile election year.

During his state of the union speech on Thursday, Biden insisted that his administration is “making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it,”, before reeling off a list of climate-friendly policies and accomplishments. “I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world,” the US president added.

However, last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it would delay a regulation that would reduce emissions from existing gas power plants, most likely until after November’s presidential election. The delay comes as the administration waters down requirements that limit pollution from cars, slowing the country’s adoption of electric vehicles.

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The backtracking could jeopardize Biden’s goal of cutting US emissions in half this decade, which scientists say is imperative to averting disastrous effects from global heating, and shows the competing pressures upon a president looking to hold together a wobbly coalition including climate activists, labor unions and centrist swing state voters before a likely showdown with Donald Trump later this year.