Power plays
Biden's response to climate change will span government agencies.
“President-elect Joe Biden is poised to embed action on climate change across the breadth of the federal government, from the departments of Agriculture to Treasury to State — expanding it beyond environmental agencies to speed U.S. efforts to mitigate global warming and to acknowledge that the problem touches many aspects of American life,” our colleagues Juliet Eilperin and Annie Linskey report. “The far-reaching strategy is aimed at making significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions even without congressional action, by maximizing executive authority.”
A team of former Obama administration officials recently presented Biden’s transition team with a 300-page blueprint for how the incoming administration can restructure the government to address climate change. The blueprint calls for creating a White House National Climate Council, establishing a “carbon bank” under the USDA that could pay farmers to store carbon in their soils and lands, and leveraging the Treasury Department’s tax, budget and regulatory policies to promote carbon reductions.
Former mayor Mike Bloomberg published an op-ed on Wednesday arguing for a similar “whole-government” approach in which “some of the most important steps” would “have nothing to do with the Environmental Protection Agency.”
“Even if Biden carries out a broad suite of policies aimed at curbing America’s carbon footprint, it may fall short of averting dangerous planetary warming,” Eilperin and Linskey write. “A recent analysis by the Climate Action Tracker shows that if the president-elect’s plan is fully realized it would shave 0.1 degree C off global temperature rise by 2100.”
Progressive groups call for a new White House climate office and push Cabinet hopefuls.
The Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats launched a petition advocating for the new office, which would coordinate interagency efforts on climate across the government. The groups also called for Biden to appoint leaders from the left wing of the party, including Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) for interior secretary, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Miss.) for treasury secretary and Attorney General of Minnesota Keith Ellison for U.S. attorney general.
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