2021 High School Essay Contest Winner:
Lessons on Climate Change: Crafting a Better Future in a Time Of
Transition
By Jack Bourdeaux, The Hotchkiss School
April 4, 2021
As Joe Biden approaches 100 days in office, his time has been focused on economic recovery and the distribution of the COVID vaccine. However, as the US begins to recover from the pandemic, Biden must focus on more long-term issues, such as climate change. Biden has said that climate change is “the number one issue facing humanity,” and numerous international officials have directly said that the future effects of our ongoing climate crisis will be nothing short of disastrous if left unmitigated. In the words of María Fernanda Espinosa, the former president of the UN General Assembly, “We are the last generation that can prevent irreparable damage to our planet.” UN officials also emphasized that there is only a decade left before irreversible damage is done to the climate. Parts of the world are already beginning to feel the strain: California’s 2020 wildfire season was the worst on record, and, given that 91% of the state is currently in a drought, the 2021 season is expected to be even worse. Australia’s 2019 wildfire season, which burned from July 2019 until March 2020, is similarly considered to have been “one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history.” In other parts of the world, the situation is even worse. In Southern Africa, for example, ongoing drought has created massive food and water shortages, as well as looming massive blackouts. Therefore, given the evidence, climate change is clearly the most pressing issue facing the Biden administration.
The Trump administration did nothing to mitigate the effects of climate change; they actually made the situation worse. In four years, the Trump administration rolled back almost 100 rules and regulations, which, when taken together, could add up to 1.8 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere by 2035. For context, that is 30% of what the US emitted in 2019. Despite that, many experts say that the biggest harm inflicted by the Trump administration is not these regulatory rollbacks, but rather the loss of time. The so-called “carbon budget”—the amount of CO2 that we can release into the atmosphere before the damage becomes irreparable—is less than 500 billion tons globally. Every year action isn’t taken, costlier emission cuts must be made to avoid the worst of climate change. It is still possible for the Biden administration and their successors to achieve net-zero emissions, but the emission cuts necessary would be the largest in history. Furthermore, the 500-billion-ton carbon budget only provides a 50/50 chance of keeping temperatures from increasing beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Biden can still arrest the regulatory regression of the past four years, even if he cannot turn back time. Trump primarily used executive orders to dismantle climate policy, but Biden has been quick to use the same method to reverse the damage. Since the start of his term, Biden has signed orders pausing extraction of oil and gas from federal land and halting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, among other things. Executive orders can only go so far, however, and Biden has subsequently turned to legislative solutions to enact broader, more enduring change. Addressing climate change through legislation comes with its fair share of issues, though. Although Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress, it is still very unlikely they will find the necessary votes to advance major legislation. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of the most conservative Democrats in the 50-seat majority, has opposed efforts to end the filibuster, a tool used by the minority party to necessitate 60 or more votes to pass most legislation. In addition, Manchin has defended the continuation of coal production in West Virginia. As the incoming chair of the Senate Energy Committee, Manchin will have inordinate power in dictating the Democrats’ climate agenda. As a result, the vast majority of green initiatives are unlikely to pass in the Senate.
This predicament is unlikely to change, because although most voters support climate action, only 42% of them said it was very important in determining who they vote for. This means that climate change is not currently a deciding issue in national elections, and elected officials can effectively ignore climate change and still get re-elected. Other structural obstacles, such as partisan gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and the Republican bias in the Senate, only compound the problem, making climate change that much more unlikely to be addressed. Additionally, the conservative majority in the Supreme Court increases the likelihood that passed legislation will face major legal challenges, or may even be overturned.
The situation is dire, but not hopeless. In fact, the tools Biden needs to fight this crisis can be found in the actions of the Trump administration itself. In early 2019, the Trump administration declared a state of emergency, redirecting billions of dollars to build the border wall. At the time, Trump claimed that the flow of “drugs and criminals'' crossing the southern border constituted an “invasion” of the country. These claims were racist, xenophobic, and false, but they provide a clue towards how Biden could combat the climate crisis. Trump’s emergency may have been baseless—the flow of “drugs and criminals'' was mostly made up of asylum seekers—but it is an undeniable fact that climate change is a true emergency. Were Biden to declare a state of emergency, it would greatly increase his ability to direct funding towards clean energy initiatives and programs to combat climate change. This strategy has support from Democratic leadership too. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said earlier this year that the Biden administration should explore declaring an emergency as an option. Some might say that Biden should not act so unilaterally, and were it any other issue, those claims would be justified. Climate change is not a normal issue, though, and the US and the world at large cannot afford half-hearted measures and partisan fighting. The work must be done now, and every day of inaction is a day wasted.
Lastly, even if Biden passes major legislation, the Democrats win a supermajority, or a state of emergency is declared, the Biden plan still will not be enough. Biden’s plan currently calls for net-zero emissions by 2050, but given the small amount of time before the carbon budget is spent, net-zero emissions need to be achieved in significantly less time. To put it frankly, Biden’s climate plan should have been implemented in 1990, not 2021. If Biden wants to achieve anything significant regarding climate change, he will not only need to think outside the box politically, but make his goals more ambitious as well. Whether or not he will do that remains to be seen, but given the importance of climate change, how high Biden aims and how much he achieves will ultimately determine the success of his presidency and the future of our planet.
