Climate change is an enormous environmental, social, and economic threat to the United States. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels and other industrial processes are a major driver of this threat. Even if the world stopped emitting CO2 today, the huge quantities of CO2 generated by human activity to date would continue to sit in the atmosphere and cause dangerous climate effects for at least another 1,000 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported that keeping average global warming below 1.5°C is not possible without the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR).2 While funding and legislative support for CDR has greatly increased in recent years, the United States does not yet have a coordinated plan for implementing CDR technologies. The Department of Energy’s CDR task force should recommend a governance strategy for CDR implementation to responsibly, equitably, and effectively combat climate change by achieving net-negative CO2 emissions.

Challenge and Opportunity 

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is a dangerous global threat. Climate change, driven in large part by human-generated CO2 emissions, is already causing severe flooding, drought, melting ice sheets, and extreme heat. These phenomena are in turn compromising human health, food and water security, and economic growth.

Figure 1. Data collected from observation stations show how noticeably atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen over the past several decades. (Data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association; figure by Klaus S. Lackner.)

Morton, E.V. (2020). Reframing the Climate Change Problem: Evaluating the Political, Technological, and Ethical Management of Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the United States. Ph.D. thesis, Arizona State University.

CO2 concentrations are higher today than they have been at any point in the last 3 million years. The contribution of human activity is causing CO2 emissions to rise at an unprecedented rate — approximately 2% per year for the past several decades (Figure 1) — a rate that far outpaces the rate at which the natural world can adapt and adjust. A monumental global effort is needed to reduce CO2 emissions from human activity. But even this is not enough. Because CO2 can persist in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, CO2 already emitted will continue to have climate impacts for at least the next 1,000 years. Keeping the impacts of climate change to tolerable levels requires not only a suite of actions to reduce future CO2 emissions, but also implementation of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies to mitigate the damage we have already done.

The IPCC defines CDR as “anthropogenic activities removing CO2 from the atmosphere and durably storing it in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs, or in products.” While becoming more energy efficient can reduce emissions and using renewable energy causes zero emissions, only CDR can achieve the “net negative” emissions needed to help restore climate stability.

Five companies around the world — two of which are based in the United States — have already begun commercializing a particular CDR technology called direct air capture. Climeworks is the most advanced company, and can already remove 900 tons of atmospheric CO2 per year at its plant in Switzerland. Though these companies have demonstrated that CDR technologies like direct air capture work, costs need to come down and capacity needs to expand for CDR to remove meaningful levels of past emissions from the atmosphere.

Thankfully, the Energy Act of 2020, a subsection of the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act, was passed into law in December 2020. This act creates a carbon removal research, development, and demonstration program within the Department of Energy. It also establishes a prize competition for pre-commercial and commercial applications of direct air capture technologies, provides grants for direct air capture and storage test centers, and creates a CDR task force.

The CDR task force will be led by the Secretary of Energy and include the heads of any other relevant federal agencies chosen by the Secretary. The task force is mandated to write a report that includes an estimate of how much excess CO2 needs to be removed from the atmosphere by 2050 to achieve net zero emissions, an inventory and evaluation of CDR approaches, and recommendations for policy tools that the U.S. government can use to meet the removal estimation and advance CDR deployment. This report will be used to advise the Secretary of Energy on next steps for CDR development and will be submitted to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the House of Representatives Committees on Energy and Commerce and Science, Space, and Technology.

The Biden administration has clearly shown its commitment to combating climate change by rejoining the Paris Agreement and signing several Executive Orders that take a whole-of-government approach to the climate crisis. The Energy Act complements these actions by advancing development and demonstration of CDR. However, the Energy Act does not address CDR governance, i.e., the policy tools necessary to efficiently and ethically steward CDR implementation. A proactive governance strategy is needed to ensure that CDR is used to repair past damage and support communities that have been disproportionately harmed by climate change — not as an excuse for the fossil-fuel industry and other major contributors to the climate crisis to continue dumping harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The CDR task force should therefore leverage the crucial opportunity it has been given to shape future use of CDR by incorporating governance recommendations into its report.

Plan of Action

The Department of Energy’s CDR task force should consider recommending the following options in its final report. Taken together, these recommendations form the basis of a governance framework to ensure that CDR technologies are implemented in a way that most responsibly, equitably, and effectively addresses climate change.

Establish net-zero and net-negative carbon removal targets.

The Energy Act commendably directs the CDR task force to estimate the amount of CO2 that the United States must remove to become net zero by 2050. But the task force should not stop there. The task force should also estimate the amount of CO2 that the United States must remove to limit average global warming to 1.5°C (a target that will require net negative emissions) and estimate what year this goal could feasibly be achieved. Much like the National Ambient Air Quality Standards enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, there should be a specific amount of CO2 that the United States should work toward removing to enhance environmental quality. This target could be based on how much CO2 the United States has put into the atmosphere to date and how much of that amount the United States should be responsible for removing. Both net-zero and net-negative removal targets should be preserved through legislation to continue progress beyond the Biden administration.

