Biden’s Environmental Agenda

By Alyssa Sembrat

I attended Ramapo College’s online climate conference in October. When I logged into the meeting at 10 am, Professor Ashwani Vasishth was beginning to discuss how the presidential election in the United States of America would affect the climate crisis’s future.

The presentation started by looking at what Joe Biden promised the people of America should he become president. He claims that using his power of executive order that he will make a clean energy plan and take environmental action. This statement made me hopeful, considering President Trump believes climate change is a hoax, pulled the United States out of the Paris accords, and took the solar panels off the White House.

Within the Biden plan, he promises to put limits on industrial methane output. It is safe to assume a large part of industry methane is produces by the meat industries from the cattle, so I would be interested to see how this executive order plays out. Another significant contribution mentioned in the conference was fracking, which is the collection of natural gas by drilling deep underground. This change might mean a shift in where energy is gathered from. I would hope for a transition towards sustainable renewable energy would be evident at this point.

Next, he promised to move towards 100% clean energy and zero emissions. Using clean energy would help economic growth in the long run if people could just see past their short-sighted need for immediate income. The next promise that was made was for “climate-ready government facilities.” This is something that all buildings should be doing given the increasing amount of natural disasters in a rapidly heating world.

Next were a couple of promises: to electrify government vehicles, use less corn fuel and more biofuels, protect natural resources and the animals, especially from industries that would seek to destroy them to make a quick profit. I was very excited that should Biden become elected, many of these changes could and would happen almost immediately. It makes me hopeful that there would be even more change through the usual government processes that take a very long time.

The next thing that was looked at was a website that predicted the rise in temperature by 2100. Should everything stay exactly the way it is under the Trump administration, the planet’s average temperature is on track to raise 4 degrees Celsius, or around 7 degrees Fahrenheit. At the conference, the point was made that these were average global temperatures, not in every single area. Either way, a temperature increase of that much would be catastrophic for all life on earth. It is apparent that change must happen. This website allowed for modifications to be inputted and the estimated increase in global temperature recalculated accordingly.

The climate conference host then took the time to play with the inputs per the participants’ request. One fact that stood out to me was that industrial methane caused an equal amount of heating as all coal, gas, and oil pollution. One of the other simulations was if all of Biden’s executive orders were to occur, how would that change the climate change estimation? The result was that the temperature would only increase by 2.3 degrees Celsius. This is better than what is currently predicted but not ideal. It is believed that temperature increase should stay below 2 degrees Celsius to avoid climate change’s worst effects. To accomplish this, new technology, carbon pricing, electrification with clean energy could be increase. Making these changes would have no impact on current economic growth, which shows change is very much possible. The last thing that stood out to me is if everything were done in an environmentally friendly, sustainable way, the temperature increase would only be around 1-degree Celsius.