Andrea Thompson

 

Scientific American

  

[…continued…] That’s the good news. The not-so-good news: It’s unclear how much of this ambitious climate plan will actually be possible to implement in the current political environment. It seems likely that the Biden-Harris administration will almost immediately take a series of executive actions to reverse many Trump-era policies that stalled or reversed progress on climate action – such as rejoining the Paris Agreement, replacing the many Trump-era political appointees who have been openly hostile toward climate science and have attempted to use the existing regulatory authority of certain agencies, especially the Environmental Protection Agency, to achieve some modest emissions cuts.

   But large-scale legislative interventions […] will require congressional approval. Without Democratic control of the Senate, passing any substantive climate legislation will likely be a very steep uphill battle. The now very conservative US Supreme Court, too, may become an obstacle to even some forms of executive action or agency rule making, given the expectation of major court challenges […]