President-elect Joe Biden announced a serious warning about climate change on Saturday when he announced the candidates who will make up his environmental team. Biden stressed the need for the U.S. to reintroduce the Paris climate agreement and discussed how the country has often failed to protect low-income communities from environmental hazards.
“We’re in a crisis,” Biden said. “Just as we need to be a unified nation in response to COVID-19, we need a unified national response to climate change. We must meet the moment with the urgency it demands, as you would during any national emergency.”
While Mr Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris highlighted the ambitious agenda of the Biden administration, Biden insisted that they do not propose “dreams of cakes in the sky, these are concrete solutions to act”.
Biden linked the need to address climate change to “environmental justice,” and said “generations” have passed since the country fulfilled its “basic obligation” to provide all Americans with clean air and safe drinking water.
Biden announced the diversity of his candidates for the Cabinet, saying there are at least 12 historic appointments, including the congresswoman Deb Haaland, which if confirmed, would be the first Native American to head the Department of the Interior.
Haaland, who tweeted earlier this week that “a voice like mine has never been a cabinet secretary or head of the Interior Department,” said growing up in her mother’s Pueblo house made her “fierce.”
“This moment is profound when we consider the fact that a former Secretary of the Interior proclaimed his goal of ‘civilizing or exterminating.’ [Native Americans]”Haaland said.” I am a living witness to the failure of this horrible ideology. ”
In addition to Haaland, Biden nominated other candidates: Jennifer Granholm as Secretary of Energy, Michael Regan as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Brenda Mallory for the Chair of the Environmental Quality Council, Gina McCarthy as the national climate adviser and Ali Zaidi as the deputy national climate adviser. Biden has previously announced that John Kerry will serve as the special presidential envoy for the climate.
Granholm previously served as governor of Michigan and is a vocal advocate of clean energy, as Biden seeks to distance the U.S. from fossil fuels.
Granholm said Saturday that she is “obsessed” with “creating well-paid jobs in America in a global economy” and “taking advantage of the opportunities that a clean energy economy will provide workers.”
Regan, who would be the first black man to lead the EPA if confirmed, stressed that environmental protection and economic prosperity go “hand in hand.”
“We will make sure the EPA will once again be a strong partner for states, not an obstacle,” Regan said. “We will be motivated by our convictions that all people in our great country have a right to clean air, clean water and a healthier life, no matter how much money they have in their pocket, the color of their skin or the community they have. live in. “