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White House Holds Briefing Before Biden Signs Climate Executive Actions. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired January 27, 2021 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:30:00]

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Good afternoon.

President Biden is continuing to follow through on his key promise to take swift and bold action that addresses the climate crisis.

Building on his day-one actions of rejoining the Paris Agreement, and strengthening our clean air and water protections, and -- and holding polluters accountable, today he will take executive action to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad, while creating good-paying union jobs, building sustainable infrastructure, and delivering environmental justice.

I'm thrilled today, as a part of our effort to bring policy experts into the briefing room, we're joined by two very special guests who are going to talk to you all about today's executive orders and take a few questions as well. And I will always -- as always, play the role of bad cop when they have to go.

National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and my former boss, former Secretary of State John Kerry. And a big day for Boston in the briefing room, so OK.

(LAUGHTER)

With that, go ahead.

MCCARTHY: Thank you. A big day for Boston every day. Thank you, everybody.

Today President Biden will build on the actions he took on day one, and he'll take more steps to fulfill a commitment he made to tackle the climate crisis while creating good-paying union jobs and achieving environmental justice.

In his campaign, he and Vice President Harris put forward the most ambitious climate vision that any presidential ticket had every embraced, and he spent more time campaigning on climate than we have ever seen.

The president also has consistently identified the climate crisis as one of four interrelated existential crises that are gripping our nation all at once, and he's demanding answers that can address all four. And he's not waiting to take action, getting us started on his first day in office, because science is telling us that we don't have a moment to lose to fight against all four of these crises in a way that recognizes their intersectionality.

He's always committed the U.S. to re-enter -- I'm sorry. He's already committed the U.S. to re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement, and he committed us as well to start undoing the assault on our environment that has occurred over the past four years. And he is now taking additional action to really target the challenge of climate change.

So today for me is a very good day. Just one week into his administration, President Biden is continuing to move us forward at the breadth and the pace that climate science demands.

[12:35:00]

Today's executive order starts by saying, "It is the policy of this administration that climate considerations shall be an essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security." That's where the big guy comes in. It gives my colleague, John Kerry, the first ever international climate envoy, the authority to really drive forward a process that will restore American leadership on climate throughout the world. And you will see and hear more about that from Secretary Kerry.

MCCARTHY: But here at home, we have to do our part or we will not be able to make the kind of worldwide change that climate change demands. So this executive order establishes a White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, and it directs everyone who works for the president to use every tool available at our disposal to solve the climate crisis.

Because we're going to take a whole-of-government approach. We're going to power our economy with clean energy, we're going to do that in a way that will produce millions of American jobs that are going to be good-paying, that are going to be jobs that have the opportunity for workers to join a union.

Because, as President Biden has often told us, when he thinks of climate change, his first thought is about jobs, and it should be. Because people in this country need a job, and this is about making that happen in the most creative and significant way that the federal government can move forward.

And we're going to make sure that nobody is left behind, and I'm not just talking about communities in terms of environmental justice, but workers as well. This order takes historic strides to address environmental injustice, it creates both a White House interagency task force to address environmental justice as well as an advisory council.

It directs the Department of Health and Human Services to create an Office of Climate Change and Health Equity because, after all, climate change is the most significant public health challenge of our time.

And it tasks the Department of Justice with establishing an Office of Climate Justice because we know the communities who are being hurt, and we know we have to start enforcing the standards today and ensuring that they are part of the solution and in places that we can invest.

In fact, it commits 40 percent of our investment in clean energy towards disadvantaged communities so they can benefit from the new jobs that are available and seed that better future.

President Biden's order establishes a working group on coal and power plant communities because we have to make sure that in this transition, every agency in government is using every tool at their disposal to drive resources to those communities.

And it fulfills longstanding commitments to leverage our vast natural resources to contribute to our clean energy future. It places a pause- and-review on new oil and gas leases on federal public lands and waters, consistent with a promise President Biden has repeatedly made and has been very clear in the face of efforts to distort his promise.

And it sets a goal of doubling offshore wind production by 2030. In addition, he plans to sign a presidential memorandum that aims to restore scientific integrity across the federal government and earn back the public's trust, making a commitment to base solutions on the best available science and data.

So today is a very big day for science and for our efforts to power our economy with good-paying union jobs. Thank you very much.

KERRY: Good afternoon, everybody, it's great to be here. Let me say, first of all, what a pleasure it is to be here with Gina. I am a big fan of Gina's, Gina and I worked very, very closely together during the campaign, when we sat down to bring the Bernie Sanders folks together around the Biden climate plan.

