President Biden is taking steps to restore national forests devastated by wildfires, drought and blight, using an Earth Day visit to Seattle to sign an executive order protecting some of the nation’s largest and oldest trees.
By signing the order on Friday, Biden can publicly reassert his environmentalist credentials at a time when his administration has been preoccupied by high oil and gasoline prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Gas costs have been a drag on Biden’s popularity and created short-term political pressures going into this year’s midterm elections, yet the Democratic president has been focused on wildfires that are intensifying because of climate change.
Biden’s ambitious climate agenda has been marred by setbacks, a year after he took office amid a flurry of climate-related promises. The president hosted a virtual summit on global warming at the White House last Earth Day. He used the moment to nearly double the United States’ goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, vaulting the country to the front lines in the fight against climate change.
While Biden is raising fuel economy standards for vehicles and included green policies in last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law, the lack of greater progress casts a shadow over his second Earth Day as president. “The federal government has an urgent need to reduce massive greenhouse gas emissions from severe wildfires, which can only be accomplished by actively managing our unhealthy and overstocked federal forests,” he said.
Timber sales from federal forests nationwide more than doubled over the past 20 years, as Republicans and Democrats have pushed more aggressive thinning of stands to reduce small trees and vegetation that fuel wildfires.
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