How will Biden impact tackle change? Here’s what Centre County experts and advocates hope
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Climate change is a global issue with local consequences. The Centre Daily Times looks at the impacts on our communities, and what local leaders and residents are doing to address the issue and focus on sustainability.
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After four years of regulation reversals and agreement withdrawals, Centre County climate change experts’ and activists’ attitudes toward the Biden administration air on the side of cautious optimism.
Throughout his term, President Donald Trump and his administration have undone more than 100 environmental policies and weakened Obama-era guidance on federal oversight of natural resources.
On Jan. 20, President-elect Joe Biden will take office, hoping to undo some of his predecessor’s actions and reenter the international climate discussion.
One of the key features of Biden’s climate plan is to make sure every appointee and agency, whether it’s the Justice Department or a White House regulatory official, takes global warming seriously.
Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences at Penn State and the author of five books on climate change, said this multi-prong approach to protecting the environment is a good place to start.
“In the past, climate change and other environmental issues have tended to be sort of siloed within certain agencies, like the Department of Energy or the Environmental Protection Agency,” Mann said. “The real problem with that is that climate change is now a pervasive threat that touches on every aspect of modern life.”
It is “artificial,” Mann said, to think of climate change as only belonging to a small number of departments when it’s really a global challenge involving diplomacy, economic investment and sustainable agriculture. He said it’s no coincidence that John Kerry, who served as Secretary of State under the Obama administration and who has a seat on the National Security Council, was named climate envoy.
“Climate change is now a major national security threat,” Mann said, citing how recent Syrian conflicts arose in large part due to an unprecedented drought. “I think that (naming John Kerry is) a direct recognition of the national security dimensions of the problem.”
Paul Shrivastava, the director of Penn State’s Sustainability Institute, also said a systemic approach to meeting sustainability goals is needed to catch up with the rest of the world on climate action.
“A tsar sitting in a separate office, doing it by himself and not communicating with the Department of Defense and Department of Interior and Department of Homeland Security, etc., is not going to be able to do it,” Shrivastava said. “You need to have a climate mini-tsar in every department, coordinated by the climate tsar and sustainability tsar, to make this happen.”
Mann cited the administration’s plans to utilize the Climate 21 Project — a blueprint hundreds of pages long written by Obama-era experts that outlines specific policy steps for each department — as giving him reason to believe Biden will pursue the multi-agency strategy he was largely unable to incorporate as vice president.
Obama’s administration ran out of time and “political capital,” Mann said, although the extent to which Biden can follow through on climate promises and cooperate with Republican lawmakers in Congress remains to be seen.
As Mann sees it, there are two broad goals Biden should pursue upon taking office: undoing Trump’s deregulatory executive actions and reestablishing diplomatic relationships with other countries in regard to climate policy. The latter goal involves rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, an international accord in which member countries submit and adhere to carbon reduction targets.
Shrivastava said rejoining the accord is vital for collaborative climate leadership and “return(ing) the moral high ground to us.” He added, however, that the U.S. must both lead and co-lead.
“We need to think of this not as a leadership that bullies the world into doing something. We need to make it a moral leadership,” Shrivastava said. “It’s not enough to preach, and not enough to sign agreements and do declarations and all the stuff that goes on in the international development world.”
Flora Cardoni agreed that an all-hands-on-deck strategy is key to coordinating climate efforts. Cardoni is a field director for PennEnvironment, a nonpartisan, statewide environmental advocacy organization that lobbies for climate policy in Harrisburg every year.
This year, the “lobby day” took place virtually as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but the June event still drew over 400 volunteers, activists and PennEnvironment members, who met with legislators via Zoom.
While what happens in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5 will determine which party has control of the Senate — and in turn, what pieces of legislation get prioritized — Cardoni hopes issues addressed by Congress under Biden include clean energy, tax credits for renewable energy use, expanded public transit systems and climate infrastructure programs.
But even if procedures remain the same at the state level, Cardoni added, she views Biden’s win as a net positive for the environment. PennEnvironment will be able to focus more on fixing environmental problems and less on opposing Trump’s tactics.
“It’s certainly a win, because even just a difference of having an administration who recognizes climate change as a big threat ... versus an administration that denies the existence of climate change, and rolls back all of our progress,” Cardoni said, “that difference is huge.”
Mann also said congressional action is needed to supplement executive action, predicting a Senate through which only focused, bipartisan climate bills will pass. While the Green New Deal — a Democratic-proposed policy package aimed at addressing climate change and socioeconomic wealth disparities — may not be on the debate table, he said, Biden will aim to reach across the aisle and craft moderate, targeted legislation.
During the Democratic primaries, the Sunrise Movement — a youth-led grassroots organization and political group — heavily criticized Biden’s climate plan, giving it an “F” rating and saying it “lack(ed) many policy specifics.”
After Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race, however, the movement collaborated with Biden’s campaign to draft one of the most ambitious climate plans ever put forward by a presidential candidate, according to numerous climate change experts. He pledged to invest $2 trillion in clean energy and reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2035.
Siddhi Deshpande, a student at Penn State and the co-founder of Sunrise Movement’s State College chapter, said it was heartening to see the organization’s influence at such a high level. While Sunrise pushes for more progressive policies like the Green New Deal, Deshpande said any increased regulation and accountability of fossil fuel companies is a good thing.
“The hope for Biden comes from the fact that he has shown he’s somewhat willing to listen to us,” Deshpande said.
Shrivastava said that while the first priority of the country should be to recover economically from the pandemic, focusing on programs that both produce jobs and improve carbon performance are necessary to move the country forward.
“With patience and diligence, a lot can be done,” Shrivastava said. “It is not irreversible. I’m very optimistic, and I’m very hopeful that in the next four years, we will see a whole different America.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 7:00 AM.