[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
[co-author: Shawn Whites]
Key Points:
On Earth Day, the Biden-Harris administration announced a new target for the United States to achieve a 50 to 52 percent reduction in economy-wide GHG emissions by 2030, which constitutes the country’s new NDC under the Paris Agreement.
To achieve the new NDC, the United States envisions a “whole-of-government” approach to catalyze opportunities for businesses to partner with the federal government to rapidly transform the power, transportation, buildings, industrial and agriculture and lands sectors.
The close partisan split in Congress likely will force the administration to rely on a combination of agency regulation and other executive actions to demonstrate progress toward achieving the NDC.
The era of good feelings enjoyed by President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party's progressive wing will face a stern test of its staying power as the administration pushes forward into the next phases of its big-ticket policy agenda.
Who the president is matters to sustainable investing.
One hundred days into Joe Biden’s presidency, his administration’s executive orders and agency actions have reinstated and advanced an environment that empowers sustainable investing. President Biden has also assembled a strong climate-change team and bestowed significant authority on it, including establishing a new White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, headed by Gina McCarthy, and appointing former Secretary of State John Kerry to the U.S. National Security Council as special presidential envoy for climate.
All of this sets our children and grandchildren and wildlife up for a more secure future but threats to sustainable investing remain.
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President Biden has made climate change a main focus of his
administration. At the beginning of his term, President Biden
issued several executive orders addressing climate change: Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and
the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate
Crisis (January 20, 2021) and Executive Order on
Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad (January 27,
2021) ( Day 7 Environmental Executive Order ). This
article will highlight the administration s international
focus, climate justice, climate litigation, and several priorities
of the recent executive orders.
As President Biden promised prior to inauguration, he recommitted the U.S. to the Paris Climate