The year 2021 brought a new administration to the government. An administration that has made a plan for solving the climate crisis that has been seen as less of a priority for the past four years. The Climate crisis is urgent, and now that the Biden Administration has a plan, how will things look in the future?
Unlike the previous president of the United States, President Biden has made fixing climate change one of his top priorities. “I support Joe Biden’s statement in saying that we need to act now in order to say the earth” Ava Tabron ‘24. Climate change is not something to be put off, one of the reasons President Biden has consulted with scientists like Gina McCarthy on this topic is because we don’t have much time until climate change is irreversible. He has a large, detailed, and science-based plan for the climate crisis. Some of the large-scale actions he plans to take are to work with Congress to enact legislation this year that will allow the US to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. He wants to make America have the cleanest, fastest, and safest railroad system. President Biden wants to stop China from subsidizing coal exports, as China produces the most carbon emissions per year. In 2018 China had emitted 10.06 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide being the largest carbon emitter. For comparison America had emitted 5.41 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, and America has the 2nd most carbon emissions per year. If China were to lower their fossil fuel emissions, and use less coal then not only will that be helpful to their country since their air isn’t clean, it will help surrounding countries.
President Biden has both long and short term goals for tackling the climate crisis. On January 20th 2021, President Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement, which is an agreement within the United Nations signed by 189 countries to work together on stopping climate change. On that same day, President Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline extension. He also has stopped the money going to the border wall that the previous president had been building and has redirected those funds to help fight the climate crisis. President Biden’s website says, “The Biden plan will be paid for by reversing the excesses of the Trump tax cuts for corporations, reducing incentives for tax havens, evasion, and outsourcing, ensuring corporations pay their fair share, closing other loopholes in our tax code that reward wealth not work, and ending subsidies for fossil fuels.” In his plan there is not only a plan to prevent climate change, but to fix the issues that it has already caused. Another important job Joe Biden has that would have thought to be tied to global warming, is making sure all Americans have clean water.
“Climate change is going to touch our lives in almost every way, but water will be at the center. In the northeast we are seeing water events such as thunderstorms with greater intensity and frequency. However, in other parts of the country, such as the southwest, southeast, and west, conditions will get drier. The impacts of these shifts are already being seen, such as the forest fires in the west and the prolonged droughts in the midwest. So, in the more arid regions access to freshwater will be harder to come by, and in the areas that are getting wetter those heavy rainstorms will cause flooding, which may result in nutrients and pollutants being carried into nearby bodies of water.” says Courtney McKinley, Upper School Physics and Environmental Science teacher. Because of global warming, the percentage of freshwater is decreasing, which can make it harder for people to have access to drinkable water.
Instead of only focusing on only the years that he is going to be President, Biden is looking into the future with his climate change plans. By 2030, Joe Biden plans to protect biodiversity and slow extinction by conserving 30% of America’s lands and waters, doubling offshore wind power, and creating 500,000 new electric car charging outlets. By 2050, President Biden’s plan will “Ensure the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050”. By looking at the Green New deal and Biden’s plan for climate change, you’ll see they are extremely similar. “I like how the Green New Deal targets the larger problem of how great the amount of greenhouse gas emissions are, and how we need to curb that amount,” Gracie Gaskell ’24 says. The Biden plan has many extremely important tasks in it, but one of the most important tasks is bringing down greenhouse gas emissions, as those gases are one of the major contributors to climate change.
In conclusion, we can see that President Biden takes climate change seriously, and has a plan to fix it. He has consulted with scientists and looked at the facts to develop a plan. Our future will look different than today, but for the better. President Joe Biden’s America will be a clean one.