Design a public carbon removal service.

If carbon removal targets become law, the federal government will need to develop an organized way of removing and storing CO2 in order to reach those targets. Therefore, the CDR task force should also consider what it would take to develop a public carbon removal service. Just as waste disposal and sewage infrastructure are public services paid for by those that generate waste, industries would pay for the service of having their past and current CO2 emissions removed and stored securely. Revenue generated from a public carbon removal service could be reinvested into CDR technology, carbon storage facilities, maintenance of CDR infrastructure, environmental justice initiatives, and job creation. As the Biden administration ramps up its American Jobs Plan to modernize the country’s infrastructure, it should consider including carbon removal infrastructure. A public carbon removal service could materially contribute to the goals of expanding clean energy infrastructure and creating jobs in the green economy that the American Jobs Plan aims to achieve. 

Planning the design and implementation of a public carbon removal service should be conducted in parallel with CDR technology development. Knowing what CDR technologies will be used may change how prize competitions and grant programs funded by the Energy Act are evaluated and how the CDR task force will prioritize its policy recommendations. The CDR task force should assess the CDR technology landscape and determine which technologies — including mechanical, agricultural, and ocean-based processes — are best suited for inclusion in a public carbon removal service. The assessment should be based on factors such as affordability, availability, and storage permanence. The assessment could also consider results from the research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) program and the prize competitions mandated by the Energy Act when making its determination. The task force should also recommend concrete steps towards getting a public carbon removal service up and running. Steps could include, for instance, establishing public-private partnerships with prize competition winners and other commercialized CDR companies.

Create a national carbon accounting standard.

The Energy Act directs the RD&D program to collaborate with the Environmental Protection Agency to develop an accounting framework to certify how much carbon different techniques can remove and how long that carbon can be stored. This may involve investigating the storage permanence of various carbon storage and utilization options. This may also involve creating a database of storage lifetimes for CDR products and processes and identification of CDR techniques best suited for attaining carbon removal targets. The task force could recommend to the Secretary of Energy that the framework becomes a standard. A national carbon accounting standard will be integral for achieving carbon removal targets and verifying removal through public service described above.

Ensure equity in CDR.

While much of the technical and economic aspects of carbon removal have been (or are being) investigated, questions related to equity remain largely unaddressed. The CDR task force should investigate and recommend policies and actions to ensure that carbon removal does not impose or exacerbate societal inequities, especially for vulnerable communities of color and low-income communities. Recommendations that the task force could explore include:

• Establishing a tax credit for investing in CDR on private land. This credit would be similar to existing credits for installing solar and selling electricity back to the grid. Some or all of proceeds from the credit should go to help communities previously harmed by environmental injustice (i.e., “environmental justice communities”).
• Launching a CDR technology deployment program that gives environmental justice communities a tax credit or other financial benefit for allowing a CDR technology to be deployed in their communities. This “hosting” compensation would be earmarked for local environmental remediation.
• Incentivizing design of CDR technologies that deliver co-benefits. For instance, planting trees not only helps remove carbon from the atmosphere but also creates shade, provides habitat, and helps mitigate urban heat-island effects. Industrial direct air capture plants can be surrounded by greenspace and art to create public parks.
• Interviewing environmental justice communities to understand their needs and how those needs could be met through strategic implementation of CDR.

Include CDR in international climate discussions.

Because CDR is a necessary part of any realistic strategy to keep average global warming to tolerable levels, CDR is a necessary part of future international discussions on climate change. The United States can take the lead by including CDR in its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement. The U.S. NDC most recently submitted in April 2021 does discuss increasing carbon sequestration through agriculture and oceans but could be even more aggressive by including a broader suite of CDR technologies (e.g., engineered direct air capture) and prioritizing pursuit of carbon-negative solutions. The CDR task force could recommend that the Department of Energy work with the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and the Department of State Office of Global Change on (1) enhancing the NDC through CDR, and (2) developing climate-negotiation strategies intended to increase the use of CDR globally.

Conclusion

Global climate change has worsened to the point where simply reducing emissions is not enough. Even if all global emissions were to cease today, the climate impacts of the carbon we have dumped into the atmosphere would continue to be felt for centuries to come. The only solution to this problem is to achieve net-negative emissions by dramatically accelerating development and deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). As one of the world’s biggest emitters, the United States has a responsibility to do all it can to tackle the climate crisis. And as one of the world’s technological and geopolitical leaders, the United States is well positioned to rise to the occasion, investing in CDR governance alongside the technical and economic aspects of CDR. The CDR task force can lead in this endeavor by advising the Secretary of Energy on an overall governance strategy and specific policy recommendations to ensure that CDR is used in an aggressive, responsible, and equitable manner.

