Obama issues executive order on climate change | StateImpact Pennsylvania Skip Navigation

Obama issues executive order on climate change

President Obama and former Energy Secretary Steven Chu tour a Penn State lab on February 3, 2011.

Pete Souza / Official White House photo

President Obama and former Energy Secretary Steven Chu tour a Penn State lab on February 3, 2011.

President Obama signed an executive order Friday morning that claims it will deal with the impacts of extreme weather caused by climate change.
The executive order does a few things:

  • Creates a Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience to garner input from state and local governments on how to be prepared for heat waves, draughts, wildfires, and floods. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (D) is the only representative on the task force from Pennsylvania. Governor Jack Markell (D) from neighboring Delaware is also part of the group.
  • Directs federal agencies like FEMA to adjust their policies to ones that encourage municipalities to take the future impacts of climate change into account when rebuilding from extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy through grants and technical assistance programs. Federal agencies are also being asked to examine how land and water management policies can help mitigate impacts.

The order comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is defending one of the administration’s major initiatives to keep warming patterns from accelerating by lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

“Those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don’t have time to deny it,” Obama said in a speech presenting his Climate Action Plan last June, “They’re busy dealing with it.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental protection recently released a report about how climate change will affect the state. The legally-mandated analysis was more than one year overdue. A second report on how the state can cut greenhouse gas emissions has not been published.

Up Next

Coast Guard plans would allow transport of fracking wastewater on barges