Joseph Robinette Biden

“ And many climate and health calamities are colliding all at once. It’s not just the pandemic that keeps people inside; it’s poor air quality. Multiple studies have shown that air pollution is associated with an increased risk of death from COVID-19. And just like we need a unified national response to COVID-19, we desperately need a unified national response to the climate crisis because there is a climate crisis. ”

“ And today’s executive order will help strengthen that commitment by working with other nations to support the most vulnerable to the impact of climate change and to increase our collective resilience. ”

“ A key plank of our Build Back Better Recovery Plan is building a modern, resilient climate infrastructure and clean energy future that will create millions of good-paying union jobs — not 7, 8, 10, 12 dollars an hour, but prevailing wage and benefits. ”

“ We need engineers to design them and workers to manufacture them. We need iron workers and welders to install them. Technologies they invent, design, and build will ultimately become cheaper than any other kind of energy, helping us dramatically expand our economy and create more jobs with a cleaner, cleaner environment. And we’ll become the world’s largest exporter of those technologies, creating even more jobs. ”

“ You know, we are also — we’re going to build 1.5 million
new energy-efficient homes and public housing units that are going to benefit communities three times over: one, by alleviating the affordable housing crisis; two, by increasing energy efficiency; and, three, by reducing the racial wealth gap
linked to home ownership.
We’re also going to create more than a quarter million jobs to do things like plug the millions of abandoned oil and gas wells that pose an ongoing threat to the health and safety of our communities. ”

“ Today, I’m signing a presidential memorandum making it clear that we will protect our world-class scientists from political interference and ensure they can think, research, and speak freely and directly to me, the Vice President, and the American people.
To summarize, this executive order — it’s about jobs — good-paying union jobs. It’s about workers building our economy back better than before. It’s a whole-of-government approach to put climate change at the center of our domestic, national security, and foreign policy. It’s advancing conservation ”

“ More Americans see and feel the devastation in big cities, small towns, coastlines, and in farmlands, in red states and blue states. And the Defense Department reported that climate change is a direct threat to more than two thirds of the military’s operational critical installations. ”

“ We see small business and master electricians designing, installing, and innovating energy-conserving technologies and building homes and buildings. And we’re going to reduce electric consumption and save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in energy costs in the process.
And when the previous administration reversed the Obama-Biden vehicle standard and picked Big Oil companies over American workers, the Biden-Harris administration will not only bring those standards back, we’ll set new, ambitious ones that our workers are ready to meet. ”

“ We have to start by creating new, good-paying jobs, capping those abandoned wells, reclaiming mines, turning old brownfield sites into new hubs of economic growth, creating new, good-paying jobs in those communities where those workers live because they helped build this country. ”

“ Transforming the American electric sector to produce power without carbon pollution will be a tremendous spur to job creation and economic competitiveness in the 21st century, not to mention the benefits to our health and to our environment. ”

“ We must keep — we must lead global response because neither challenge can be met, as Secretary Kerry has pointed out many times, by the United States alone. We know what to do, we’ve just got to do it. ”

“ We’re going to need scientists, the national labs, land-grant universities, historical black colleges and universities to innovate the technologies needed to generate, store, and transmit clean electric — clean electricity across distances, and battery technology, and a whole range of other things. ”