{"id":18623,"date":"2021-01-29T23:36:57","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T23:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=497957"},"modified":"2021-01-29T23:36:57","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T23:36:57","slug":"the-first-100-bidens-sky-high-stack-of-executive-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/29\/the-first-100-bidens-sky-high-stack-of-executive-orders\/","title":{"rendered":"The First 100 \u2013 Biden\u2019s Sky-High Stack of Executive Orders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The following is an excerpt from The First 100, a short-run weekly newsletter analyzing federal climate action during the first months of the Biden administration. Sign up to get more of The First 100<\/a> in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Hi, I\u2019m Nathanael Johnson, and today is day 10 of the Biden administration. It\u2019s been another week with another (bigger!) round <\/a>of executive <\/a>orders<\/a> on climate change.<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Joe Biden is taking every opportunity he can to address climate change. His power is limited, though, because Biden alone can\u2019t make laws \u2014 he can\u2019t ban fracking, levy a carbon tax, or give everyone the money to put solar panels on their homes. But he has almost complete authority over the government bureaucracy, and when he tells that massive system to start using clean electricity and zero-emissions vehicles, as he did this week, it\u2019s a big deal.<\/p>\n

To give a sense of scale, the federal government employs<\/a> four times as many people as the biggest U.S. corporation \u2014Walmart<\/a>. It provides 9 million jobs, and its employees aren\u2019t all just pencil-pushers: Some of them, for example, fly fighter jets, burning a staggering amount of energy. The government uses <\/a>about as much energy each year as all the solar panels in the country <\/a>produce.<\/p>\n

In order to put postal employees in electric trucks and Secret Service agents in e-limos, automakers are going to have to ramp up their production lines. There are 650,000 vehicles in the government fleet \u2014 twice the number of electric cars Americans bought in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

As the government shifts its buying habits, the ripple effects will be real. Still, it’s important to remember that there\u2019s always some distance between a mandate being made and it being followed. These things take a while. The government isn\u2019t going to put in an order for half a million electric cars tomorrow; it\u2019s going to replace them as they break down over the next decade \u2014 or until a new president takes office and reverses everything Biden just did.<\/p>\n

But Wait … There\u2019s More.<\/span><\/p>\n