![]() ![]() Still, Biden faces a Herculean task in rebuilding the lower ranks of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, which saw high rates of attrition during the Trump years.ĭespite all the work to be done, climate and environmental advocates seemed to collectively exhale following Biden’s inauguration, after a bruising four years under Trump. ![]() To emphasize their focus on climate change, Biden and Harris have stacked their political appointments with climate hawks-even their cabinet appointees Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary and Janet Yellen as treasury secretary are strong on the issue, noted Parenteau. “There will have to be Republicans on board,” he said.īut passing climate legislation-quickly-will be key to assuring allies across the world that the United States is recommitting to fighting the climate crisis in a real way.Īs Biden pursues the vision of unity that he laid out in his inaugural speech on Wednesday, he will face pressures from within his own party, as members of the progressive wing try to pull him toward more significant climate action. On that front, the Biden administration’s work on climate will face some roadblocks, thanks to the narrow margins Democrats hold in both houses of Congress. “My guess is he can’t get where he’d like to be in 2030 without Congress.” “The question is, what are we going to commit to, and how much can Biden do via executive orders and how much will rely on Congress?” said Parenteau. The commitments that Biden makes toward the Paris agreement will likely serve as a crystallizing force for climate policy in the United States, said Pat Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at the Vermont Law School. It also represents an opportunity for the United States to be part of a global green economic boom linked with recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. “It will be an enormous and impressive list for the new administration to get through,” said Gerrard, “but each agency has a staff that has been waiting to be unleashed, and that will be thrilled to get back to their primary mission.”įor the United States, rejoining the Paris agreement means finding a way to decarbonize the atmosphere by 2050 and do its part to limit global warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius. On Wednesday, it was rebranded the Climate Reregulation Tracker to keep track of the work to be done by the Biden administration to restore what was lost, starting with what was included in Biden’s day one order. “But while we’ve lost a lot of time, and while certainly there is much damage to undo,” she said, Biden’s order to review the agency rules “is a commitment to do just that-to as swiftly as possible reverse the destructive policies of the Trump administration and also recognizing that that’s not enough.”Īt Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, professor Michael Gerrard’s Climate Deregulation Tracker logged more than 175 rollbacks during the Trump administration, like its rule limiting what kinds of science could be used by the EPA or changes to the National Environmental Policy Act. “The last four years have been an unrelenting assault on our public health and environmental protections on an unprecedented scale,” said Jill Tauber, the vice president of litigation for climate and energy at Earthjustice. His order also directed federal agencies to review more than 100 rules that the Trump administration made on the environment, with an eye to potentially overturning many of them. The president moved to rejoin the Paris agreement and signaled a review of vehicle emissions standards. ![]() It’s an urgent plan, predicated upon Biden’s belief that there is no time to waste.Īfter four years of steady erosion of the nation’s climate policy, Biden offered big plans on day one. See jobsīiden, who ran on the most progressive and comprehensive climate plan of any presidential candidate in history, took the oath of office just before noon outside a Capitol building ransacked two weeks ago by a Trump-supporting mob, and Wednesday evening signed executive orders aimed at aggressively fighting both the pandemic and climate change-something Trump glaringly failed to do.įrom revoking the Keystone XL pipeline permit to reviewing actions that rolled back clean air and water protections, the sweeping directives laid a road map for the work ahead on the climate crisis. Please take a look at the new openings in our newsroom.
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