WASHINGTON — Joe Biden is picking deal-makers and fighters to lead a climate team he’ll ask to remake and clean up the nation’s transportation and power-plant systems, and as fast as politically possible.
While the president-elect’s picks have the experience to do the heavy lifting required in a climate overhaul of the U.S. economy, they also seem to be reassuring skeptics that he won’t neglect the low-income, working class and minority communities hit hardest by fossil fuel pollution and climate change.
Progressives, energy lobbyists, environmental groups and auto workers on Wednesday welcomed Biden’s choice of popular former Mayor Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary. His expected picks of former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm for energy secretary and former Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy as leader of domestic climate efforts also were met with general applause.
Along with the yet-to-be-named heads of EPA and the Interior Department, Buttigieg, Granholm and McCarthy will be part of an effort to rapidly build and develop technology to retool the United States’ transportation and power grid systems from petroleum and coal to a greater reliance on solar, wind and other cleaner forms of energy.
Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico is considered the frontrunner for Interior — and won a key endorsement Wednesday from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — but Biden has not announced his choice. If selected, Haaland would be the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary.
Biden has pledged to make slowing the impacts of climate change a top priority and has laid out an ambitious plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse emissions to net-zero by 2050. The plan includes an immediate return to the global 2015 Paris Agreement on climate and a pledge to stop all climate-damaging emissions from U.S. power plants by 2035.
Among those on his climate team, Granholm as Michigan’s governor helped nudge auto workers toward accepting a switch to production of more electric vehicles. That will be one of several big ticket clean-energy efforts she and others in the administration will be pushing under Biden’s promised $2 trillion climate plan, which will face obstacles from Republicans in Congress and battles over which priorities to implement first.
“She’s a good lady,” said retired United Auto Workers local president Pat Sweeney, who remembers Granholm for helping to broker the Detroit auto bailout during the 2008-09 financial crisis. “She’ll do a good job.”
Sweeney recalled Granholm personally telephoning him and other local union officials – more than once – to push for concessions needed to close the multibillion-dollar federal bailout to keep U.S. auto plants open. “She told us she was counting on us not to let her down, after she put her neck on the line for us,” Sweeney said.
