Hours after he is inaugurated, President-elect Joe Biden will take aim at more than 100 Trump-era actions weakening climate and environmental regulations in his first step toward implementing his aggressive climate agenda.
Biden will sign an executive order later Wednesday that his transition team said “takes critical first steps to address the climate crisis,” while revoking the Trump administration’s “harmful policies.”
As expected, the order will jump-start the process to put the United States back in the Paris climate agreement and cancel permits for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. Also in the order, Biden will temporarily pause new oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for which the Trump administration just issued leases on its last full day in office.
Biden will also direct the Interior Department to review the boundaries of several national monuments that President Trump shrunk in what environmentalists said opened the door to energy development in those previously protected areas.
In addition, Biden will immediately order his federal agencies to begin review of more than 100 Trump-era actions weakening environmental regulations and promoting fossil fuel development. The list includes nearly 50 actions at the Environmental Protection Agency and more than 30 at the Interior Department.
Among the regulations Biden is targeting are Trump’s relaxation of fuel economy standards, the elimination of controls on methane from oil and gas production, and the weakening of several energy efficiency standards for appliances, including clothes washers, dishwashers, and light bulbs.
However, many of the directives won’t see an immediate effect, as Biden’s teams at federal agencies will have to slog through a monthslong rulemaking process to overturn many of the Trump actions.
Biden’s EPA team was given an early boost Tuesday, though, when a federal appeals court struck down the Trump administration’s weaker carbon controls for power plants. That ruling allows the incoming Biden EPA to start essentially from scratch, without having to repeal the Trump-era rule.
Republicans are already objecting to the Biden team’s moves, arguing they will damage the economy. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, slated to be the top Republican on the Senate Environment Committee, called rejoining the Paris deal and killing the Keystone pipeline “virtue signaling.”
“My constituents and I have not forgotten the harm brought by this approach under the Obama administration,” she said in a statement, adding it will be “imperative that Congress aggressively exercises oversight” against the Biden administration.
Biden’s national climate adviser Gina McCarthy, though, defended the decision to cancel the Keystone pipeline, which has angered labor unions that Biden carefully sought to win over during the campaign.
“Climate change is a crisis, and the Keystone pipeline and its construction was not consistent with addressing the climate crisis to the depth and scope that we are planning to address it,” she told reporters Tuesday. “Whatever limited benefit that Keystone was projected to provide now has to be obviously reconsidered with the economy of today.”
