Climate tops agenda

SOLVING the climate crisis by boosting investments in new technologies will be at the center of the Biden administration’s job creation agenda, the incoming top economic White House adviser said on Wednesday.

“I think what you are going to see across the presidentelect’s rescue-and-recovery strategy is an approach that puts solving the climate crisis at the center of creating jobs,” Brian Deese, President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming director of the National Economic Council, told the Reuters Next conference.

Mr Biden is expected to present on Thursday his first big policy initiative on economic relief from the COVID-19 crisis.

Mr Deese, who helped negotiate the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate when he worked under former President Barack Obama, said Mr Biden would make good on his promise to rejoin the pact on day one. President Donald Trump began the formal process of removing the United States from the agreement after the November 3 election.

Rejoining the pact will be “just the first” step on working with other countries on climate, Mr Deese said.

Mr Biden, who takes office on January 20, will also make good on quickly bringing together the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gases to “increase our collective ambition on emissions reductions,” Mr Deese said.

“Part of ... our diplomatic strategy and our economic strategy has to be to work with other countries to push them, push their ambition, even as we have to demonstrate our ability to come back on the stage and show leadership on this issue.”