By Dean Gallea
The previous U.S. President was known for rolling back environmental protections and instituting Executive Orders that set back progress towards mitigating climate change by years. We now have a new federal government – including a compliant Congress – that promises to repair of a lot of the damage that was done during the prior four years, support new, green-industry jobs and technologies, and go further than ever before in instituting needed regulations on polluting, carbon-based industries.
As a candidate, President Biden proposed a two trillion-dollar climate agenda that included provisions ranging from coordinating climate priorities in transportation infrastructure spending to rebooting “Cash for Clunkers” in the interest of modernizing fleets toward cleaner vehicles.
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In its first two weeks, the nascent Biden administration has begun to stake out a serious climate action agenda. Biden’s already substantial campaign trail pledges and transition-period policy plans have unfurled into a sweeping set of first steps that implicate nearly the entire federal government. The White House’s newest multipart executive order on climate change and environmental justice takes important steps toward ending federal fossil fuel subsidies, jump-starting mass markets for EVs and other fossil-free products, embedding climate considerations in every federal agency’s decision-making, and accounting for racial and geographic inequities when apportioning the benefits
Eyes on the future: An open letter to President Biden on Indigenous Peoples
This is an open letter to President Joe Biden from a group of Indigenous Peoples and advocates.
The letter calls for a series of actions from the Biden Administration in support Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the U.S. and abroad.
“Internationally, the United States must become a champion for Indigenous Peoples’ rights and, in our foreign policy and foreign assistance, engage Indigenous Peoples as partners through their own social, political, and legal institutions in addressing the world’s most urgent challenges and in advancing security, prosperity, sustainability, and peace,” the authors write.
January 20, 2021
WASHINGTON (Jan. 20, 2021) Utah’s congressional delegation comprised of U.S. Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Mitt Romney (R-UT), Representatives Chris Stewart (R-UT), John Curtis (R-UT), Burgess Owens (R-UT), and Blake Moore (R-UT), as well as state officials including Gov. Spencer Cox, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, Attorney General Sean Reyes, Senate President Stuart Adams, and Speaker of the House Brad Wilson, issued the following statement regarding President Biden’s executive order directing the Department of the Interior to review the boundaries and conditions of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments.
“For over 25 years Utah has been the center of controversial and divisive unilateral national monument decisions. Roughly two-thirds of our backyard belongs to the federal government, which has meant land management actions have often been done to us rather than with us. A review in name only with predetermined results, which ultimatel
Biden Signs Sweeping Orders to Tackle Climate Change and Rollback Trump’s Anti-Environment Legacy
The new president moved immediately to review more than 100 Trump administration actions and restore the protection of federal lands and the regulation of greenhouse gases.
January 21, 2021
President Joe Biden takes the oath of office during the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Credit: Andrew Harnik/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
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In the early hours on Wednesday, as the sun was setting on one presidency and rising on another but long before it would actually peek over the horizon two men did two very different things.