How Joe Biden plans to use executive powers to fight climate change

10 ways Biden plans to fight climate change, with or without Congress.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is the president-elect of the United States.

Now the work begins to make the handoff between governments, figure out who will fill key posts, and start making the to-do list.

It’s not clear yet however who will control the Senate. That may end up becoming the biggest obstacle for Biden’s administration, particularly his ambitious agenda to deal with climate change.

His proposal calls for an aggressive shift to clean energy, carbon neutrality by the middle of the century, and massive federal investment to drive these changes. Contrast that with President Donald Trump, who put forth no plan to deal with climate change and actively undermined existing policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

But Biden’s most ambitious ideas — particularly using $1.7 trillion in government money — requires Congress to go along, and it’s not clear he’ll have a willing majority. Even a narrow Democratic majority could be thwarted by the filibuster.

Biden is also likely to undo most if not all of Trump’s environmental rollbacks with his executive powers. Trump has repealed or weakened 125 environmental regulations, like protections for endangered species, environmental risk assessments for infrastructure, and has opened protected wilderness for fossil fuel development and logging.

Some of the most notable rollbacks are of rules seeking to cut greenhouse gases, like the Clean Power Plan, energy efficiency standards, and fuel economy regulations for cars and trucks. Many of these rollbacks are also tied down in ongoing lawsuits across state and federal courts that may take months to resolve.