An executive order is a signed, written, and published directive from the President of the United States. Issuing an Executive Order is not to be confused with taking an Executive Action, which has little legal significance. Executive orders are not legislation; they require no approval from Congress, and Congress cannot simply overturn them.
On May 3, 2019, National Geographic Magazine published an updated timeline (dating back to March, 2017) of the Trump Administration’s first two years of environmental actions and policy changes. Although much of the piece focuses on deregulations, it covers executive orders as well, including two, signed on April 9, 2019, which will smooth the path for companies to build oil and gas pipelines and limit the tools states have to block them, not to mention Trump’s earlier order to increase logging of forests on federal land, signed on December 21, 2018, a day before the government shutdown.
On January 20th, 2021, President Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. On his first day in office, President Joe Biden moved to rejoin the Paris Agreement — which will take 30 days to take effect. He also signed an executive order entitled, “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.” This establishes the Biden administration’s commitment to immediately work to confront both the causes and impacts of climate change by implementing policy guided by science. The order rolls back many actions taken by the Trump administration to loosen environmental standards and protections and calls on all federal agency heads to review and “consider suspending, revising, or rescinding the agency actions” that may be inconsistent with Biden’s articulated policy. The order is divided into eight sections: (1) policy; (2) immediate review of environmental actions taken during President Trump’s term; (3) restoring national monuments; (4) Arctic refuge; (5) accounting for the benefits of reducing climate pollution; (6) revoking the March 2019 permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline; (7) other revocations; and (8) general provisions.
All executive orders can be found here. Executive Orders related to climate are listed on this page. The Biden administration has also issued Presidential Actions, Statements & Releases, Speeches & Remarks , Press Briefings, and Fact Sheets (including those relating to the budget). which are directly related to climate change. These can be found here.
The Washington Post, much as it did for the Trump Administration, is keeping track of Biden’s environmental actions here.