2021 High School essay contest Honorable Mention:
Re-establishing International Trade Rules: An Urgent Agenda for
America
By Bohan Zhang, BASIS Independent McLean
June 14, 2021
On May 27, 2020, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai held an introductory meeting with the Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. As the trade chiefs of the world’s two largest economies, Liu and Tai’s meeting raised expectations for the newly-formed Biden administration’s trade policy. Especially, how would the new government handle the current dilemma between global influence and domestic stability.
Over the last four years, the Trump administration was kidnapped by rising right-wing populism and domestic protectionism triggered by ongoing technical changes and globalization. During the 1980s, suffering the gradual loss of the American manufacturing industry's comparative advantage, President Ronald Reagan's laissez-faire economic ideology led to the financialization of American enterprises and hollowed out the labor-intensive domestic industries. Decades later, the service sector constitutes 70% of America's GDP; the well-being of the American economy relies on banks and high-tech firms. This has taken a toll on the working class, which has seen the evaporation of 7.5 million manufacturing jobs. Against this backdrop, calls for trade protectionism rose paved the way for former President Donald Trump, who was elected for his promise to fix America's structural woes.
After assuming office, President Trump faced constant declines in traditional labor-intensive industries, like steelmaking and automobile manufacturing, brought on by fast-developing automation technologies. In contrast to Reagan's support for the liberalization of capital and product markets, Trump favored anti-globalism as a solution, sacrificing pre-established interdependent economic relationships between the U.S. and other countries for domestic political stability. He announced that the United States would quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership(TPP) soon after he took office. The TPP, a milestone healthy and fair international trade agreement, took his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, years of negotiations. Trump also stated he was willing to compensate American corporations like Under Armor for the costs of moving their factories home and bringing back American jobs. This series of acts signaled Trump's antagonistic attitude towards free trade and a strong desire for a politically stabilized but economically isolated America.
The severe consequences of Trump's isolationist policies accelerated during his last year in office. America's major competitor, China, took advantage of the underdeveloped economic conditions of its neighboring countries and signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which was designed to combat American economic influence in the Pacific Rim. With tariffs expected to reduce on over 90% of traded goods, the RCEP has fostered the use of the Chinese Renminbi and diminished the dominance of the U.S Dollar as the only global hard currency. China also signed its Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with the EU right before the 2020 U.S presidential election, further reducing China's reliance on the American high-tech industry and curtailing America's importance as a leading foreign investor in the EU.
Though facing these two challenges, the Trump administration still claimed success in protecting America's interests in trade during the election of 2020. Despite the controversies on whether such policies truly reduced the trade deficit, which hovered around -3% of U.S GDP, the consequences were evident from a strategic perspective. American corporations faced reduced market shares due to retaliatory policies; America's credibility was strained; America's competitors formed new partnerships, diminishing America's global economic leadership.
The severe consequences of these "flawed" trade policies focused the world's attention on restructuring the international trade order. Meanwhile, the American middle class's demand to isolate the country from the global economy grew continuously. Well-known as the promoter of world economic development, the newly-formed Biden administration is expected to lead America to overcome the dilemma between domestic politics and international leadership, especially in the current post-pandemic era. President Biden aims to correct the previous anti-globalism of U.S. trade policy and play a bigger role in world trade, reclaiming its international leadership role.
Nevertheless, Trump's neglect of multilateral cooperation with America's traditional alliances allowed its competitors to form mutually beneficial trade agreements that isolated America, putting the country in a disadvantageous position. To restore America's influence in global trade, Secretary of State Antony Blinken's recent high-key visits to Japan and South Korea signaled that "America is back" to both allies and competitors. In addition, the administration has already used its established cooperative relationship with the EU to contain China's expanding influence. Triggered by human rights issues in China's Xinjiang region, the EU-China Investment Deal has been put in jeopardy, giving the United States the chance to play its geopolitical cards and gain trade benefits.
It is also notable that, while aiming to create a more dynamic world trade pattern, the Biden administration is not pursuing the polar opposite of the previous administration's policies as it is aware that many citizens are still concerned about foreign competition. Thus, merely pursuing the acceleration of trade and international communication in the world is not enough. In addition to being a promoter, the new administration has to position America as the regulator of world trade. According to analysts, the Biden Administration is likely to more actively work with allies through the existing system to hold China accountable for its unfair trade practices and to engage in fewer overtly provocative unilateral trade actions. The administration also promised to support the idea of "Made in America" during the 2020 Campaign, which includes aggressive efforts to protect intellectual property. This move is aimed at prohibiting trade secret theft, especially within the technology sector.
Though it’s only been a few months since the new administration took office, we already see promising progress on rebuilding America’s global trade leadership, which could potentially solve trade problems that trouble both the American and international markets. Moreover, the Biden administration is trying to implement policies to address domestic economic problems. In contrast to the Trump administration’s uncompromising anti-globalization strategy, the new administration’s strategy seems to be more flexible.
The trend of globalization and trade liberalization is most likely irreversible. The recovery of the global trade pattern is taking place, but it is only palliative to addressing a fundamental political issue: conservative populism that resulted from the job losses under the irreversible shifting of American comparative advantage. A long-term solution, in my opinion, would be developing a superior education infrastructure and fostering innovation. With more skilled workers and high-tech jobs, we can make America great again. In the words of world-renowned economist Arvind Panagariya: “ In the end, choosing between free trade and protectionism, you have to ask where protectionism has resulted in prosperity—and it is pretty hard to find evidence of that.”