Outdoor Retailer - January 2021 - 23

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monuments, perhaps in his first days in office.
Outdoorists might be forgiven for feeling the
need to rehab their political whiplash for a day
or two, but even with Biden in office, there's
much work to be done. Greenhouse gasses
already in the atmosphere have committed
us to at least a few more decades of warming,
and areas of the American West-including outdoor recreation hot spots like Moab,
Utah-have already seen 2 degrees Celsius
of warming, beating the global average, not
to mention the threshold set by the Paris
Agreement. As Inauguration Day approaches, the outdoor industry's policy wonks, access
advocates, and climate champions are looking ahead to what they can accomplish in the
coming years in a new administration-and
with or without the Senate.
Some are looking well beyond Biden. The
next four years will go by quickly, according to
Mario Molina, executive director of Protect
Our Winters (POW). " We're talking about the
full transition of the energy system by 2035, "
he says. " That far outlives this and the next administration. So it needs to be a priority for the
outdoor state regardless of what administration is in power. "
And there are still concerns with the outgoing administration; plenty of effects from
Trump-era policies on public lands and conservation, climate, and international trade
will linger into the new administration. " The
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is really at the
forefront of our minds, " Robinson says. " The
potential oil-and-gas leasing sale could come
down to the final hours of the Trump administration, and they'd be tough to reverse. " And
there's the Tongass; in October, the Trump
administration announced it was seeking
to open more than half of Tongass National
Forest to development, including logging. The
Tongass is the largest national forest in the
U.S., an old-growth carbon sink, and an important food source for native Alaskans who
rely on the Tongass' streams for salmon.
The battle is not over.

CLIMATE POLICYWITHOUT CONGRESS
Without the Senate, some Democrats are
mourning the loss of an opportunity to pass
sweeping climate legislation. But, as we saw in

BIDEN ANNOUNCED REP. DEB HAALAND AS HIS
GROUNDBREAKING PICK TO LEAD DOI, WHICH
MANAGES ABOUT A FIFTH OF THE LAND IN THE U.S.,
IN DECEMBER. IF CONFIRMED, HAALAND, A MEMBER
OF LAGUNA PUEBLO, WILL BE THE COUNTRY'S
FIRST NATIVE AMERICAN CABINET SECRETARY.
Deb Haaland

the Trump years, there's much an administration can do.
The Biden administration is expected to
move quickly on rescinding Trump-era energy
rollbacks, such as tightening emissions standards and clean-air regulations, and axing an
executive order from 2017 that lifted restrictions on offshore drilling and exploration.
" There's a lot the Department of the Interior
(DoI) can do, " Molina says. Wind turbine permits that were held up in the previous administration, unenforced emissions regulations on
Bureau of Land Management land-a slew of
things happening at DoI add up. " A lot of this
stuff is not sexy, " Molina says. " For me, that's a
key takeaway. Seeing the cabinet appointments,
this isn't going to be big, splashy, Paris 2015 capand-trade work, " he says. " But it would be far
more effective to do it right, and a lot of this will
be agency-level work, and there's a lot of it. "
Biden announced Rep. Deb Haaland as

his groundbreaking pick to lead DoI, which
manages about a fifth of the land in the U.S., in
December. If confirmed, Haaland, a member
of Laguna Pueblo, will be the country's first
Native American cabinet secretary. Though
she comes from an oil-producing state,the
New Mexico congresswoman has protested
the Dakota Access Pipeline and supports
Biden's climate plan ( " That economy wasn'tn
working for a lot of people, " she told The
Washington Post of the state's ol and gas jobs).
She's also a marathon runner.
The Department of Agriculture also has a
role to play in the climate crisis. The Forest
Service falls under the USDA, and agriculture
plays a big role in emissions. EPA estimates
put about a quarter of global GHG emissions
under the category of agriculture, forestry,
and land use. Biden's pick for Ag, Tom Vilsack,
held the role throughout the Obama presidency, and he's a concerning choice for some
climate activists, who see him as a businessas-usual leader entering a time of crisis.
In November, Biden announced he would
name John Kerry as a special envoy on climate, a new cabinet-level position, and in
December, he nominated former EPA chief
and National Resources Defense Council
President Gina McCarthy as Kerry's domestic counterpart, the " climate czar. " But, in addition to giving climate a home in his cabinet,
Biden's transition website outlines an all-in
approach to climate with a call for investment in infrastructure and efficient buildings, transportation, energy, agriculture, and
environmental justice. Climate is one of four
priorities listed on the transition site (the
others are COVID-19, economic recovery,
and racial equity). It's not just a workaround
for an administration dealing with a GOP-led
Senate; climate change is already affecting

January 2021/ OUTDOOR RETAILER 23

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Outdoor Retailer - January 2021

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