Introduction

For those who can afford to fill their fridge by clicking a button on their smartphone or walking around to the organic grocery around the corner, it is easy to forget how complex and fragile our food systems can be. However, for millions of Americans who suffer from poor health because of food insecurity, or farmers and ranchers whose yields are decreasing along with the nutrient density of their product, that fragility is felt every day. Sustainable food systems engender intricate connections and feedback loops among climate change, public health, food security, national security, and social equity. When one of these factors is overstressed, disaster can result.

COVID-19 has underscored the vulnerability of our food systems. The pandemic caused restaurants to close overnight, strained supply chains, and led to food rotting on land, in warehouses, and on shelves. Low-income and food-insecure families waited in lines that stretched for miles while producers and distributors struggled to figure out how to get supplies to those who needed them. Concurrently, generations of racial inequity and the coordinated disenfranchisement of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) has crystalized as an issue that needs to be addressed at every level in our country, especially within our food and agricultural systems.

Addressing these issues—now and for the future—requires a coordinated response across sectors. Food security is deeply intertwined with public health and social equity. Un- and under- employment, the racial wealth gap, and increased financial hardships for certain communities result in increased malnutrition, obesity, metabolic diseases, and chronic illness, as well as particular susceptibility to severe impacts from COVID-19 infections during the present pandemic. The climate crisis compounds these issues. Farming practices that degrade soil health, reduce agriculture capacity, and compromise the well-being of small farms and rural communities prevent us as a nation from becoming healthier and more secure. As we look at opportunities to “build back better,” we must embrace paradigmatic shifts—fundamental restructuring of our systems that will support equitable and inclusive futures. Compounding crises require changes in not only what we do, but how we think about what we do.

A fundamental problem is that progress in modern agriculture has been implicitly defined as progress in agricultural technology (AgTech) and biotechnology. Little emphasis is placed on examining whole-systems dependencies and on how connections among soil health, gut bacteria, and antibiotic use in livestock impact human health, economic prosperity, and climate change. With such a narrow view of “innovation,” current practices will solve a handful of isolated problems but create many more.

Fortunately, alternatives are ripe for adoption. Regenerative farming, for instance, is a proven way to combat future warming while increasing the adaptive capacity of our lands, providing equitable access to food, and creating viable rural economies. Regenerative farming can also restore soil health, which in turn improves food quality while enhancing carbon sequestration and providing natural water treatment.

Transitioning away from dominant but harmful practices is not easy. The shift will require an inclusive innovation ecosystem, investors with long time horizons, new infrastructure, tailored education, economic incentives, and community safety nets. This document explores how the agricultural sector can support, and be supported by, policies that advance science, technology, and innovation while revitalizing living systems and equitable futures. We recognize that agricultural policy often overlooks interventions that are appropriately suited to advance these concepts with Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities and on tribal lands. To avoid this mistake, the concepts presented herein start from the ground up. We focus on the benefits of improving soil health and food security through regenerative agricultural activities, and provide examples of policies that could promote such activities in a variety of ways. Letting practice drive policy— instead of having policy dictate practice—will result in more sustainable, inclusive outcomes for all communities.

While agricultural policy can and should be shaped at the local, regional, state, and national level, this document places special emphasis on the role of the federal government. Building better food systems will require multiple government agencies, especially federal agencies, to collaboratively advance more equitable policies and practices. Most national agricultural programs are housed within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But the interconnectedness of how we produce food and fiber (and the ways in which those practices impact our environment and nourish people) demands priority investment not only from USDA, but also from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Health and Human Services—to name just a few. This document—based on a review of existing policy recommendations and current practice, development and refinement of new ideas, and identification of underleveraged roles and programs within the government— suggests what such investments might look like in practice.

Summary

Putting a price on carbon is fundamental to achieving U.S. climate goals for 2050. Many options for carbon price-setting exist, and in this policy brief we propose a tax-and-dividend approach that mitigates the challenging impacts that carbon policies have on poor and suburban/rural communities, particularly those in Middle America. Such a plan will be a net gain for low-income households, in contrast to other proposed climate change policies which will adversely affect the poor. Furthermore, it has been shown that even a modest carbon tax can have large benefits in terms of cost-effectiveness.

For that reason, we propose the following:

• Introduce a carbon tax-and-dividend plan as part of any federal climate policy.
• Use revenue to offset impacts on low-income households, taking into account enormousregional disparities.
• If political dynamics favor regulatory standards, consider coupling such standards with amodest carbon tax whose revenue can be used to offset their regressive effects.

Summary

The United States needs to radically enhance its efforts to build community disaster resilience. The frequency and cost of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters have increased significantly over the past decade. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s estimates, the direct costs of disasters between 2018 and 2019 amounted to over $136 billion. And 2017 Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria resulted in over $265 billion in damage and displaced many communities. Moreover, accelerated urbanization and climate change continue to exacerbate communities’ vulnerability to climate disasters, rendering the current disaster mitigation, recovery, and emergency response policies untenable in the near future.

