(Image credit – Adam Schultz / The White House)
Four months into his administration, President Biden’s approach to climate change is beginning to cohere around two executive orders he issued his first week in office.
Signed on Inauguration Day, the first order set an urgent tone through high-priority moves, such as rejoining the Paris climate agreement, initiating an update of government benchmarks for the social cost of greenhouse gases, and reversing a number of Trump administration actions on environmental policy.
The second order, issued Jan. 27, established an array of policymaking mechanisms and outlined an agenda on matters such as climate resilience, environmental justice, and climate-related economic opportunities, with many action items due within 60, 90, and 120 days.
Funding Builds on Efforts to Enhance Climate Change Resilience as President Biden Visits FEMA Ahead of Hurricane Season
Today, President Biden will meet with members of his homeland security and climate teams at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Response Coordination Center in Washington, D.C. to receive an update on preparations for the 2021 hurricane season. In advance of the President’s visit, the Administration is announcing it will direct $1 billion for communities, states, and Tribal governments into pre-disaster mitigation resources to prepare for extreme weather events and other disasters, and the Administration is announcing the development of next generation climate data systems at NASA to help understand and track how climate change is impacting communities.
The White House
Funding Builds on Efforts to Enhance Climate Change Resilience as President Biden Visits FEMA Ahead of Hurricane Season
Today, President Biden will meet with members of his homeland security and climate teams at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Response Coordination Center in Washington, D.C. to receive an update on preparations for the 2021 hurricane season. In advance of the President’s visit, the Administration is announcing it will direct $1 billion for communities, states, and Tribal governments into pre-disaster mitigation resources to prepare for extreme weather events and other disasters, and the Administration is announcing the development of next generation climate data systems at NASA to help understand and track how climate change is impacting communities.
[co-author: Shawn Whites]
President Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate has wrapped up. The event saw world leaders highlighting their countries’ respective climate commitments, calling for collective action, and attending breakout sessions designed to foster dialogue around climate finance and technological innovation, among other topics. After Vice President Harris and President Biden opened the summit, Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered further introductory remarks before the trio joined Climate Envoy John Kerry at a horseshoe-shaped table to watch speeches from the world leaders in attendance. Then fifteen additional cabinet heads, political appointees, and special advisors spoke or moderated sessions during over the next two days. These U.S. officials comprise the core leadership team tasked with implementing the administration’s “whole of government” climate strategy. Below, we introduce these key members in the order in which they first appeared during the Summ
(S.A. Sonsthagen/U.S. Geological Survey via AP, File)
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas parroted Joe Biden’s handlers’ position on “the climate crisis” during the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate on Thursday, reaffirming DHS’s commitment to adapting a response to the “climate emergency” to include steps to battle the “national security threat” of the “existential threat of our time.”
Today I’m bringing together leaders from around the world to meet this moment of climate peril, and extraordinary opportunity. No nation can solve this crisis on its own, and this summit is a step on a path to a secure, prosperous, and sustainable future. https://t.co/lcUUsgyEo3