Lessons on Climate Change: Crafting a Better Future in a Time of Transition

President Joe Biden has made climate a major pillar of his administrative agenda. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

This article was submitted as part of the Columbia Political Review’s 2021 Annual High School Essay Contest. Its content is dated 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.

Jack Bourdeaux is a high school student at the Hotchkiss School. He is the winner of the Columbia Political Review’s 2021 Annual High School Essay Contest.