The Atlantic by Robinson Meyer 1/26/2021
The president’s most interesting climate proposal yet hasn’t appeared in an executive order.The U.S. federal government owns
645,047 motor vehicles, according to its most recent report on the matter. This fleet is, for the most part, a menagerie of trucks: construction vehicles, Ford F-150s,
armored vans that sit next to NASA launchpads so astronauts can quickly flee in case of an emergency. Many of those trucks—about a third of the federal fleet—are the white, cube-like U.S. Postal Service vans. Another third are passenger cars. The government owns a lot of vehicles.
Since he took office six days ago, President Joe Biden has
recommitted the United States to the Paris Agreement and canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. More policy is expected this week. But
his most interesting climate actions so far haven’t taken the form of executive orders or really appeared in writing at all. Yet they offer a clearer view of Biden’s approach to climate change—and its aspiration to reshape the American economy—than anything we’ve seen so far.
His plan for the federal fleet, in particular, encapsulates Biden-era climate policy in its ambition and limits. He
debuted the initiative yesterday while signing an
executive order pledging that the government would buy more American-made goods.
“The federal government also owns an enormous fleet of vehicles, which we're going to replace with
clean electric vehicles made right here in America, by American workers,†he said. This initiative will create 1 million electric-automaking jobs, he claimed. (That’s a big goal: At the end of last year, about 930,000 Americans worked in automaking, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
More:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/01/weekly-planet-why-biden-is-buying-645000-new-cars/617828/
