U.S. President Joe Biden hit the ground running Wednesday, with plans to sign a raft of executive orders to start the process of reversing Trump administration environmental and energy regulations and set the groundwork of what will be the federal government’s most aggressive effort to date to combat climate change. On the day of his inauguration as the 46 th president, Biden turned to fulfilling a host of promises to take executive actions aimed at reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating an already fast-moving shift from fossil-fuel-fired power plants to renewable energy resources.

Biden’s “day one” actions included executive orders that will launch the process of reversing some of the Trump administration’s most “harmful actions” preventing the country from combating the climate crisis, domestic “climate czar” Gina McCarthy told reporters Tuesday. On the international front, Biden will formally resubmit the U.S. to the Paris climate agreement , which the U.S. officially exited in November under the direction of Donald Trump. The United Nations could accept U.S. membership in the international pledge within 30 days, beginning the process of repairing the rift between the U.S. and the majority of countries agreeing to its targets for carbon emissions reduction. The executive order will also seek to roll back oil and gas infrastructure projects opposed by the Obama administration and […]