National security officials-designate announced this week by President-elect Biden, John Kerry, an Obama administration secretary of state, appeared. He will take up an unusual position – the Climate Envoy.
According to Biden’s transition team, the appointment of Kerry does not require Senate approval. He will be attached to the White House National Security Council, which means that the committee will also include climate issues in its responsibilities.
Kerry is undoubtedly a familiar face on the international stage of discussing combating climate change. In 2016, then Secretary of State, she signed the Paris climate agreement with her granddaughter at United Nations Headquarters in New York to strengthen public awareness of creating a good environment for future generations.
Late last year, Kerry also launched World War Zero, a bipartisan group of leaders and celebrities to combat climate change.
Over the past four years, the Trump administration has been skeptical of climate change, claiming that curbing climate change will hinder the economic development of the United States.
Therefore, it withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and repealed a series of environmental regulations to promote the development of mining and manufacturing in the United States.
In contrast to Trump, Biden regards climate change as a national security risk factor. He has long promised that if elected president, he will return the United States to the Paris climate agreement on the first day of his term to continue to promote the transition of countries to renewable energy.
According to Biden’s campaign promise, the United States will promote the elimination of fossil energy subsidies at the global level, promote G20 countries to stop funding for overseas high-carbon projects, implement the results of the international air shipping industry emission reduction negotiations, and provide green debt relief for developing countries. relief) program.
But how much trust Biden-led America can get on global climate change depends on its domestic carbon reduction policies.
Democratic radicals such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have put forward a Green New Deal proposal. In contrast, the Biden administration’s planning for climate issues is relatively modest, but if it gets passed, it will also become the most aggressive climate strategy in the U.S. history.
Over the next four-year term, the Biden administration plans to invest $2 trillion in climate action to make the U.S. electricity industry carbon neutral by 2035, while pushing the United States to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
At a time when the coronavirus epidemic is slow to ease and the situation in the United States is overly tense due to the economic crisis and ethnic issues, the Biden administration is also expected to make climate policy part of the post-epidemic economic stimulus plan.
the $400 billion invested in clean energy in the next 10 years will boost employment and economic growth, and existing and newly developed oil and gas extraction projects also need to implement strict emission standards.
Addisu Lashitew, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, stressed that SMEs will face a dual challenge, that is, recovering from the economic crisis caused by the epidemic and transitioning to a low-carbon economy. But the epidemic has weakened its ability to adapt to climate change or invest in new technologies related to it.
Therefore, Racht suggested that the Biden administration set up a special fund for SMEs to finance environmental technology research and development, energy efficiency improvement and pollution reduction-related projects of small and medium-sized enterprises to strengthen their resilience to climate change.
In addition, the Biden administration’s energy transformation plan is expected to increase investment in carbon capture and storage technologies. Implement tax and fee reduction policies for electric vehicles and install more than 500,000 public electric piles nationwide by 2030.
It is worth noting that if Biden cannot agree with the Republican-controlled Senate on the above-mentioned legislation, he needs to realize his campaign promise by issuing a presidential executive order.
Previously, Obama and Trump had often done so. Trump had repealed environmental regulations related to oil and gas production by executive order, and Obama had tried to use the executive order to promote a clean electricity plan.
However, the weakness of the presidential executive order is that it is easy to be obstructed by the law. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to stop Obama’s clean electricity plan.
