A resume of Joe Biden’s first week … lots of reasons for optimism from ‘UnEarthed’
‘There’s a new sheriff in town
The United States, as noted by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, is rejoining the Paris Agreement. The controversial Keystone pipeline has been nixed. President Obama’s vehicle emissions standards have been reinstated. Several protected national monuments have been expanded. Oil and gas leases in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge have been halted. And the working group on the social costs of greenhouse gas emissions has returned.
That’s a pretty big chunk of climate action on day one for the new President. But Biden still has a lot on his plate just undoing the damage of his predecessor. Researchers tallied 175 environmental rollbacks in the past four years, and some of these will be harder to reverse.
But Biden has greater ambitions than restoring environmental standards to where they were when he last worked out of the White House. That’s why he’s assembled a team of climate experts and advocates – a ‘nerve centre,’ as described by the New York Times – to get as much done as possible.
Leading that team is former Secretary of State, now climate envoy John Kerry. He’s been talking up the importance of getting a result from the climate summit in Scotland later this year. “At the Cop in November, all nations must raise ambition together – or we will all fail, together,” he said.
The Glasgow meet is viewed by the British government as a major opportunity to forge close ties with a wary Biden administration, but the key question is whether Biden can work with China, which has led on climate while also cracking down on human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Can they form an alliance to save the world?’