Should an Obama-Era Climate Change Executive Order Be Codified Into Law? (S. 2239)

What is S. 2239?

(Updated September 13, 2021)

This bill would codify the provisions of Executive Order 13653, which was an Obama-era executive order preparing the U.S. for the impacts of climate change that was subsequently reversed. It had set forth a commitment to ensuring that the federal government identifies and considers climate changes’ wide-ranging impact in the development of relevant national security doctrines, policies, and plans. It marked the first time that U.S. security agencies were required to consider climate change in the formulation of national security doctrine. 

Executive Order 13653 directed U.S. federal agencies to take steps to help American communities strengthen their resilience to extreme weather and prepare for other effects of climate change. It addressed four task areas: 

1. Modernizing Federal Programs to Support Climate Resilient Investment
   
2. Managing Lands and Waters for Climate Preparedness and Resilience
   
3. Providing Information, Data, and Tools for Climate Change Preparedness and Resilience
   
4. Federal Agency Planning for Climate Change Related to Risk
   

President Trump revoked Executive Order 13653 via his own executive order on energy independence (Executive Order 13783) in March 2017.

Argument in favor

Climate change is a critical issue and it’s vital for all parts of the federal government to work together to develop a whole-of-government response to this challenge. A specific directive for federal agencies to take this issue seriously when developing policy will ensure it’s a priority.

Argument opposed

President Trump’s decision to rescind President Obama’s executive order on taking climate change into account when federal agencies develop policy was reasonable. Taking the global context — including the climate — into consideration in these decisions is already a given.

Impact

American communities’ safety; climate change; climate change mitigation and prevention efforts; climate change-related impacts on American communities’ safety and extreme weather resilience; U.S. federal agencies; Executive Order 13653; and Executive Order 13653.

Cost of S. 2239

A CBO cost estimate is unavailable.

Additional Info

In-Depth: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced this bill to codify the provisions of Obama-era Executive Order 13653, which set forth a federal government-wide commitment to identifying and mitigating climate change’s wide-ranging impacts. 

President Trump revoked Executive Order 13653 on March 28, 2017 via an executive order of his own on promoting energy independence and economic growth (Executive Order 13783). The order established the Trump administration's policy of promoting the development of domestic energy resources, called for an agency-wide review of all rules related to domestic energy development and rolled back a number or agency rules and executive actions related to energy and climate policy. When he signed the order, Trump said, “I am going to lift the restrictions on American energy, and allow this wealth to pour into our communities.”

This legislation doesn’t have any cosponsors. 

Of Note: In an August 2019 Special Report on Climate Change and Land by the UN Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Geneva, experts highlighted how rising global temperatures are increasing pressures on fertile soil and potentially jeopardizing the planet’s food security. Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Co-Chair of one of three Working Groups that contributed to the 1,200-page report, also noted that people are already suffering the effects of climate change, saying, “Today 500 million people live in areas that experience desertification. People living in already degraded or desertified areas are increasingly negatively affected by climate change.” Working Group Co-Chair Hans-Otto Pörtner stressed that there is “no possibility for anybody to say, ‘Oh, climate change is happening and we (will) just adapt to it.’ The capacity to adapt is limited.”

Due to climate change, the past half-decade is likely to become the warmest five-year stretch in recorded history. On a global scale, even small temperature increases can have major impacts on climates and ecosystems: for example, for every 1ºC increase, air’s moisture carrying capacity increases approximately 7% — leading to an uptick in extreme rainfall events. Those events can in turn trigger landslides, increase soil erosion rates and damage crops — and that’s only one example of how climate change can cause chain reactions.

Two consecutive Worldwide Threat Assessments under two different Directors of National Intelligence — the first in 2016, issued by James Clapper in the Obama administration, and the second in 2017, issued by Dan Coats in the Trump administration — have called climate change a global security threat that could cause global political instability, adverse health conditions, humanitarian crises, political unrest, and more. 

In June 2019, Sen. Klobuchar — who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination — released a list of over 100 actions she’d take via executive order in her first 100 days as president. The list included a number of actions related to climate change.

Media:

• Obama White House - Executive Order 13653
  
• Trump White House - Executive Order 13783
  
• UN IPCC Report (Context)
  
• Visual Capitalist (Context)