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President Biden signed a sweeping set of executive orders on Wednesday to address the climate crisis head-on, making good on one of his major campaign promises. The orders pause oil and gas leasing on national public land, commit America to protecting 30 percent of its land and water by 2030, create a Civilian Climate Corps, and focus action on low-income communities and communities of color.
The climate orders were met with praise from a broad coalition of environmental, community, and labor groups, while the oil industry predicted doom and immediately filed lawsuits despite the low likelihood of success in the courts and signs that its own trade groups are losing support from member companies.
The executive orders, while bold and wide-ranging, are the first step, not the last, in tackling climate change. The leasing pause gives Congress and the Interior Department time for a comprehensive review of the federal oil and gas program, which hasn't updated its royalty rates in a century, and never accounted for the climate cost of oil and gas extraction.
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The oil and gas industry is facing down a debt crisis of its own creation. The entire industry is over-leveraged and built on a house of cards that assumed much higher oil prices than we have seen and likely will ever see again. So the opportunity is to create jobs in renewables, invest significantly in off-shore wind, in renewable development on America’s public lands.”
