President Biden to Signal Government Order, Pausing Oil and Fuel Leasing

WASHINGTON – President Biden signed a package of implementing regulations on Wednesday to combat climate change at all levels of the federal government. The government says this will set the United States on track to reduce its share of emissions that warm the planet.

In an interview Wednesday morning, former Secretary of State John Kerry, Mr Biden’s international envoy on climate change, said he also hoped the United States would host “on or before” a summit that Mr Biden intends to announce new, more ambitious emissions targets April 22nd, Earth Day, although he refused to give numbers to these goals.

“That’s quite a high gear,” Kerry said, adding, “America needs to be as ambitious as possible because our credibility has been tarnished in those four years we’ve been absent.”

The series of executive orders on Wednesday focused on three main themes: job creation, environmental justice, and integrating climate change into all facets of government.

In taking important first steps towards one of Mr Biden’s most controversial election promises, the order directed the Secretary of the Interior to “pause as much as possible when entering into new oil and gas leases on public land and offshore waters.” A “rigorous one Review “all existing fossil fuel leases and licensing practices according to a White House fact sheet.

Federal agencies have also been instructed to end fossil fuel subsidies “and identify new ways to drive innovation.” The overhaul of tax breaks, worth billions of dollars in the oil, coal and gas industries, to help pay for Mr. Biden’s $ 2 trillion climate protection plan, was also a major election promise. Both plans are likely to meet strong opposition in Congress.

Wednesday’s Executive Orders also set broad new foreign policy goals.

You formalize the role of Mr. Kerry, the former Secretary of State, as Mr. Biden’s new international climate commissioner on the National Security Council. And the orders specify that for the first time climate change will be a central component of all foreign policy and national security decisions.

“We applaud this,” said Erin Sikorsky, who until last year led climate and national security analysis for federal intelligence agencies 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 endeavored to deliver on its promises made under the Paris Agreement, the agreement between nations to combat climate change. Under these conditions, the nation had pledged to cut emissions by up to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Nonetheless, Mr Biden’s orders will usher in a process of developing new and more ambitious goals that will be announced ahead of a major United Nations summit later this year.

First on the international agenda, however, is a “Climate Leaders Summit” in April, which, according to government officials, will likely include heads of state from the major emitters and a handful of others who have played a key role in the global climate negotiations.

Mr. Kerry made no commitment in his interview to announce the new goals at that meeting, but said: “Our aim would be to try to do so at or before the Summit of Heads of State or Government.”

“We’re coming back after four years of absence. We must have some humility here as we acknowledge that the President of the United States, our predecessor, upset many people and caused much misfortune and left doubts as to where America is going, ”Kerry said.

The new Washington

Updated

Jan. 27, 2021 at 1:25 p.m. ET

Energy analysts in the US have speculated that the Biden administration could reasonably promise to cut emissions by 40 to 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Europeans and environmental activists have urged the US to go up to 70 percent further.

Mr Kerry said Wednesday it was “far too premature” to speak numbers, but he was aware that the United States needs to be ambitious and realistic at the same time. “We have to do it in a way that is achievable and sensible,” he said.

By committing to a new target, the United States would commit itself to even greater reductions than it had promised under the Obama administration. This will put pressure on the Biden administration to quickly implement its domestic policies, including reviving and tightening the regulations that killed former President Trump to curb carbon pollution from power plants and car tailpipes.

Mr Kerry also avoided questions about how much more finance the United States would deliver to poor and vulnerable countries, hardest hit by climate change. Under the Obama administration, the United States has pledged $ 3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, a pool of international funding to support developing countries. It delivered $ 1 billion before President Trump abandoned the commitment.

Mr Kerry said Wednesday that how much President Biden will ask in his first budget later this year to meet the unpaid $ 2 billion is “under discussion,” as is whether the US will keep its pledge will increase.

Oil and gas industry leaders signaled that many of Mr. Biden’s domestic climate plans would meet stiff opposition.

“Punishing the oil and gas industry is killing well-paying American jobs, hurting our already troubled economy, making our country more dependent on foreign energy sources and affecting those who need affordable and reliable energy,” said Anne Bradbury, President the American Exploration and Production Council, a trading group that represents oil and gas producers, said in a statement.

Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a trade group representing offshore energy companies, highlighted legal challenges and said in a statement that the hiatus in leasing oil and gas, in particular, “is against the law and tests America paves the way to increased imports from foreign countries, which have been characterized as polluting havens. “

Environmental groups called the changes long overdue, especially after four years in which the Trump administration mocked climate science and eliminated virtually every tool the government had to combat rising emissions.

“This is the biggest day for climate action in more than a decade,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters.

In his campaign, Mr Biden set goals to eliminate fossil fuel emissions from the electricity sector by 2035, protect 30 percent of territories and oceans by 2030, and put the United States on a path to net zero emissions – that is to eliminate as much carbon pollution as the country puts into the atmosphere – before 2050.

His plan is to spend $ 2 trillion over four years to achieve this goal, a huge task in a tightly divided Congress.

In addition to formalizing a new domestic climate policy office in the White House under the leadership of Gina McCarthy, who previously served as the Environmental Protection Agency administrator under former President Barack Obama, Mr. Biden intends to set up a national climate protection group that will include leaders 21 and older Federal agencies. A new Interagency Council on Environmental Justice will also be established in the White House and a separate advisory council will be set up to prioritize understanding of the damage pollution is causing to poor and minority communities.

Mr Biden also directed the agencies to look for ways to improve the amount and quality of available climate forecasting information to help “governments, communities and businesses prepare for and adapt to the effects of climate change”.

These ramifications extend to the federal government itself. The White House directed each agency to come up with plans to better protect their facilities from climate change. This is a significant challenge: even the headquarters of many Washington agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency, are in the 100-year flood plain.

Mr Biden also issued a Memorandum on Scientific Integrity, instructing the agencies to make what the White House called “evidence-based decisions based on the best available scientific knowledge and data.” Any agency, not just those conducting scientific research, must appoint “scientific integrity” officials.

The steps to ensure scientific integrity follow the efforts of former President Donald J. Trump’s administration to thwart climate science.

In one of the most famous examples, senior Trump officials put pressure on those in charge of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2019 to turn down their own scientists after a weather station in Birmingham, Alabama, contradicted Mr. Trump’s false assertion that Hurricane Dorian was hit would hit the state.

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