We did it Joe!
8 minute read
Ding Dong the Donald is Dead*. If you believe** in climate change, you will have breathed a sigh of relief last week as major news networks across the world projected that Joe Biden would become the 46th President of the United States.
We've talked about Mr Biden's $2tr green spending plan before. It's a nice headline; but as Boris has shown, it's easy(ish) to make commitments, far harder to follow them up with meaningful actions. Throughout his campaign, Mr Biden consistently cited climate change as one of his top four priorities; he promised to invest heavily in climate R&D, create thousands of new green jobs, stop leasing federal land for gas and oil exploration, restore electric vehicle tax credits and reimpose fuel economy standards.
With a starkly divided country, the Republican party looking set to retain control of the Senate and the staggering and baffling strength of partisanship in US politics; it is looking like it will be very hard for the President-elect to drive through his enormous green spending pledge, decarbonise the US energy sector by 2035 and hit net zero by 2050.
But, with a good track record of working across the aisle combined with five decades in elected office under his belt – you can't say that Mr Biden doesn't have the ability and experience to navigate political obstacles. There is plenty he can do though without the need for new legislation.
Firstly, and most prominently, he's promised to re-sign the Paris Agreement, re-join the WHO, both of which can be done without Congressional approval (as the Donald showed us).
We also should not forget that climate change occupies a different space in the public's collective consciousness than it did even four years ago. Polls on election day reported that two-thirds of voters (irrespective of party) consider climate change to be a key issue.
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Many of Trump's changes to climate and environmental policies were made via executive authority. Biden can quite simply use the same tools to undo everything Trump did.
According to researchers at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (part of Columbia University), Trump took 159 actions which cut back on environmental protections and/or promoted the use of fossil fuels – they have even written a report detailing exactly how Biden can restore the protections Trump weakened or scrapped entirely.
Biden's strategy to phase oil out of the US energy mix likely spells the end for the Keystone XL pipeline, as he can revoke the permit that authorises construction. He could also issue executive orders to block the opening up of US coastal waters to oil and gas drilling, and reverse Trump's reversal of Obama-era policies that directed federal agencies to cut their GHG emissions by 40% in a decade.
Fortunately, an awful lot of Trump's environmentally detrimental executive orders landed his administration in court, embroiled in legal challenges. Executive orders from Biden could render these null and void (and save a great deal of legal fees!).
Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations – from the seemingly minor, such as relaxing energy efficiency standards for dishwashers, to the potentially catastrophic, such as opening up over half of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, one of the world's largest temperate forests, for logging. Other Trump measures that could be reversed include his efforts to prevent wind development along the Atlantic coast and loosening of vehicle emissions standards.
Any new regulation not finalised by the time Trump's term expires in January can simply be scrapped. However, to change those that have already taken effect, Biden would have to start new rulemaking, which can take several years.
The cabinet appointments Biden chooses to make can also have a big impact – for example, Trump decided to put former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. He also appointed David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist, as the Interior Department secretary – with a view to opening up more public lands for oil and gas drilling.
But why wait for legislation?
Market forces are powerful – particularly when nudged in a particular direction. We are increasingly seeing the private sector take the lead on environmental (and social) sustainability issues for the simple reason that it's good for business. The first rule of nudge theory is if you want someone to do something, make it easy for them to do.
Biden can certainly use his powers to create a business environment that makes behaving responsibly easy (and rewarding) and makes things like polluting and exploiting natural resources really difficult and expensive. Further rules and incentives can also be put in place for the financial services sector to accelerate the flow of capital to industries that contribute to decarbonising the economy.
Domestic matters aside, re-joining the Paris accord is by far the most significant global action Biden will be able to take immediately. With the US coming back to the party, alongside the recent arrivals of China, Japan and South Korea – two-thirds of the world's economy representing more than half of GHG emissions will have made net zero commitments (India, Russia, Australia and the Gulf states being the largest emitters yet to do so).
Besides the headline 2035 and 2050 ambitions Biden campaigned on – he also set some ambitious milestone targets for his first term in office, which if achieved, will go a long way to restoring the rest of the world's confidence in the US's ability to be a climate leader.
The significance of all this goes beyond the world's second-largest polluter taking its responsibility to reduce emissions seriously once again. A renewed era of global leadership under a Biden Presidency will be hugely important in getting other countries to the net zero table as well as naming and shaming those that are falling behind on their own climate commitments <ahem>.
COP26 should have been happening this week. The 12-month delay the pandemic has imposed might actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Not just because the US will be back on board, but it has also spurred governments across the world to improve their environmental commitments as part of their stimulus spending.
It'll also be fascinating to see if the US and China can compartmentalise their "it's complicated" relationship and not allow their trade war or even the potential threat of sanctions related to the human rights abuses in Xinjiang to hamper collaborative efforts to reduce emissions.
With the world's largest emitters now all starting to pull in the same direction we could be reaching an important geopolitical turning point and the objectives of the Paris agreement look slightly less unachievable – and perhaps are even within striking distance. We only have a decade left to make the decisions that will dictate the course of modern civilisations for centuries to come. Donald has just wasted four precious years. The President-elect may have his wings clipped but his hands are not tied.
*Subject to a mind-numbing legal tiff
**Asses empirical evidence to test null-hypothesis and draw logical conclusions supported by robust data