Biden Climate Watch: After the First 100 Days

Since President Biden came into office, perhaps the most significant thing he’s done in his ambitious attempt to slow climate change has been — I can’t believe this needs to be said — to trust in science.

It does need to be said though, after the devastation that former President Trump wrought on environmental regulations and previously pristine land and water, and his endangerment of animals, partly based on his refusal to believe in global warming, and partly because of his pandering to the fossil fuel and other polluting industries.

Biden’s open ear to scientists has been a relief to many Americans, and to much of the world.

In his first 100 days, Biden went hard at fixing the environment in what seemed like a sprint. He rejoined the Paris Agreement, named the country’s first “climate czar” (John Kerry), killed the Keystone XL pipeline, pledged to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030, and signed countless executive orders that reestablished a focus on emissions and clean water regulations that Trump had decimated.

“The Biden administration has hit the ground running,” Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the nonpartisan conservation group Center for Western Priorities,” told Outside magazine in April.

But now that we’re past the first 100 days, can Biden sustain such a blistering pace in his fight against climate change? That’s yet to be seen. Still, in the past month, the administration has made a dizzying number of moves to combat the climate crisis. Here are some of its more significant actions:

1. Last week, the administration suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, America’s largest parcel of publicly owned land, pending an environmental review. Trump had managed to auction off the refuge’s drilling rights in the last couple of weeks of his presidency.

On one side of the Arctic refuge debate are politicians and oil industry lobbyists who say drilling would create jobs and be a boon to Alaska’s economy. On the other are environmentalists and members of the Gwich’in tribe, who fear the potential devastation to wildlife and flora, as to as well as the way of life of the nation of indigenous people, who consider this land sacred.

But, also last week, The Washington Post reports, the Justice Department filed a brief that supports ConocoPhillips’s massive drilling project at the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, known as the Willow project.

And, disappointingly to environmentalists, the administration supported the Trump administration’s decision to issue oil and gas leases in Wyoming, and chose not to pursue the closure of the Dakota Access pipeline.

2. Biden’s federal budget proposal includes a whopping $36 billion in funding to clean up and invest in the environment, a $14 billion increase from the 2021 budget. He aims to use the money to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create clean energy solutions — which include retrofitting schools, houses, and federal structures — and toward “climate resiliency.” The funds would be used to expand climate research and policy development, including $1.5 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to expand its climate forecasting capabilities. Here’s a good look from The Hill at what else is in the proposal.

3. In March, the administration said it hopes to produce 30 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind by 2030. While the East Coast has been investing in offshore wind energy for a while now (with Biden giving it a boost in February), the West Coast has been trailing behind. Two factors appear to be critical as to why:

A) Mainly, deep coastal waters in the Pacific (unlike the shallower coastline waters in the Atlantic, which allow for wind turbines to be bolted into the seabed) up the cost of building turbines significantly. The depth of Pacific coastal waters would require a more precarious system of tethering the turbines to the sea floor.

B) The Navy declared months ago that wind turbine projects off California would interfere with its training and readiness operations.

On May 25, the administration and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said they will proceed with offshore wind development regardless of these complications. The Navy, it seems, no longer opposes the project.

4. With severe weather events on the rise, President Biden declared on May 24 that he will be doubling the amount of money the government uses to prepare for storms and other natural disasters, which are increasingly on the rise and intensity due to climate change, to $1 billion.

“The president has made a commitment to do two things starkly different from the prior administration,” Gina McCarthy, the White House’s national climate adviser, told The Washington Post. “The focus on science and using the government to solve problems and highlight them, and really tell the public the truth, and helping them prepare for that, is a breath of fresh air right now.”

Aka don’t expect to see Biden holding a Sharpie to a map of an oncoming hurricane anytime soon.

5. On May 3, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule to cut the ever-increasing use and production of hydrofluorocarbons that The New York Times called “the first significant step the E.P.A. has taken under President Biden to curb climate change.”

Ironically, hydrofluorocarbons — used in refrigeration, air-conditioning, and aerosols — were developed as a supposedly less harmful alternative to chemicals that were destroying the planet’s ozone layer, which absorbs ultraviolet radiation. But hydrofluorocarbons turned out to have the potential to increase global warming “that can be hundreds to thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide,” according to the EPA.

Fortunately, both sides of the aisle in Congress have expressed support for a reduction of these toxic chemicals. Cutting the use of hydrofluorocarbons worldwide would avert up to 0.6 degree Celsius of warming by the mid-21^st century, scientists say.

Unfortunately, the United Nations warns that global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by nearly 8 percent each year between 2020 and 2030, or “the world will miss the opportunity to get on track towards the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.”

A rise in temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius is the minimum we’ll need to avoid in order not to see our planet implode, climate scientists say.

If we do hit that mark, “we’ll see some of the climate impacts we already see today begin to go from bad to outright terrifying,” says the Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit founded by former Vice President Al Gore.

“It’s about the point where we’ll likely see many natural systems begin to cross dangerous points of no return, triggering lasting changes and transforming life as we know it.”