President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’s victory marks a new day in the fight for bold, just and equitable climate policy in the United States. It means that the US will now have a leadership that believes in science, knows that climate change is real, and is committed to supporting united and multilateral action.
Biden made climate change a cornerstone of his platform early in his campaign for the presidency, pledging to spend $2tn on clean energy, re-join the Paris Agreement (which he accomplished on February 19, 2021) and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. His plan was described as the most ambitious of any mainstream US presidential candidate.
As a result of the 2020 election, Democrats now control the White House and the Congress, although in the Senate it will take Vice President Kamala Harris to break a tie vote, making legislation challenging. The president will, nonetheless, will have a wide array of tools — from expanding renewables on federal lands to pushing the financial industry on climate change — that could put the U.S. on a trajectory to decarbonizing its electricity sector by 2035.
For more on what he has already accomplished and what he plans to accomplish, go to Biden’s Climate Plan and to the LAWS AND LITIGATION section where you will find extensive information on what is happening within the federal government, from the Executive branch to the Legislative and Judicial branches.
These organizations are dedicated to bringing climate change into public policy, are watching how government does and doesn’t support measures supporting climate change, and are often with a particular emphasis on carbon taxes (or fees and dividends).