climate change

‘We Need to Get Things Moving': Meteorologist on Biden's Climate Plan

While Climate Central's chief meteorologist is optimistic about Biden’s plans, she is cautious because time is running out.

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Since his first day in office when he signed an executive order getting the United States back into the Paris Agreement, President Joe Biden had laid out the most aggressive climate plan in the country’s history.

This includes having “net zero” greenhouse emissions by 2050, stopping oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and beginning the transition to electric vehicles.

“They're not just bringing this into science and environment and energy, but they're also bringing this into transportation, they're bringing this into the economy,” said Bernadette Woods Placky, Climate Central’s chief meteorologist. “They're bringing this into the justice department and environmental justice issues.”

While Placky is optimistic about Biden’s plans, she is cautious because time is running out.

“A lot of the basics were understood in 1980, and we've waited so long to do anything about them, and the longer we wait, the harder it is to solve these issues, the more expensive it is, the more people die, the more health that's affected.” She said. “I don't think people fully understand the longer we wait, the worse it's going to be because our greenhouse gases that we put into the atmosphere now stay there for hundreds to thousands of years, and that's why you hear such urgency in our voices when we talk about the subject matter. It's not one specific avenue or one specific policy, it's more the timelines. We need to get things moving and we need to get them moving fast.”

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