Biden makes historic choices on climate change
Dear Friends and Concerned Citizens, Date: 12/20/20
We are taking this moment to acknowledge an historic occasion. Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico, a member of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe, has been nominated to lead the Department of the Interior. Micheal Regan is set to lead the EPA, the first Black Southerner to be nominated.
Both understand how climate and environmental issues must focus on ending exploitation. Both are committed to building a more sustainable economy that can work for all. And from their lived experiences, they know the pain inflicted on communities ignored for too long, and now will be in positions of power to fundamentally change who’s at the table forming environmental policy.1
As an Indigenous woman, Rep. Haaland’s nomination to the Department of the Interior is especially significant, putting her in charge of an agency which too often in our history has stolen land and violated Native rights and treaties.2
The Biden climate team’s depth and breadth of experience is the change we’ve demanded for years. Tell your senators how much you support them for confirmation.
Michael Regan is ready to lead the next wave of a renewable energy future — he worked on air quality at EPA under the Clinton and Bush Administrations, served as the head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, and led a historic cleanup of toxic coal ash dumps across the state that threatened the drinking water of millions of residents.
Rep. Haaland has been an environmental justice champion in the House, leading efforts like requiring the Department of the Interior to consider environmental justice impacts in all its decisions, and the fight to set aside 30% of all U.S. land for conservation by 2030. She’s stood shoulder to shoulder with protestors and water protectors at Standing Rock and is determined to end all fossil fuel drilling and extraction on public lands.
These revolutionary nominations were made possible because of activism — work done by countless activists, mostly people of color, fighting for environmental justice and Indigenous rights and dignity over decades to make this possible.
It’s your victory too, especially if you’ve been fighting for this change for a long time. Every letter you and other Sierra Club changemakers wrote, every call you made, every door you knocked, and every social media post you shared led to this. We’ve built a massive movement for climate justice where it is now a top priority of the incoming Administration.
As qualified as they are, the Senate still has to vote. Tell your senators to approve them!
Deb Haaland and Michael Regan are forming a broad, progressive climate team. They join former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm at the Department of Energy, former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy as the White House domestic climate coordinator, former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry as international climate coordinator, and Brenda Mallory, a lawyer with a long history of fighting for environmental justice, who will lead the Council on Environmental Quality.
This is a big deal. All of these champions can help deliver a climate agenda that meets the needs of the crisis we are facing. This new page starts with continued pressure on Congress to approve these historic nominations.
Send your senators a message now (and be ready to follow it up with a phone call, personal letter, or lobbying visit)! It will only happen if we have their back to take bold actions on climate and environmental justice that will undo centuries of environmental racism and destruction to our air, water, lands, wildlife, and climate.
Thanks for everything you do to protect people and the environment,
Melinda Pierce, Legislative Director, Sierra Club
References
1- “With historic picks, Biden puts environmental justice front and center” Washington Post, Dec 17, 2020.
2- “Growing Our Roots: Anti-Racism in Conservation Work,” Sierra Club, August 27, 2020.
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I don’t buy it. I would rather see an old rich white man with a history of fighting for environmental justice than a handicapped gay black woman with indigenous and Latinx ancestors, and a resume that includes stints at Goldman Sachs, Raytheon and Exxon.
I am not impressed by tokenism. I’d gotten a bulletin from North Carolina activists, with ten reasons they oppose Regan; I saw a similar list from California activists about Mary Nichols.
One criterion might be that a potential nominee should be endorsed by environmentalists (or the corresponding engaged community for other agencies) from the person’s own state. Haaland may be the first Native American to head Interior, but what really seems “histoic to me is that she’s apparently not a sellout; I’ve seen nothing but positive words from activists about her, and she participated in the Standing Rock encampment. Whereas Regan supported the ACP.
And what about the chip mills deforesting the southeast to send wood across the Atlantic to be burned in old coal-fired power plants, emitting more CO2 than the coal they replaced, but garnering climate credits because they’re supposedly climate neutral because the trees will grow back (if allowed).