And she is the perfect person to be tackling domestic side of this equation, which is complicated. And nobody knows the details better than she does, and nobody's going to be more effective at corralling everybody to move in the same direction.

[12:40:00]

It's also an enormous pleasure for me to be here with Jen Psaki. She mentioned that nobody was her boss, but I had the privilege of working with her. And she, seven years ago, we gathered in the State Department Briefing Room, she's traded up, obviously, but she has not given away any of her fundamental principles and commitment to telling you all the truth, telling the American people the truth and doing so with great candor and transparency, and I'm very happy to be here with her.

The stakes -- the stakes on climate change just simply couldn't be any higher than they are right now. It is existential. We used that word too easily, we throw it away. But we have a big agenda in front of us on a global basis, and President Biden is deeply committed, totally seized by this issue, as you can tell by this executive order and by the other -- the initiative of getting back into Paris immediately. That's why he rejoined the Paris agreement so quickly, because he knows it is urgent.

He also knows that Paris alone is not enough, not when almost 90 percent of all of the planet's emissions, global emissions, come from outside of U.S. borders. We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn't solved.

So that's why, today, one week into the job, President Biden will sign this additional executive set of orders to help move us down the road, ensuring that ambitious climate action is global in scope and scale as well as national here at home.

Today, in the order that he will sign, that Gina has described to you, he makes climate central to foreign policy planning, to diplomacy, and to national security preparedness. It creates new platforms to coordinate climate action across the federal agencies and departments, sorely needed.

And most importantly, it commissions a national intelligence estimate on the security implications of climate change to give all of us an even deeper understanding of the challenge. This is the first time a president has ever done that, and our 17 intelligence agencies are going to come together and assess exactly what the danger and damage and potential risks are.

The order directs the State Department to prepare a transmittal package seeking Senate advice and consent on the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, an amendment that by itself, if ratified and fully enforced globally, could hold the earth's temperature by 0.5 of an entire degree, not insignificant.

And it sets forth a process for us to develop an ambitious new Paris target, as well as a U.S. climate finance plan, both of which are essential to our being able to bring countries of the world together to raise ambition and meet this moment when we go to Glasgow for the follow-on agreement to Paris.

So that's the only way for the world to succeed together, my friends, is to -- again, this is an issue where failure literally is not an option.

KERRY: As he committed to doing on the campaign trail, the president is announcing that he will host a leaders' summit on climate change less than three months from now on April 22nd, Earth Day, which will include a leader-level reconvening of the major economies' forum. We'll have specifics to lay out over time, but the convening of this -- of this summit is essential to ensuring that the -- that 2021 is going to be the year that really makes up for the lost time of the last four years, and that the U.N. Climate Conference, COP 26, as it's called, which the U.K. is hosting in November -- to make sure that it is an unqualified success.

The road to Glasgow will be marked not just by promises, but by progress at a pace that we can all be proud of, and Gina is going to be putting her efforts into making certain that that is true. The world will measure us by what we can do here at home.

So with these executive actions today, we believe we're steps further down that journey. Thank you.

PSAKI: All right. Let's start with (inaudible).

QUESTION: Thank you so much.

Secretary Kerry, a question for you, and then for Administrator McCarthy. You talked about the fact that it won't really matter what we do very much if the rest of the world doesn't do the same thing. But the U.S. has had a fairly rocky relationship with China recently. How do you plan to try to bring both China and India to the table on this issue?

[12:45:00]

KERRY: Well, before I -- before I answer that, let me just say that the issue of -- of -- of making a difference, i.e., what we do at home, what I'm saying is you can't solve the problem alone, but our doing things makes an enormous difference. What Gina succeeds in pulling together is essential to our ability to have credibility in the world.

Now, with respect to China, obviously, we have serious differences with China on some very, very important issues, and I am as mindful of that as anybody, having served as secretary of state and in the Senate. The issues of theft of intellectual property and -- and -- and access to market, South China Sea -- I mean, run the list. We all know them. Those issues will never be traded for anything that has to do with climate. That's not going to happen.

But climate is a critical standalone issue that we have to deal on in -- in the sense that China is 30 percent of the emissions of the world. We're about 15 percent of the emissions of the world. You add the E.U. to that, and you've got three entities that are more than -- than 55 percent or so. So it's urgent that we find a way to compartmentalize, to move forward, and we'll wait and see. But President Biden is very, very clear about the need to address the other issues with China, and I know some people have been concerned. Nothing is going to be siphoned off into one area from another.

