Turning up the temperature

Fiona Harvey | 29th October 2021 | Brussels, Comment, Washington

Ahead of Cop26, can Joe Biden’s bold climate change action plan help save the planet?

If there was any doubt that Joe Biden would make the climate crisis the touchstone of his presidency, he dispelled it within his first 100 days. On his first day in office, Biden started the process of rejoining the Paris agreement, revoked the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, strengthened the Environmental Protection Agency and set in train a series of decisions intended to reduce the US’s carbon footprint, meet a long-term goal of net zero emissions by 2050, and re-set the recovery from Covid-19 on to a green path. Calling climate change “the existential crisis of our time”, Biden made it clear his electoral mandate was to shift the world’s biggest economy permanently to a low-carbon footing. He said: “This is a moral imperative, an economic imperative, a moment of peril – but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities. Time is short, but I believe we can do this, and I believe we will do this.” Biden embarked on a series of domestic policy initiatives intended to bring dow...

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