It's an issue president Joe Biden has called the existential threat of our time.

In my view, we've already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis.

We can't wait any longer.

We see it with our own eyes.

We feel it.

We know it in our bones.

This past week at the White House, Biden signed a pile of executive orders on climate change.

He ordered the Interior Department to meet specific goals for conservation and green energy production.

He ordered the director of national intelligence to produce reports on the security risks of climate change.

And he ordered a pause on oil and gas leasing on public lands and in public waters.

What we're trying to do is make a concerted effort to build infrastructure that makes it available to make all kinds of shifts to clean energy,

because clean energy really is the future.

Biden's chief advisor on climate, former EPA head Gina McCarthy, spoke to NPR the day Biden signed those orders.

This is our ability to actually make the promises that President Biden made on the campaign trail and put them into action.

Consider this.

Joe Biden has taken the first steps toward a huge goal to dramatically reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions,

but that will be impossible to achieve through executive orders alone.

From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish.

It's Monday, February 1st.

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