Resilience has served as an organizing principle for policymakers, first responders, and businesses in marshalling resources to reduce community vulnerability, stimulate recovery, and ensure reliable access to critical services (e.g., energy, water, shelter, food, health, ecosystems services and mobility) in the aftermath of climate disasters. However, the current set of reactive disaster recovery efforts and resilience policies have proven to be inefficient and costly, contributing to the widening of the `climate gap’ and entrenching vulnerability traps, particularly among marginalized and disadvantaged communities.

The Biden-Harris Administration should invest in information technology, data transparency and convergence research to build data-enabled predictive capabilities that anticipate shifts in communities’ demand for critical services under compound climate disasters, and inform effective resource allocation to equitably mitigate the impacts of climate change. These investments will not only enhance stewardship of taxpayer dollars, create jobs and bolster the economy, but will also shrink the rapidly widening climate gap and save lives.

Summary

Every year, Americans lose billions of dollars to natural hazards. Hurricanes, wildfires, floods, heat waves, and droughts affect millions of Americans and are particularly devastating for low-income communities and communities of color. The number of ‘billion-dollar disasters’—those that cause over a billion dollars in damage—is rising as a result of climate change, urbanization, high risk developments, communities in vulnerable areas, aging infrastructure, and federal policy that rewards risk-prone behavior rather than incentivizing risk reduction. An overhaul of U.S. federal disaster policy will reverse the trend and eliminate billion-dollar disasters. This goal requires action at all levels of government, coordination across agencies, and leadership from the highest levels.

The Biden-Harris Administration should implement a multi-phase plan beginning with an executive order instructing federal agencies to define federal roles in disaster response, coordinate agency efforts, and integrate social justice and climate change into decision-making. Agency-level mandates will develop and implement best practices, incentivize state and local measures, and create an evidentiary basis for funding allocations. Finally, legislative reform of disaster laws will enable flexible responses to the continuing effects of climate change. A coordinated overhaul of federal laws and policies will inspire change at state and local levels, leading to a U.S. disaster policy that is climate-ready, addresses social inequities, reduces taxpayer liability and disaster damage, and saves lives.

Challenge and Opportunity

Disaster effects continue to worsen. Climate change is exacerbating hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and wildfires. Development and population growth in at-risk areas have placed more people, infrastructure, and economic activity in harm’s way. Serious disasters are more frequent and more costly (Figure 1). In 2019 alone, the U.S. experienced fourteen different billion-dollar disasters. In a five-month period that year, flooding affected eleven states: Oklahoma, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Federal aid is designed to be a last resort in disasters: the backstop when local and state resources have been overwhelmed. Current disaster policy and practice, however, results in disincentives for local governments to engage in proactive risk reduction. The more damage a county experiences, for example, the more money the county receives from the Federal Government, providing little incentive to adopt better building codes or limit development in risk-prone areas. The National Institute of Building Sciences estimates that updating and refining building codes alone could save $4 for every $1 spent—as well as save 600 lives, avoid 4,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and create 87,000 new jobs (NIBS 2019). Despite this alternative approach, U.S. disaster policy emphasizes recovery rather than prevention. Only a fraction of disaster funding—just 15%—is spent on reducing future losses.

Relief decisions use wealth and assets as measures of need, rather than people. The result is that disaster funding increases wealth inequality. There is also little evidence that the billions in disaster recovery paid by U.S. taxpayers each year has increased community resilience. According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly 45,000 new homes experienced repeat flood losses over the last decade, while less than half that number had their flood risk reduced through elevation, acquisition, or floodproofing.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is a key organizer for federal response in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. In the long tail of recovery, though, other agencies— including the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Federal Transit Authority (FTA), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and Small Business Administration (SBA)— become involved. These agencies have significant and increasing spending authority and autonomy, but the risk reduction projects they prioritize and the reasons for their selection are often unclear or unavailable to researchers or the public. Projects are also not required to complement or support one another; each agency has its own mission, and there is little overarching coordination. At times, their actions may even work at cross-purposes.

Overhauling U.S. disaster policy will require a major effort across multiple levels and branches of government. This effort will not only limit but also potentially reverse the trend of increasing disaster costs. Disaster policy can create incentives for risk-smart development, promote climateproof investments in infrastructure, and protect society’s most vulnerable populations.

Plan of Action

A complete overhaul of U.S. disaster policy will require many actions across government branches. The following roadmap is a starting point: an initial set of steps to establish leadership, coordination, and a structure within which numerous actors can engage in a collaborative effort to build a disaster-resilient nation.

The plan is guided by the following principles:

• Equity must be at the center; disaster policy must focus on enabling communities.
• High-level leadership is required to coordinate multiple mutually supporting actions throughout the Federal Government.
• Aligning state and local government incentives will encourage these institutions to assume responsibility for building resilient communities.
• Transparent, evidence-based decision-making and implementation are most effective.