QUESTION: And then a question for either of you on coal. Your executive order talks about oil and gas on federal lands, but it doesn't really say much about coal. What is this administration's policy when it comes to coal?

MCCARTHY: Well, in terms of the oil and gas decision, it was -- is to make sure that we take a little pause and review the entire strategy of how we're looking at public lands. So it will include looking at -- at what new leases ought to be approved and sold. It's looking at our ability also to look at coal in that mix.

So the program review is going to look at how we manage public lands consistent with climate, but also, consistent with the marriage between climate and really growing jobs of the future. So it will be in the mix to be looked at, but it is -- it is not, at this point, included. It was not part of the commitments on the campaign, but we're going to take a close look at all of it. And can I just add on your -- your comment about China, which, I'm not going to speak to the international dynamic. But I am going to say that part of the challenge that we face here is -- is a challenge that President Biden has already started to address with his Buy America pledge. We have to start not just go -- shifting to clean energy, but it has to be manufactured in the United States of America, you know, not in other countries. And there is going to be a large discussion about how we make sure that a lot of the investment is -- is about building up our manufacturing base again. That's great jobs. That's often, hopefully, union jobs. But it is also a wonderful opportunity for us to recoup the benefits of that manufacturing and lower the cost of clean energy.

Part of the way we're going to get there is by making sure the federal government buys American, and that the federal government looks at its procurement across every agency so that the breadth of what we spend is spent designed to advance job growth in the United States, to advance health benefits for environmental justice communities, and to begin to tackle the very challenge -- the existential challenge of climate change.

PSAKI: Jeff Mason?

QUESTION: Thank you. Jeff Mason with Reuters. A question for both of you. Can you give us a sense of when you expect to have these so- called NDC or U.S. target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Paris Accord? And can you also give us a sense of how ambitious you plan to make that number? Will it be 40 percent, 50 percent, higher than that?

MCCARTHY: Well...

KERRY: We're united in this, so...

MCCARTHY: Yeah, I'm -- I'm the dude who's supposed to deliver this in a timely way, and he sets the timing. So the -- basically, we want to make sure that the NDC is something that can be announced before the summit on Earth Day. And so we're going to be out of the gate working with the agencies to see what kind of reductions and mitigation opportunities there are, and also, again, to look at our public lands to make sure that we can continue to store carbon in our soil, to work with agriculture and others, to look at how we better manage our forests so we're not seeing the devastating forest fires that we've been having before.

[12:50:15]

So all across the federal government, every agency -- and you'll see many of them specifically tasked in this executive order -- will participate in the task force that we're going to have to actually develop the most aggressive NDC that we can to deliver the kind of boost that Secretary Kerry is looking for, to be able to ensure that our international efforts are robust and -- and sufficient to address the challenge internationally.

QUESTION: And just to follow up on that, for house -- for Secretary Kerry, how do you assure international partners that the U.S. will stick to whatever you propose after having seen the Trump administration take the U.S. out of the Paris Accord?

KERRY: Well, that's precisely why we're going to stick by it, and I think our word is strong.

I've been on the phone for the last few days talking to our allies in Europe, elsewhere around the world, and they are welcoming us back. They know that this administration already had a significant part of what has brought us to -- will bring us to Glasgow, which was the Paris agreement. The Obama-Biden administration had great credibility on this issue, and having President Biden be the person now who is driving this forward is enormously meaningful to -- to -- to the folks there.

KERRY: And they also know that I was deeply involved in the negotiations in Paris. And -- and now asked by the president -- by President Biden, to make certain we do the same in Glasgow (ph), if not more.

So I -- I -- I have had no one question our credibility at this point in time. Someone probably will and the answer will be that I think we can achieve things in, of course, in the next four years that will move the market place, the private sector, global finance, innovation and research that in fact no -- no one -- no political person in the future would be able to undo what the planet is going to be organizing over these next months and years.

This is the start of something new. I don't know if you read Larry Fink's letter of BlackRock the other day -- yesterday. But there's a new -- new awareness among major asset managers and commercial banks and others about the need to be putting resources into this endeavor because it is -- it is a major investment demand.

So I think the proof will be in what we do, neither Gina nor I are going to start throwing around a lot of big promises.

But you heard what she just said and we will work very closely because we're going to try to bring to the table to help in form her and the folks she's working with what we're picking up abroad and what people are doing abroad and the steps that they're taking and how we now have to measure ourselves against them and they will measure themselves against us. We are well of that.

PSAKI: (Inaudible).

