New Biden orders pause drilling, put focus on fighting climate change
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on public lands, one of a slate of executive actions he is taking to demonstrate his commitment to fighting climate change, despite opposition from the fossil fuel industry.
The move effectively hit pause on the federal government’s leasing program while the administration considers an overhaul, weighing the climate and public health risks of continued oil and gas development against the government’s legal obligations to energy companies. This review is the first step toward an outright ban on new drilling, one of Biden’s campaign promises.
With the executive actions on climate policy, Biden aims to harness the authority of the government as never before to reduce planet-warming
emissions. The orders amount to a sweeping repudiation of the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken environmental regulations and deny the seriousness of climate change. And they are a reflection of how the new administration thinks about climate policy — as an existential crisis demanding an all-of-government approach.
“We’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis,” Biden said at a White House signing ceremony. “We can’t wait any longer. We see it with our own eyes, we feel it, we know it in our bones. And it’s time to act.”
Even as opponents were claiming the initiatives would cost jobs, Biden emphasized that that a comprehensive climate effort would create clean-energy jobs nationwide.
The executive orders included directives to federal agencies to end fossil fuel subsidies, a call for creating a task force to plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and
a declaration making climate change a national security priority for the first time.
The president also directed his administration to protect 30% of the nation’s federal land and coastal waters by 2030, a proposal that climate scientists and environmentalists have advocated for internationally as a way to curb global warming and protect endangered species.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the extraction and consumption of oil, gas and coal from federal lands and waters accounts for nearly a quarter of the nation’s total carbon dioxide emissions.
The order also calls for the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps that will put Americans to work restoring forests, improving recreation on public lands and addressing the effects climate change.
Other orders gave priority to the needs of people living in communities burdened by industrial pollution, elevating the issue of environmental justice that was important to many of the young and minority voters that supported Biden’s candidacy.