Executive Branch

An executive order from the President or memorandum from the Office of Science and Technology Policy should direct agencies to address climate change and social equity in all federal actions. The order should provide a new mandate for inter-agency task forces such as the Mitigation Framework Leadership Group (MitFLG) to take, at minimum, the following actions:

• Define leadership and roles for each federal agency and establish coordination mechanisms to align actions during pre-disaster risk mitigation and long-term recovery.
• Provide a roadmap for federal agencies to create incentives for local governments to take risk reduction measures.
• Direct all agencies to review disaster expenditures and decision-making processes, make the results public, and review consistency among agencies.
• Pursue place-based pilot programs that are participatory and community-based to establish participatory processes and evaluation methods.
• Develop a long-term plan for disaster recovery that (1) addresses inequities in access to housing, infrastructure, and social services, (2) promotes quality of life, (3) and ensures a just transition process for communities as they build resilience.

Legislative Branch

Following the executive action, Congress should legislate reform both the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 (NFIP) and the Stafford Act of 1988. Congress should adopt the guidelines made by inter-agency task forces and recommendations made by the hazard science community. Congress must deliberate on:

• Increased spending flexibility to support community resilience and functioning.
• Raising the disaster threshold given the increasing frequency and severity of events and the need to incentivize local and state governments to prepare for and limit the damage caused by common hazards.
• Adjusting the federal cost-share to incentivize action without burdening communities.
• Creating incentives that protect vulnerable populations.

University and Government Research

New science is needed to create a more robust foundation of evidentiary knowledge. Through National Science Foundation calls and inter-agency task force member agencies commissioning National Academies Studies, funding should be allocated toward:

• Defining and developing a public insurance program that covers a wide range of disasters.
• Evaluating the adequacy of the disaster directive for achieving national goals.
• Undertaking research to inform thresholds for federal action at state and local levels

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed systematic vulnerabilities in the way that wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases are managed at national and international scales. The next administration should take three key steps to address these vulnerabilities in the United States. First, the White House should create a “Task Force on the Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases”. This Task Force would convene agencies with oversight over animal imports, identify necessary policy actions, determine priority research areas, and coordinate a national response strategy. Second, the next president should work with Congress to pass a bill strengthening live-animal import regulations. Third, U.S. agencies should coordinate with international organizations to address global movement of infectious diseases of animals. Together, these actions would reduce the risk of emerging infectious diseases entering the United States, offer greater protection to citizens from zoonotic diseases, and protect American biodiversity from losses due to wildlife diseases.

Challenge and Opportunity

More than 60% of emerging infectious diseases in humans first originate in animals. More than 70% of these come from wild animals. HIV, for instance, jumped to human hosts from primates in Africa. MERS spread to humans from camels in the Middle East. Of present salience, experts believe that the virus that causes COVID-19 originated from wild animals in China (probably bats).

The risk of animal-to-human “spillover”—and the global spread of zoonotic diseases—increases when wildlife are traded and imported around the world (e.g., for food, traditional medicines, display, pets, etc.). The global spread of COVID-19 has drawn attention to problems such as lack of disease surveillance in wild animal populations and lack of disease testing in many live animals at international borders. International wildlife-trade laws do not account for public-health risks of wildlife trade. These laws also do not require collection of data on zoonotic diseases (i.e., diseases caused by germs that spread between animals and people): data that could help prevent the next pandemic. These problems are exacerbated by accelerating rates of habitat conversion and biodiversity loss coupled with increased volume and speed of international commerce.

The United States is especially susceptible to emerging zoonotic diseases because it is the world’s largest importer6 of legally traded wild animals, yet lacks domestic regulations requiring most imported live animals to be tested for diseases, pathogens, or parasites. Gaps in U.S. statutory and regulatory frameworks governing live-animal imports increase disease risks for humans while also threatening our country’s biodiversity and natural resources. In the United States, four agencies oversee some aspect of live-animal imports—but this oversight is far from comprehensive. The Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is responsible for assessing the risk of diseases in agricultural imports, but not wildlife species. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) oversees imports of only primates and some species of rodents, bats, or birds known to spread zoonotic diseases. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is responsible for regulating imports of all wildlife (and imposes stricter standards on species previously identified as injurious), but its mandate does not cover infectious diseases or parasites. The upshot is that imports of most wildlife species to the United States are not assessed for disease risk by any agency. Most disease agents that infect wildlife (except for a small number of known zoonotic diseases) are not monitored by any agency either.

Plan of Action 

The next administration should take three key steps to address systematic vulnerabilities in the way that wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases are managed in the United States and around the world. 

Create a White House Task Force on the Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

This Task Force would convene agencies with oversight over animal imports (including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of the Interior (DOI), and CDC) and those supporting research (NSF, NIH) or international assistance (U.S. Department of State, USAID) to determine global research priorities on wildlife disease, and facilitate international cooperation on mechanisms to reduce demand as well as disease risk in the live animal trade. The task-force would use the One Health concept that links human health with animal health and environmental health, and that applies a comprehensive approach to understanding the drivers of disease emergence, the spread of disease, and the impacts on human health.

