Climate Change:  What the Biden Administration is Planning

–By Brooke Kirkpatrick  

[Brooke, a freshman at ESM, won first place in a recent essay contest. She is the granddaughter of Sue Savion.]

The Biden Administration has won the recent presidential election, and is said to be one of the most progressive presidential teams on the topic of climate change.  Based on the way that former Vice President Joe Biden has described his plan for climate change in detail, I am certain that he will indeed make great strides towards a better future.  I have developed a passion for climate change primarily through the actions and leadership that I have witnessed and admire in my grandma.  Her current collaboration with The Green Sanctuary and the Sierra Club inspire me to question my role and the impact that I can make in affecting environmental change.  She has always been the type of person to stand for what she feels is right, thereby sparking my interest in activism as well.  Some actions of the Biden Administration that I find the most intriguing and opportunistic are the promise to hold polluters of low-income communities and communities of color accountable for their actions and he will ensure that the United States’ electricity production is carbon-free by 2035.  With this climate plan in place, I am hopeful that future generations will see positive effects on the climate in the hands of the Biden administration.

Joe Biden has always been a leader when it comes to climate change.  In 1986, he introduced one of the first climate bills in Congress and continued to advocate for climate change and the need to address it ever since.  Biden has pioneered numerous other climate change programs such as the Tropical Forest Conservation Act in 1998. And the Recovery Act in 2009, which was the largest single investment in clean energy.  He has also pledged to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, putting the U.S. back on the international stage for climate change.

Greenhouse gasses are detrimental to the well-being of our atmosphere, land, and oceans, and are the leading cause of climate change since the mid-20^th century.  According to the plan for climate change on JoeBiden.com, The Biden Administration wants to make US electricity production carbon-free by 2035 and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.  In order to achieve this, the amount of carbon that is put into the atmosphere must also be balanced by something taking it in.  Planting trees, or forestation, will help to balance out the excess CO2 emissions in our atmosphere.  Biden has stated that he will invest 1.7 trillion dollars into making this possible.  He will for example, advance the manufacturing of electric cars and make 4 million buildings more energy efficient.  This initiative will subsequently create more than 10 million good-paying jobs.  In an era in which unemployment has reached an all-time high in April 2020, the outlined climate change proposals will significantly benefit many different aspects of American life.

The Biden administration has also stated that they will hold those individuals who are abusing their power and disproportionately polluting low income and communities of color accountable.  I think it is great that President Biden acknowledges that there are people who are specifically targeting these communities, and that he is willing to address it.   Hopefully, this will lead to change providing cleaner resources for those affected in the aforementioned communities.

Despite possible setbacks from the narrow margin between the parties in Congress as well as the pandemic, I fully believe the Biden Administration will make sizable and prominent strides for climate change in the U.S. and the rest of the world.  As Biden said: “How we act or fail to act in the next 12 years will determine the very livability of our planet.”

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