How The Biden Administration's Stance On Climate Could Impact Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - Many concerned about climate change believe the Biden administration will breathe new life into the battle against what burdens our planet.
Biden pledged to reduce the country's dependency on fossil fuels by 2050.
Minnesota Environmental Partnership executive director Steve Morse believes the inauguration of President Joe Biden signals a return to a science-based fight against climate change.
"This is like a breath of fresh air," he said. "There have been so many attempts and successes at undoing measures that had been put in place over the last few years to make progress."
Morse says he is hoping for reversals of the Trump administration's roll-back of rules, like cleaning up power plants and protecting children from polluted air.
He says we don't have a lot of time. Here in Minnesota, new reports show the state has regressed in its efforts to combat climate change.
"In the past year our emissions are actually going up when we need to reduce them by 50% by the year 2030 in 9 years according to science to order to avoid the worst catastrophic impact of climate, so we have a lot of work to do," said Morse.
Morse says Minnesotans should look to Washington to take the lead on issues that impact our state.
"We expect such things on the mining front: there is an effort to put more copper sulfite mining up in northern Minnesota and were very hopeful that the Biden administration would see the light and join in with where the Obama administration left off and not allow this type of mining in the BCWA watershed," said Morse.
He's hoping to see investment in waste water and drinking water infrastructure as well as increased investment in transit. But there are also issues his organization hopes get turned around sooner rather than later.
"In Minnesota we just recently permitted the Line 3 project which is a bill oil project to ship tar sand oil across Minnesota. We just permitted that in Minnesota and we expect today he is going to reverse the presidential permit for a similar pipeline, the Keystone pipeline, so that type of pipeline doesn't open," said Morse.
Morse says Biden's choices of Former Secretary of State John Kerry and Former EPA chief Gina McCarthy to lead this effort internationally and nationally signals the fight against climate change has been reset.