Work with Congress to pass a bill strengthening live-animal import regulations.

This bill would build on past legislation (e.g., H.R. 6362/S. 3210;11 H.R. 3771/S. 1903;12 and S. 375913) related to wildlife disease. The bill should:

• Reduce risk of zoonotic disease introduction to the United States by increasing surveillance of live-animal imports at U.S. borders. Specifically, Congress should give APHIS the authority to use pre-import screening, such as a process that assesses disease risk by species and country and determines allowable imports on the basis of that assessment. Congress should also expand the mission of APHIS to address not only disease issues that affect agricultural animals but also disease issues associated with zoonotic and wildlife diseases.
• Amend the Lacey Act to strengthen the FWS’s ability to identify, designate, and stop injurious species (including dangerous pathogens) from entering the United States, and from moving via interstate commerce if and when they do enter. Specifically, the Lacey Act should be amended to grant the FWS authority over emergency listing (i.e. one that is accelerated and bypasses the notice and public comment process); authority to list human and wildlife pathogens as injurious species; and authority to regulate interstate commerce in listed injurious species.
• Expand efforts to control illegal wildlife trade. President Obama’s July 2013 Executive Order on Combating Wildlife Trafficking resulted in the development of a holistic national strategy for tackling the entire trade chain of wildlife trafficking. The next administration should strive to implement elements of this strategy that have not yet been implemented, and to build on elements that have. This could include increasing the FWS’s enforcement capacity, strengthening measures to prevent and deter wildlife trafficking, increasing the severity of penalties for wildlife crime, and taking steps to reduce demand (media campaigns, behavior change) for imported wildlife.

Coordinate internationally to address diverse aspects of wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases.

The next administration should direct USDA (primarily APHIS) and the FWS to lead the following efforts:

• Amend the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) treaty and accompanying resolutions to (i) consider disease risk as a factor in regulating wildlife imports and exports, and (ii) broaden the scope of CITES in tackling domestic markets.
• Strengthen efforts by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) to develop a systematic approach for early detection of (and rapid responses to) emerging infectious diseases of human, wildlife, and domesticated animals.
• Expand OIE’s ambit from simply assessing disease risk in livestock trade to one in which OIE works with CITES and country-based labs to expand disease surveillance in all live-animal trade, including by conducting tests. OIE should establish a publicly accessible, centralized, and curated system for monitoring the global incidence and spread of wildlife pathogens in order to facilitate early detection of disease emergence and to document disease spread. Such a system could be modeled on GISAID or EpiFlu.

Conclusion 

Regulatory gaps put Americans at risk of exposure to emerging infectious disease from unregulated and under-regulated imports of wildlife. The next administration should address these gaps by creating a White House task force, strengthening live-animal import regulations, and coordinating with international institutions to reduce the global movement of emerging infectious diseases. The result would be a nation that is healthier and safer—for humans and animals alike.

The United States lacks the basic information and digital infrastructure required to effectively respond to the emerging climate crisis. While the science and technology needed for sensible climate policy exists, efforts to leverage these technical resources are fragmented and undirected. Actors in the most important sectors of the U.S. economy are making long-term investment decisions based on inaccurate or outdated data as a result. In the past 10 years, for example, homes worth over $11.2 billion have been built in areas that are at risk from sea-level rise. Insurance companies have paid over $25 billion in claims resulting from the 2017 wildfires in California. Better information on environmental impacts of climate change will make it possible to mitigate losses from wildfires, droughts, floods, and extreme weather events. Therefore, the next Administration should invest in Earth observation to directly measure environmental change and greenhouse gas emissions.

The next Administration should also invest in modern data and information technology infrastructure to effectively and efficiently respond to climate change. Such digital infrastructure will make it easier to integrate climate science into decision making. These investments will not only strengthen the domestic economy, but will also reposition the United States as a global leader on one of the most pressing “moonshots” of our time—basic measurements of humanity’s impact on our home planet.

Challenge and Opportunity

By 2050, the cost of anthropogenic climate change to the United States is projected to be equivalent to the cost of a mid-scale pandemic, year-over-year. Yet American homeowners, small businesses, and even large enterprises are making investments with expected dividends in 10- 30 years as if the impacts of climate change are unknowable — they aren’t. The technology exists to measure the causes and effects of climate change at a resolution and frequency commensurate with economic decision-making. The challenge is to effectively organize disparate federal efforts to collect and distribute information about how our home planet is changing, so that Americans and American companies can make smart, forward-thinking choices.

Environmental information, especially about climate change, is a public good and should be provisioned by the public sector. In addition, there are sweeping economies of scale associated with Earth observation — with high upfront costs of data collection and data infrastructure, but low marginal costs to extend coverage from one state to the next. As such, the Federal Government is a natural home to lead and coordinate Earth observation.

