Biden signs actions to fight climate change, create jobs
Series of executive orders also set broad foreign policy goals
“We’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer. We see it with our own eyes. We feel it. We know it in our bones. And it’s time to act.” — President Joe Biden
WASHINGTON >> President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a sweeping series of executive orders that aim to “confront the existential threat of climate change” throughout the federal government, framing them as an economic boon that would create millions of new jobs.
“We’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer,” said Biden, speaking at the White House. “We see it with our own eyes. We feel it. We know it in our bones. And it’s time to act.”
Looking to counteract Republican claims that his climate policies would hurt an economy already weakened by the pandemic, the president cast many of his orders as job creators, among other
things pledging to use the purchasing power of the federal government to buy a vast fleet of zero-emissions vehicles. “This will mean 1 million new jobs in the American automobile industry,” Biden said.
Wednesday’s executive orders also set broad new foreign policy goals, including specifying that climate change, for the first time, will be a core part of all foreign policy and national security decisions.
Earlier in the day Biden’s international climate envoy, John Kerry, said the United States would host an international climate change summit on Earth Day, April 22. “The convening of this summit is essential to ensuring that 2021 is going to be the year that really makes up for the lost time of the last four years,” said Kerry.
He pledged that by that date he would announce a new set of specific targets detailing how the United States would lower its carbon
dioxide emissions under the terms of the Paris Agreement, the international climate accord from which former President Donald Trump had withdrawn, and which Biden has rejoined.
In addition, taking the first significant steps toward one of Biden’s most contentious campaign promises, the executive orders direct the Interior Department “to pause on entering into new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and offshore waters to the extent possible” while beginning a “rigorous review” of all existing fossil fuel leases and permitting practices, according to a fact sheet provided by the White House.
Federal agencies also will be ordered to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies “and identify new opportunities to spur innovation.” Overhauling the tax breaks — worth billions of dollars to the oil, coal and gas industries — to help pay for Biden’s $2 trillion climate change plan was also a major campaign promise. However, there is little the executive branch can do unilaterally without
action from Congress.
“I don’t think the federal government should give handouts to big oil to the tune of $40 billion dollars in fossil fuel subsidies,” Biden said, referring to studies suggesting that removing tax breaks for oil and gas companies would total that amount of revenue over 10 years. He vowed to ask lawmakers to end those tax incentives — a statement that brought quick condemnation from the oil and gas industry.
Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, an oil industry trade group, said his group will “oppose any kind of effort like that.”
Oil, gas and coal executives as well as Republican lawmakers described Biden’s climate change plans as a broadside against the fossil fuel industry that will do little to actually reduce United States emissions. Pete Obermueller, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, said the decision to pause new leases represents “a staggering loss” to his state, while Jim Willox, president of the Wyoming
County Commissioners Association, called it “a punch in the gut” to Wyoming.
New Mexico, a major oil and gas producing state that owes about a third of its budget to revenues from the industry, “will be hit harder than any other state” by Biden’s leasing plan.
Major oil companies took a more measured approach. BP in a statement said it wants to work with the administration to develop “well-designed climate policies.”
Kerry in an interview Wednesday said the United
States must make up for lost time on the global stage, and a Climate Leaders Summit that Biden will hold on April 22 will be the first step toward that.
“We’re coming back after four years of absence,” he said. “We have to have some humility here, recognizing that the president of the United States, our predecessor, angered a lot of people and created a lot of unhappiness and left a trail of doubt about where America is going to go,” Kerry said.
“We applaud this,” said Erin Sikorsky, who led climate
and national security analysis across federal intelligence agencies until last year and is now deputy director of the Center for Climate & Security, a Washington-based think tank. “It moves us beyond what Obama did.”
The United States has struggled to meet its promises under the Paris Agreement, the agreement among nations to fight climate change; under those terms the nation had pledged to slash emissions up to 28% below 2005 levels by 2020. Nevertheless, Biden’s orders will kick off a process to develop new and more ambitious targets that will be announced in advance of a major United Nations summit at the end of the year.
Biden also intends to establish a National Climate Task Force that will include leaders from 21 federal agencies. It also creates a new White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council and a separate advisory council to prioritize an understanding of the damage pollution does to poor and minority communities.