He has pledged to create a new government research agency focused solely on addressing climate change, as well as 500,000 new electric vehicle charging stations and tax breaks for carbon capture technology. “There will probably never be a better time to change the national conversation to a focus on climate and decarbonisation of the economy,” said Venkatramani Balaji, a researcher at Princeton University and Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in Paris.īiden wants to create millions of new jobs by reshaping the auto industry for low-emission vehicles, building greener infrastructure, constructing 1.5 million new sustainable housing units, and cleaning up pollution from oil and gas wells and coal mining sites.
To follow his stream of executive orders, Biden pledged $2 trillion in climate spending in a ‘Green New Deal’ intended to drag the country out of its pandemic recession. The EU has already presented a transatlantic agenda for the president, laying out a wish-list for better ties on technology, trade, climate change and public health preparedness. “The United States is back,” declared European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In Europe, meanwhile, there was undisguised relief at the end of the Trump era. In further moves to restore environmental protections, Biden revoked a permit granted to the contentious Keystone XL pipeline to bring oil from Canada, to Nebraska, which is opposed by environmentalists.īiden also signed a wide-ranging order rescinding rollbacks to vehicle emissions standards imposing a moratorium on oil and natural gas activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska and re-establishing a working group on the social costs of greenhouse gasses.Īnother Trump era action, the so-called "Muslim travel ban," which in 2017 restricted travel and immigration to the US from several predominantly Muslim and African countries, with repercussions for researchers, was lifted. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, will participate in WHO’s annual executive board meeting on Thursday. The president halted his predecessor’s efforts to leave the World Health Organisation.
These legislative land mines are going to have to be defused in order to make progress,” said Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.īiden also signed an order to restore the Obama-era directorate for global health security and biodefense at the National Security Council, which was set up after the 2014 Ebola epidemic but disbanded by Trump. “The Trump administration put a lot of rules in place to make it harder to address climate change. His first moves signaled a determination to put a tumultuous four years to bed, with actions undoing Donald Trump's curbs on immigration and his weakening of environmental oversight.Ĭlimate researchers were happy to see quick action on what they felt were egregious acts by Trump. Much to restore,” Biden told the crowd at a scaled-back inauguration at the US Capitol. Hours after assuming office, the 46th president took up his pen and wielded his executive authority to sign the country back into the international Paris climate agreement. New US president Joe Biden moved quickly on his first day in office to begin reversing his predecessor’s environmental agenda, but was warned that he will face “ferocious” opposition to get bold climate change policy passed in the coming years.
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