Bolstering the Federal Government’s Earth observation will reposition the United States as a global leader on the most pressing “moonshots” of our time. Establishing capacity to collect basic information about the vital signs of our planet will be a clear diplomatic, scientific, and economic win for a new Administration. This document outlines feasible, measured, and near-term activities in support of that goal.

Plan of Action

The next Administration should take immediate and bold actions to elevate Earth observation at the federal level. Specifically, the next Administration should 

Deputize the next NASA Administrator to lead Earth observation for the Federal Government, with decisive support for budget-neutral reallocation of resources toward Earth science. NASA has the mandate, public trust, technical resources, and science budget to take a leading role in monitoring climate change. Currently, only 7% of NASA’s annual budget is dedicated to studying our home planet. The urgency of climate change requires that number to be much higher. The percentage of NASA’s annual budget allocated to Earth science should be doubled within the first year of the next Administration. Moreover, structures to support climate science within the Federal Government are insufficient. NASA leadership will organize, elevate, and operationalize existing efforts. For example, reallocation and refocusing of resources could be used within the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to develop an ecosystem of firms capable of (i) collecting and processing climate data and (ii) creating decisionsupport tools to foster better understanding of climate change impacts and more effective adaptation responses.

Establish a Climate Corps to increase the pipeline of talent in climate-change mitigation and adaptation, with a specific branch dedicated to leveraging Earth observation data. The Climate Corps should adopt a tiered approach that puts members to work at the local, state, and federal levels, tailoring information and services delivered accordingly. The federal branch of the Climate Corps could be modeled on and work with existing programs such as the Presidential Innovation Fellows. The state and local branches of the Climate Corps would link federal investment in climate data and science with on-theground needs. Localities on the front lines of climate change require tailored scientific and technical expertise to support evidence-based decision-making. We recommend recruiting graduates with science and technical degrees to branches of the Climate Corps focused on serving such localities nationwide. Much like the Peace Corps embeds members within communities abroad, this Climate Corps branch would embed members within front-line communities at home to facilitate two-way communication about local needs, relevant scientific findings and capabilities, and informed investments at all levels of government.

Create a collaborative public-private partnership for climate data and science, much like the BRAIN Initiative brings together public and private entities to advance understanding of brain function. The partnership should be overseen by a civilian science board and should aim to allocate $5 billion over five years in applied research grants to universities and small businesses. These grants would spur development of innovative technologies to monitor Earth systems in response to community and industry needs. Supported by committed involvement from the Department of Defense (e.g., DARPA, IARPA), part of the partnership’s mandate should be to reinstate the MEDEA program (or follow-on incarnation) to make military data assets available to civilian researchers and data scientists.

Conclusion

There are moral and economic imperatives for the United States to take swift action, supported by consistent and credible data, on climate change. Global investment in Earth observation is insufficient to adequately respond to climate change. The United States can leverage its comparative advantage in scientific diplomacy and domestic talent to fill this information gap. By doing so, our nation can lead the world to the next great human achievement—a stable and productive climate.

Summary

A national regenerative agriculture initiative launched by the federal government could transform how American farmers provide food, fiber, and land stewardship. This initiative would commit to matching what farmers earn growing food and fiber with an equal investment in farmers’ work to rebuild the country’s natural capital.

Regenerative agriculture produces a safe and abundant food supply while building soil health and regenerating natural resources. This approach recognizes the key roles farmers and ranchers have in providing clean air, clean water, and ecosystem services that benefit all society.

A national regenerative agriculture initiative would provide needed investment in rural economies while simultaneously empowering current and future farmers to grow food in ways that improve soil health, ecosystem services, and natural resources. This strategic initiative would support the return of farming as a more widely valued job in America.

To achieve truly regenerative agricultural systems nationwide, the federal government should catalyze new markets and focus federal funding for regenerative agriculture programs, research, and development. Key steps towards this goal include creating a Regenerative Agriculture Advisory Task Force, mobilizing substantial investments to upgrade the agricultural sector, and prioritizing regenerative agriculture as a major theme in agricultural innovation.

The next administration should support legislation to fund the National Climate Bank, a non- profit that will create millions of jobs through public-private investment in clean energy and climate-related technologies. Built on the successful “green bank” model, the Climate Bank will spur $500 billion of private and public investment, create 5.4 million jobs, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while driving capital into frontline and environmental-justice communities. Legislation to support this policy passed the House of Representatives with billions of dollars in funding in July. The administration can enact this policy by including funding for the National Climate Bank in its climate and infrastructure-oriented stimulus proposals to Congress.

Approximately 30 million Americans—one in five workers—are collecting unemployment benefits. Labor-force participation is at its lowest level in nearly fifty years. These figures are worse than anything seen during the Great Recession. Deep, forward-thinking, and transformative measures are needed to revitalize our economy and open stable, well-paying opportunities for working Americans. Yet Congress has focused exclusively on short-term relief.

