Joe Biden Is Delivering on His Green Promises | Opinion

Nearly every day, former President Donald Trump asks the same question on his failing social media platform, Truth Social: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

When it comes to the environment and, most urgently, addressing the climate crisis, the answer is unequivocal: yes. It is a simple and indisputable fact that President Joe Biden has done more than any other president in history to increase safe renewable energy, address the climate crisis, and protect the environment. And we are better off because of it.

Because here is the truth: The climate crisis is not coming; it is here now. We see it around us every day: wildfires and droughts, stronger hurricanes, and flooding. The U.S. just went through our hottest winter on record. The crisis impacts everything, from our day-to-day lives to our health and food systems, to our economy and our national security. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris understand this and have made addressing the climate crisis a priority since Day 1 of their administration.

On his first day in office, in a direct rebuke to Trump and his disastrous environmental policies, Biden announced the United States would rejoin the Paris Agreement, an international pact signed by more than 190 countries committing to avert catastrophic levels of climate change. Biden followed that announcement with a pledge to cut our climate pollution by at least 50 percent by 2030, making the United States a global leader in the fight against the climate crisis.

With two monumental legislative achievements—the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act—Biden also centered the environment and addressing the climate crisis.

The infrastructure bill, which the president signed into law in his first year in office, is a vital step toward building a stronger and, importantly, cleaner economy. The law provides for several critically important climate investments, including funding for electric vehicle charging stations, clean electric buses, community resilience against natural disasters, lead pipe replacement, and the cleanup of polluting oil and gas wells. The law also includes a historic investment of $20 billion in clean-energy research and development.

Biden followed the infrastructure bill with passage of the Inflation Reduction Act—the largest-ever investment in the fight against the climate crisis that any country has ever made. Together with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, this legislation will slash the country's planet-warming carbon emissions by up to 40 percent by the end of this decade. It puts the country on the path toward a net-zero economy by 2050. The law also invests billions to promote clean energy and climate justice. American families will save more than $27 billion on their electricity bills by 2030. And it will help to spur clean-energy innovation and strengthen domestic manufacturing. Already, more than 270,000 new clean energy jobs have been created.

The president has also worked aggressively to reduce the impact of fossil fuels. Late last year, thanks in significant part to Biden's leadership, nearly 200 countries took the historic step of agreeing to a global pact to transition away from fossil fuels—a first in the nearly 30-year global effort to address the climate crisis. And in January, the Biden administration announced that it was pausing approval of export licenses for liquid natural gas, a particularly potent contributor to global heating. The move is a big win for vulnerable communities on the front lines of the climate crisis and is a major step toward ending our reliance on dirty fossil fuels.

Just last week, Biden's Interior Department raised royalty rates for companies drilling for fossil fuels on public lands, for the first time in nearly a century. And for the fourth year in a row, the president's budget proposes an end to outrageous fossil fuel subsidies to the oil and gas industry totaling $35 billion in corporate welfare over the next decade.

And since climate deniers took charge of the House of Representatives, key House committees, and the speakership following the 2022 midterm elections, Biden has used his executive authority to continue to advance his climate agenda. In the last two years, Biden has used the power of his office to sign executive orders to measure greenhouse gasses from the transportation sector and to establish the American Climate Corps, as well as to pursue his Justice40 Initiative's goal of ensuring that at least 40 percent of climate investment benefits go to communities marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.

The president has also used his authority to protect land from coast to coast. According to a recent analysis from the Center for American Progress, in the Biden administration's first three years, it has conserved more than 24 million acres of public lands and has channeled more than $18 billion toward conservation projects. This is additionally significant given the increasing challenges that the climate crisis poses to biodiversity.

Has Biden done everything the environmental community has wanted? No. Is there more he can and should do to address the existential threat from the climate crisis? Absolutely yes. And the president would probably be the first person to say so. But as the campaign heats up, Biden has a tremendous record of accomplishment on environmental issues that he—and all Democrats—can and should run on.

Just as Biden took bold action on Day 1 to address climate change, Trump would take equal—if not greater—action on Day 1 to undo all the progress we've made, not only over the last three years but over the last three decades when it comes to protecting the environment and addressing the climate crisis.

So, when it comes to Trump's question, we are far better off than we were four years ago. And we simply cannot afford to go back.

Michelle Deatrick is the founder and chair of the DNC Council on the Environment and Climate Crisis.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.