The White House reaffirmed the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to climate change, job creation, and environmental justice on Wednesday and announced that President Joe Biden will take executive actions to address “the climate crisis at home and abroad while creating good-paying union jobs and equitable clean energy future, building modern and sustainable infrastructure, restoring scientific integrity and evidence-based policymaking across the federal government, and re-establishing the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology”.
The decision comes on Biden’s seventh full day in office and fulfils key campaign promises such as freezing new oil and gas leasing on federal land and kicking off his ambitious agenda to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to help the United States (US) achieve a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. The announcement also follows several climate-related executive orders signed by the president in his first few days in office, including re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement and revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.
While establishing climate change as an essential consideration for US foreign policy and national security, the order also states that the US will host a Leaders’ Climate Summit on Earth Day, April 22, 2021, and exercise its leadership to promote a significant increase in global climate ambition. As part of Biden’s “whole-of-government approach”, the order further officially creates the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy—led by the first-ever National Climate Advisor and Deputy National Climate Advisor—that is tasked with implementing the president’s domestic climate agenda. It also creates a White House environmental justice interagency council and a White House environmental justice advisory council to prioritise environmental justice. Additionally, the order directs all federal agencies to develop plans for how climate change will affect their facilities and operations and requires agencies to find ways to ensure better public access to information about the climate crisis.
Though Biden’s climate change initiatives have been met with criticism over their potential impact on American jobs, the White House addressed these concerns by stating that his plan aims to create more opportunities for employment in the environmental industry by directing federal agencies to “eliminate fossil fuel subsidies” and “identify new opportunities to spur innovation, commercialisation, and deployment of clean energy technologies and infrastructure”.
White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy praised the order as one that “directs everyone who works for the President to use every tool available at our disposal to solve the climate crisis. Because we’re going to take a whole of government approach,” adding: “We’re going to power our economy with clean energy. We’re going to do that in a way that will produce millions of American jobs that are going to be good-paying, that are going to be jobs that have the opportunity for workers to join a union because, as President Biden has often told us when he thinks of climate change, his first thought is about jobs.”
In addition to taking climate change more seriously, the new administration has also sought to highlight how science will play a crucial role in informing policy. Biden has directed agencies to only make “evidence-based decisions guided by the best available science and data”. He also signed an executive order establishing the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), which will “advise the President on policy that affects science, technology, and innovation”. Biden has also tapped former secretary of state John Kerry as the presidential envoy for climate, which is a Cabinet-level position that also has a spot on the National Security Council (NSC). Additionally, the administration has elevated the position of presidential science advisor—which is currently held by Eric lander, a principal leader of the Human Genome Project—to the Cabinet-level.
Biden Takes Executive Action to Tackle Climate Change
The announcement follows several climate-related executive orders the president signed in his first few days in office, including re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement.
January 28, 2021
The Huntington Canyon coal-fired power plant in Utah. SOURCE: BRANDON THIBODEAUX/THE NEW YORK TIMES