The next administration must quickly correct this error by investing substantially in job creation. Investments should meet three critical requirements:

• Address the climate crisis. There is nearly boundless opportunity for investing in clean generation, movement, use, and storage of energy. Our nation’s economic recovery and transition to a carbon-free, resilient energy future should be one and the same.
• Ensure equity and inclusivity. We cannot have a just transition to a green future unless everyone shares in the gains. Achieving equity and inclusivity will involve using finance to lower energy costs for those paying too much for their utility bills. It will also involve strengthening frontline and communities of color through investment, job creation, and wealth creation.
• Leverage co-investment by the private sector. Matching each federal dollar with multiples of private-sector dollars will make public funds go farther, lessen taxpayer burdens, and entice private market growth.

Transitioning the United States to a 100% clean electric grid over the next 20 years will require an estimated $225 billion of new investment per year. We are far short of this benchmark. Only $78 billion was invested into U.S. clean energy in 2019. Investment shortfalls and barriers can and must be overcome through an influx of public capital, with a particular focus on investing in underserved, frontline communities and communities of color.

Plan of Action

The next administration should endorse the National Climate Bank Act in Congress to put Americans back to work building our nation’s clean-energy future. The National Climate Bank created under this Act would be an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit finance entity that would use federal funds to mobilize greater private investment to address climate change. The next administration should, therefore, include funding for the National Climate Bank in stimulus proposals. 

Building off of the “green bank” model already proven at the state and local levels, the National Climate Bank could use $35 billion of federal funds to achieve $500 billion of investment in domestic clean energy and climate-related infrastructure in just five years. This level of investment would create an estimated 5.4 million jobs spread across the country (since cleanenergy projects are needed in every community). This level of investment would also create opportunities for workers of all skillsets, not just technical workers. No new authority or government agency is needed to create the National Climate Bank as an independent nonprofit. Legislation is only needed for seed funding. 

The National Climate Bank would invest across a broad set of sectors to ensure that communities can build the climate solutions they most need: solutions that include renewable-power projects, building efficiency and electrification, clean transportation, industrial decarbonization, improved grid infrastructure, sustainable agriculture, and resilience efforts. This model works. State and local green banks across the United States have already catalyzed over $5 billion of investment into such solutions, with each green bank dollar driving an average $2.60 of private coinvestment.

Solutions financed by green banks are not only environmentally prudent, but materially improve economic well-being for individual Americans as well. For instance, alternative underwriting criteria can give low-income communities access to rooftop solar and efficiency projects that lower home energy bills. Coupling roof replacement with solar energy increases community resilience while lowering home-insurance costs. Improving building efficiency for small businesses enables small businesses to hire more workers thanks to lower operating expenses.

The National Climate Bank would also be uniquely positioned among federal agencies to advance equity and environmental justice nationwide. The National Climate Bank could and should direct investment towards frontline and communities of color, delivering benefits like job creation, lower energy costs, and increased public health. The National Climate Bank would also be flexible and nimble enough to quickly respond to community needs as they emerge. By combining multiple financing tools (e.g., co-investment, subordinated debt, credit enhancements) with market-development strategies, the National Climate Bank would leverage new private investment and reach untapped markets. Finally, the National Climate Bank would only directly finance projects that are national in scale. For all other projects, the National Climate Bank would partner with local leaders to form state and local green banks where they don’t already exist. Such decentralization would ensure that funded projects are tailored instead of “one size fits all” and that project benefits and wealth accrue within targeted communities instead of leaking out and trickling up.

There is already considerable support for a national green bank in Congress. Senators Ed Markey and Chris Van Hollen and Representative Debbie Dingell introduced the National Climate Bank Act in 2019. And the policy (under the name Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator) was included in the $1.5 trillion Moving Forward Act that recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Establishing a national green bank was a key recommendation of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and is part of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s CLEAN Future Act. Nearly 100 organizations, including environmental organizations and industry associations, have signed a letter of support for a national green bank. Polling shows that 7 in 10 Americans—including a majority of independents and Republicans—support the funding and creation of the National Climate Bank. Finally, the idea of a national green bank was endorsed by multiple presidential candidates including Jay Inslee, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, and Kamala Harris. The next Administration can harness this legislative and popular momentum and fund the NCB through stimulus.

Summary

Mass digitization of U.S. biodiversity collections would position the nation to achieve massive advances in the life sciences—a leap forward on par with the way that DNA technology transformed genomics at the start of the 21st century. This heritage consists of hundreds of millions of dry, wet, and otherwise preserved specimens in U.S. museums and other collections, including plant germplasm, microbial cultures, non-human biomedical samples (e.g., parasites), fossils, and other plant and animal samples. This proposal presents actions for the Biden-Harris Administration to take to catalyze this advance to pave the way for a sustained, coordinated effort to mass digitize the physical specimens in U.S. biodiversity collections (and their associated metadata).