Photo courtesy of the US Department of State
We're rejoining the Paris Climate Accord! The Keystone XL pipeline has been canceled! It's time to celebrate these wins—and get ready to call on the incoming administration to do even more.
With Joe Biden now sworn in as president, he brings a promise to act on climate change as one of four interrelated crises: the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, the economy, and climate. This was a promise he made to us—because of our activism, our grassroots pressure, and the strength of our intersectional movement.
But there's so much more to do. To truly tackle the climate crisis, we need to continue to build a movement that holds President Biden and this new Congress accountable to the promises they've made and push them even further to tackle the scope of the problems we face. That begins today.
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Biden's first week and months will be full of executive orders, which are presidential directives to government agencies like the EPA and Department of Interior. Even during the deepening crisis of COVID-19, as we saw clear links between air pollution and mortality rates, Trump's EPA continued to do the bidding of big polluters.
The Trump administration tried to roll back more than 100 basic protections for our air, water, lands, and climate. Today, the Biden administration begins the long journey of replacing and rebuilding those protections through executive orders as we tackle climate, racial injustice, COVID, and other problems together as one. This includes a monumental executive order that not only gets us back in the Paris Agreement but also instructs all government agencies to work together to combat the climate crisis. They have also ordered the Department of the Interior to begin to review and restore National Parks and monuments like Bears Ears. This is just the first step in a long journey to tackle these problems. We must build momentum and a movement that meets the enormity of the tasks we face.
Take the first step with us as we begin this journey through the Biden administration's first 100 days. Demand bold action on climate, centered in racial and environmental justice, and thank this administration for the promises it's already kept.
While getting back in the Paris Agreement and canceling the permits for Keystone XL are huge, there are other bold actions we expect President Biden will take in his first week in office. Part of our climate crisis is fueled by a biodiversity crisis, and to solve both we need to protect 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030. Because of the strength of our movement and the pressure and activism during the presidential campaign, we believe we will get the Biden administration to commit to this within its first 100 days in office.
They can also stop all further extraction of fossil fuels on public lands, tackle methane pollution, halt oil and gas export infrastructure and pipelines like Line 3 and the Dakota Access Pipeline. And they can put forward a bold economic recovery plan that builds on the THRIVE Agenda —a proposal backed by a movement of movements to put millions of people back to work building an economy that prioritizes racial, economic, and climate justice.
All of that is only possible with a long-term movement of people like you working together to demand President Biden and his incoming administration take bold action on climate and environmental justice. The first step is thanking them for what they've already done and asking them to do even more.