Biden’s task to address climate change

 Not so long ago, the dangers posed by global warming and climate change loomed off in the future, allowing Americans to put of f finding solutions. But tomorrow has arrived, and the new reality is impossible to deny.

The years from 2015 through 2020 were the hottest six years on record for the planet. The past year ushered in the countr y’s worst season ever for wildfires, along with a record number of tropical storms in the Atlantic. The Great Lakes are warming, and their water levels are at or close to record highs.

Yet Donald Trump’s administration didn’t just fail to take the steps needed to slow warming and mitigate its effects. It implemented policies to make things worse.


That leaves President-elect Joe Biden with a formidable task — to undo the damage caused by his predecessor, redouble our national commitment to limit climate change, and to take this action mindful of the economic and financial costs.



Americans understand the need for action. A June poll by the Pew Research Center found that “broad majorities of the public — including more than half of Republicans and over whelming shares of Democrats — say they would favor a range of initiatives to reduce the impacts of climate change.”

The incoming president wants to “put the countr y on a sustainable path to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”


Biden has a range of proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He wants to tighten energy efficiency standards for appliances and buildings, ban any new oil and gas leases on federal lands, increase mass transit funding and develop technologies to boost nuclear power and capture carbon emissions.

Though all of these ideas make sense in principle, he needs to insist that each initiative pass a strict cost-benefit test. Other wise, a vital cause may be used as a pretext for all sorts of wasteful porkbarrel projects.

Combating climate change is an urgent obligation that the Trump administration shirked. Biden has made a commitment to accept the challenge, and that’s a very good start.

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