When Joe Biden first became president, some found it hard to believe that he cared very much about climate change.
With a global pandemic raging, the former vice president and longtime senator pitched his 2020 campaign as a return to normalcy and a referendum on the erratic leadership of Donald Trump. His campaign pledges to ban drilling on federal lands and spend trillions of dollars to decarbonize the economy — though they amounted to among the most ambitious climate agenda ever put forward by a major-party candidate — were widely seen as consolation prizes to skeptical progressives and climate hawks, like those who had backed Senator Bernie Sanders or former Washington Governor Jay Inslee in the 2020 Democratic primaries.
It’s clear now that these skeptics underestimated the outgoing president. Biden’s climate agenda, broader and more ambitious than that of any U.S. president before him, is poised to stand as the most consequential feat of his presidency, especially given his self-evident failure to “heal the soul of the nation” by ushering it... Read more