MCCARTHY: I just want to call attention to the fact that cities and states have really picked up the -- the initiative to move forward on clean energy because the solutions are cheap. The solutions compete effectively against fossil fuels.

We are talking about solutions that we're not asking anybody to sacrifice but add to their advantage. And if you look at the record over the past four years, while the prior administration might have wanted energy -- clean energy to head in a different direction, it's gone faster and farther than anyone ever expected. And the idea that we could with this new work that we're doing together send signals to the market place who are purchasing at the federal level and are relooking at different ways of having on the ground change.

We can build that demand; we can actually grow significantly millions of clean energy jobs. And all of the sudden the question won't be whether the private sectors going to buy into it, the private sectors going to drive it.

And so this is going to be a signal setter, the way the federal government ought to set on what our values are, what we think the future needs to be. And that's -- this is a value lading -- laden effort that President Biden has undertaken with full knowledge that it's going to benefit jobs, it's going to benefit our health and it's going to lead to that future we want to hand to our children.

PSAKI: We'll just do the two in the front and then they will come back, I promise. So go ahead.

QUESTION: Thank you. Mr. Secretary, if you would, there's -- there certainly are oil and gas industry workers who are watching you folks right now who will hear the message -- the takeaway to them is that they are seeing an end to their livelihoods.

[12:55:00]

What -- what do you say to them? Particularly those people who --- who President Trump struck a chord with on the campaign trail when he promised to save their jobs? What is your message to them right now?

And also to the oil industry executives who are listening, are you putting them on notice today?

KERRY: Well, we didn't come here to put anybody on notice except to the serious notice about President Biden's intent to do what needs to be done to deal with this crisis and it is a crisis.

With respect to those workers, no two people are more, in this room, are more concerned about it. And the president of the United States has expressed in every comment he has made about climate, the need to grow the new jobs that pay better, that are cleaner that I mean you look at the consequences of black lung for a miner, for instance, and measure that against the fastest growing job in the United States before COVID was solar power technician.

The same people can do those jobs but the choice of doing the solar power one now is a better choice. And similarly you have the second fastest growing job pre-COVID was wind turbine technician. This is happening.

Seventy-five percent, 70 percent of all the electricity that's come online in the United States in the last few years came from renewables, not -- you know coal plants have been closing over the last 20 years. So what President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices, that they have alternatives that they could be the people to go to work to make the solar panels. They were making them here at home. That is going to be a particular focus of the build back better agenda.

And I think that unfortunately workers have been fed a false narrative, no surprise right, for the last few years. They've been fed the notion that somehow dealing with climate is coming at their expense. No, it's not. What's happening to them is happening because of other market forces already taking place.

And -- and -- and what the -- what the finance hears, the big banks, the asset managers, private investors, venture capital are all discovering is there's a lot of money to be made in the creation of these new jobs in these sectors. So whether it's green hydrogen that is going to come, whether it is geothermal heat or whether -- whatever it's going to be, those are jobs.

The same worker who works in South Carolina today putting together a BMW, which happens to be made there and -- and is currently an internal combustion engine, can put together a car but its electric. So this is not a choice between having jobs -- having good jobs, having the quality of life.

Quality of life will be better when Gina has put her term together that produces choices for us that are healthier, less cancer, cleaner air. The greatest -- the greatest cost of America, the greatest cost of children being hospitalized every summer in the United States, we spent 55 billion a year on it, is environmentally induced asthma.

That will change as we begin to reign in what we use to call pollution in this country because it is pollution. And I think that workers are going to see that with the efforts of the Biden administration, they're going to have a much better set of choices and frankly, it will create more jobs than stuck where we were.

MCCARTHY: Could I just add by pointing out a couple of things in the executive order that I want you to -- just call to your attention. We talked about the civilian conservation core. That is an opportunity to put younger people into work in -- in vitally important efforts. But if you look at this, it also has set up a task force that is looking at these cool communities -- communities that are really reliant on their local energy and utility.

MCCARTHY: And it talks about how do we revitalize those economies. And it talks about how we can put people to work using the skills they currently have where they are to start looking at those old abandoned oil and gas wells that are spewing out methane or -- or all of the coal that is mines that haven't been properly closed that are doing the same. That has great impact on climate but also will keep an opportunity for those -- for those individual workers to have work in their own communities.

We're not going to ask people to go from the middle of Ohio or Pennsylvania and ship out to the coast to have solar jobs. You know, solar jobs will be everywhere, but we need to put people to work in their own communities.

[13:00:00]