President Biden’s top climate advisers say they hope to push the market far enough toward clean energy that no future politician would be able to reverse course.
That effort will give the United States credibility in global climate negotiations and calm concerns that a future administration could undo Biden’s climate agenda, as the Trump administration did with Obama administration efforts, said special climate envoy John Kerry during a White House briefing Wednesday.
“I think we can achieve things in the course of the next four years that will move the marketplace, the private sector, global finance, innovation, and research that in fact no one, no political person in the future, will be able to undo what the planet is going to be organizing over these next months and years,” Kerry told reporters. “This is the start of something new.”
Kerry, alongside Biden’s national climate adviser Gina McCarthy, was previewing a sweeping executive order the president signed Wednesday to make climate change a central consideration in nearly every decision the federal government makes. That includes directing federal agencies to purchase carbon-free power and electric cars, elevating climate change as a national security threat, and setting a goal to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
The order also kicks off the process for the U.S. to craft a new national emissions reduction commitment as part of the Paris climate agreement.
Biden began the process for the U.S. to rejoin that global climate deal on his first day in office. His administration will face enormous pressure from environmental activists, Democrats, and other nations to set an aggressive target that puts the U.S. on a path to reach net-zero emissions by midcentury.
Biden’s team will face equally tough pressure to ensure the U.S. follows through on its commitment. Nearly all of the policies the Obama administration set out in its initial commitment to the Paris Agreement, including first-time carbon controls for power plants and tailpipe greenhouse gas standards that McCarthy helped to craft as Environmental Protection Agency chief, were erased or sharply weakened by the Trump administration.
In remarks to reporters, however, both Kerry and McCarthy suggested the landscape has shifted.
“There’s a new awareness among major asset managers, commercial banks, and others about the need to be putting resources into this endeavor because it is a major investment demand,” Kerry said. The former secretary of state cited a letter Tuesday from investment giant BlackRock CEO Larry Fink demanding the companies the firm invests in disclose their plans for a net-zero emissions future.
McCarthy, too, pointed to policy momentum in cities and states over the last four years that has helped drive clean energy prices down.
“If you look at the record over the past four years, while the prior administration might have wanted clean energy to head in a different direction, it’s gone faster and farther than anyone ever expected,” she said during the briefing.
Biden’s executive order, and the policies that will flow from it, send a signal to the market that will grow clean energy demand and create jobs in the industry, McCarthy said.
“All of a sudden, the question won’t be whether the private sector is going to buy into it,” she added. “The private sector is going to drive it.”
