What impact will Joe Biden have on the fight against climate change?

ON JANUARY 25TH John Kerry, a former senator and secretary of state, made his first speech as America’s new climate envoy. Addressing world leaders by video at a conference on climate change, he lamented the absence of leadership from his country over the past four years under Donald Trump. That, he assured them, had changed. “We’re proud to be back,” he said. “We’ll do everything in our power to make up for it.”

During his election campaign, President Joe Biden called climate change the “number-one issue facing humanity.” This distinguished him sharply from his predecessor, who called man’s impact on the climate a “hoax” and rolled back environmental protections. Mr Biden has moved quickly to overturn Mr Trump’s most egregious acts. He announced plans to bring America back into the Paris climate agreement, an international accord to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. He signed an executive order revoking a permit for Keystone XL, a controversial pipeline carrying crude oil from Canada. He paused new leases of federal lands or offshore waters to oil and gas companies, and launched a review into existing ones. More is to come. Mr Biden said in his campaign that he wants to put America on track for net-zero emissions by 2050, decarbonise the electricity grid by 2035, end subsidies for fossil fuels and spend $2trn on “green” measures over four years, including new technologies.

Climate activists tout Mr Biden’s agenda as a game-changer. Other countries already took action during Mr Trump’s term. Last year the European Union, Japan and South Korea all beefed up their climate commitments, promising to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. In September China, the world’s biggest carbon contributor, promised to become carbon-neutral by 2060. Adding an American mid-century target to these pledges would mean that 45% of global emissions have an expiry date. If countries are able to meet those goals, that would shave down the amount the planet is expected to warm, putting the projected temperature rise by the end of the century at 2.3-2.4°C above pre-industrial levels, rather than the previously forecast 2.7-3.1°C. Much more work would be needed to limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C—the target set out by the Paris agreement which, although still disastrous for some countries, would probably avoid the worst consequences of global warming worldwide. Last year’s crop of climate pledges were made in the absence of American leadership. Its re-engagement may increase pressure on more reluctant states. Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a former special envoy for climate change at the World Bank, says that laggards like Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Scott Morrison of Australia have been “hiding behind the petticoats” of Mr Trump. They won’t be able to any longer.

Mr Biden faces difficulties in fulfilling all his climate promises. Signing executive orders, of the type seen so far, is one thing; passing new laws is quite another. Democrats may have control of the White House, Congress and (narrowly) the Senate, but Mr Biden still needs the support of at least ten Republican senators to break the chamber’s filibuster. This makes overtly radical climate legislation—such as the “Green New Deal” espoused by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman from New York, and others—unfeasible. To achieve most of his goals, Ms Kyte says, Mr Biden will have to make them impossible for at least some of his rivals to resist, by packaging them as solutions to mainstream America’s more tangible concerns: jobs, incomes and livelihoods. Mr Biden knows this. He calls the transition to renewable energy transition a “gigantic opportunity to create really good jobs”. Attitudes are changing, too. In January America’s Chamber of Commerce suggested that it was open to the idea of carbon pricing and emissions caps. And Mr Biden has shown a willingness to pull multiple levers of power in pursuit of his climate agenda, announcing support for action through diplomacy, financial regulation, transport planning and more.

The next decade is crucial in averting climate catastrophe, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Mr Biden, along with Mr Kerry, will also have to helm America’s efforts at climate diplomacy, helping to persuade other countries to go further, faster. The Biden administration believes it has to co-operate with China to make sufficient progress on reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions, but arguments over security, trade and human rights make that difficult. COP26, the UN’s climate summit scheduled for November in Glasgow, will be a crucial test of the new president’s skills. But he seems committed to the task. Almost all the calls he made to world leaders after winning the election mentioned climate change, according to his transition team. And the world in which Mr Biden assumes office is different from the one he left at the end of the Obama administration. The need for economic recovery from the covid-19 pandemic means that governments are prepared to plough unprecedented sums of money into projects. Renewable energy is cheaper than ever before. Greener pastures might, at last, lie ahead.