President Joe Biden delivered remarks and signed executive actions on tackling climate change and creating jobs. This includes one that would direct the secretary of the interior to pause on entering into new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or offshore waters.
“It’s a future of enormous hope and opportunity. It’s about coming to the moment to deal with this maximum threat that is with us now, facing us, climate change, with a greater sense of urgency. In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer,” Biden said in his opening remarks.
“It’s time to act,” he added.
The ambitious climate plan Biden discussed during the presidential transition seeks to increase public investments for green infrastructure and end carbon emissions from power plants by 2035 and proposes broader public investment in green infrastructure, including $2 trillion for clean energy projects.
“I might note parenthetically if you notice the attitude of the American people toward greater impetus on focusing on climate change and doing something about it has increased across the board, Republican, Democrat, and independent. That’s why I’m signing an executive order to supercharge the administration’s ambitious plan to confront the existential threat of climate change. It is an existential threat,” Biden said today.
During today’s remarks, Biden said the government approach to climate change needs to be “bold,” and he said that includes “helping revitalize economies of coal, oil and gas communities” and create “new good-paying jobs” in those communities.
Many critics of Biden’s decision to shut down the Keystone Pipeline cite the tens of thousands of jobs that will be lost with the shutdown.
One of the executive actions Biden will sign will establish a Civilian Climate Corps Initiative to put Americans to work with jobs that include restoring public lands and waters, increasing reforestation, and protecting biodiversity.
“We’re not going to ban fracking. We’ll protect jobs and grow jobs including through stronger standards by controls from methane leaks and union workers willing to install the changes,” Biden said today.
Biden will establish the climate crisis as an “essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security.” The order instructs the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, to prepare a national intelligence estimate on the security implications of the climate crisis and directs all agencies to develop strategies for integrating climate considerations into their international work.
Biden will also re-establish the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and form the National Climate Task Force, which will be composed of leaders across 21 federal agencies and departments.
