Biden offers ambitious climate change effort
Moves to cut emissions, promote clean energy
WASHINGTON – In the most ambitious U.S. effort to stave off the worst effects of climate change, President Joe Biden issued executive orders Wednesday to cut oil, gas and coal emissions and double energy production from offshore wind turbines.
The orders target federal subsidies for oil and other fossil fuels and halt new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters. They also aim to conserve 30% of the country’s lands and ocean waters in the next 10 years and move to an allelectric federal vehicle fleet.
Biden’s sweeping plan is aimed at slowing human-caused global warming, but it also carries political risk for Democrats as oil- and coal-producing states face job losses from moves to sharply increase U.S. reliance on clean energy such as wind and solar power.
“We can’t wait any longer” to address the climate crisis, Biden said. “We see with our own eyes. We know it in our bones. It is time to act.”
“The stakes on climate change just simply couldn’t be any higher than they are right now. It is existential,” said former Secretary of State John Kerry, who is Biden’s envoy on climate change.
“Paris alone is not enough,” Kerry said at a White House briefing, referring to the global agreement on climate change that calls for voluntary emissions cutbacks by the United States and nearly 190 other countries.
Biden has set a goal of eliminating pollution from fossil fuel in the power sector by 2035 and from the U.S. economy overall by 2050.
Biden acknowledged the political risk, stating that his approach would create jobs in the renewable energy and automotive sectors to offset any losses in oil, coal or natural gas.
“When I think of climate change and the answers to it, I think of jobs,” Biden said. “We’re going to put people to work. We’re not going to lose jobs.”
Biden also is directing agencies to focus help and investment on the low-income and minority communities that live closest to polluting refineries and other hazards, and the oil- and coalpatch towns that face job losses.
Biden pledged to create up to a million jobs building electric cars, as well as
installing solar panels and wind turbines, “capping abandoned walls, reclaiming mines, turning old brownfield sites into the new hubs of economic growth.”
Republicans immediately criticized the plan as a job killer.
“Pie-in-the-sky government mandates and directives that restrict our mining, oil and gas industries adversely impact our energy security and independence,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“At a time when millions are struggling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the last thing Americans need is big government destroying jobs, while costing the economy billions of dollars,” she said.