I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, January 29th.

President Joe Biden has made climate change, one of his four central priorities, along with the pandemic,

jobs, and racial injustice. This week, Biden signed a slate of climate-focused executive orders.

He put a temporary moratorium on oil and gas activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,

revoked the Keystone XL pipelineit, set climate change as a key

consideration for U.S. national security and foreign policy, and he paused new oil and natural

gas leases on public lands and in offshore waters. And he reestablished America's commitment to the Paris Climate

Agreement. That's a lot.

And it might be driving private sector change as well.

Maybe it's a coincidence, but maybe it's not.

Yesterday, General Motors announced a goal to stop making gasoline-powered cars entirely by 2035.

Nonetheless, the president is going to need Congress to go much further than he can with executive orders. So let's take stock of climate policy here on Biden Day 10 with Lisa Friedman,

reporter at the New York Times covering climate and environmental policy. Hi, Lisa, welcome back to WNYC.

Thanks so much for having me.

And before we get to Congress, can you take stock of these climate executive orders as a whole?

How much are they just words? How much do they actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Well, they're more than just words, but they don't in themselves reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

You know, on the whole, this executive order, which includes dozens and dozens of executive actions, really sets the tone at the top telling, you know, I mean, the first and biggest thing that it does, I think, is tells every lever of government that climate change is going to be a priority in everything you do.

You know, one of the things that didn't get a lot of attention because it's a task force and,

you know, every, every president creates task

courses and commissions. But, you know, one of the main task forces that they, that this executive

order can create is a national climate task force that is made up of members of every agency

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