Warren sets 100-day climate agenda
Elizabeth Warren is specifying a handful of actions she’d take on climate change in her first 100 days as president.
In an opinion piece in BuzzFeed News yesterday, the Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential hopeful said she would carry out many of her campaign promises on climate quickly after taking office Jan. 20, 2021, if she wins the Democratic nomination and beats President Trump.
“On day one, I’ll issue a sweeping executive order rolling back all of Donald Trump’s disastrous pro-fossil fuels policies, banning new fossil fuel leases offshore and on public lands, and committing the United States to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords,” she wrote.
“During my first 100 days as president, I’ll introduce 100% Clean Energy For America legislation that will set bold and ambitious sector-specific standards to power our economy with clean energy, and create millions of good new union jobs.”
Such an executive order is nearly certain to face court challenges. The oil and natural gas industry, in particular, argues that a ban on new leases on federal land and offshore is flatly illegal without congressional approval (Energywire, Aug. 6).
Trump similarly signed executive orders in his early days in office in 2017 to undo former President Obama’s environmental policies, including a sweeping March 2017 order directing federal agencies to roll back climate change rules. The resulting rollbacks have already led to numerous court fights, many of which the administration has lost.
Warren has previously laid out numerous other climate promises, including a “green manufacturing” program and banning new fossil fuel extraction leases on federal land and offshore.
Her clean energy plan, which she first announced in September, sets deadlines for new buildings, new light- and medium-duty vehicles, and electricity generation to achieve zero carbon emissions at various points through 2035. It would be achieved through subsidies, new standards for automakers and utilities ,and other means (Climatewire, Sept. 4).
“It’s time for politicians to be honest with the American people about what it will take to defeat the climate crisis, because when Americans decide to go all in on solving a problem, there is nothing we can’t achieve together,” Warren wrote in BuzzFeed.
“Just like we mobilized to defeat the Nazis and put a man on the moon, we too can solve the climate crisis.”