Climate 21 Project Memos
(Climate 21 Project) The Climate 21 Project taps the expertise of more than 150 experts with high-level government experience, including nine former cabinet appointees, to deliver actionable advice for a rapid-start, whole-of-government climate response coordinated by the White House and accountable to the President.
The memos below contain the Climate 21 Project’s recommendations for 11 White House offices, federal departments, and federal agencies, as well as cross-cutting recommendations on personnel and hiring.
Importantly, the Climate 21 Project is not offering a policy agenda. Rather, the memos below contain recommendations that can help the President hit the ground running and build the capacity of his administration to tackle the climate crisis quickly with the existing tools at hand.
The recommendations are focused in scope on areas where the contributors have the most expertise. An all-of-government mobilization on climate change will require important work by additional federal departments and agencies that were not examined by the Climate 21 Project. READ MORE
Transition Recommendations for Climate Governance and Action
Executive Office of the President
Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Department of Transportation (DOT)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Attracting and Hiring Climate Change Talent
Biden Could Revive Enforcement Tool, With New Focus on Climate (Bloomberg Law)
Ag And Food Groups Unveil Climate Policy Platform (Ag Web)
Excerpt from Bloomberg Law: Trump officials tossed ‘supplemental environmental projects’; Advocates pushing for restoration, new targets under Biden …
A memo from the Climate 21 Project—a initiative from more than 150 former officials identifying levers for climate action across the U.S. government—recommends the Justice Department reinstate supplemental environmental projects, or SEPs, a popular settlement option the Trump administration nixed in March.
The department could then “amplify the administration’s climate agenda by prioritizing cases with a climate nexus and negotiating supplemental climate projects in settlements,” the report says. Some outside lawyers have endorsed the recommendation.
The move, if embraced by Biden administration officials, would both reinvigorate a longstanding approach for addressing alleged environmental violations, and encourage government lawyers to seek more creative deals that reduce greenhouse gases.
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Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency lawyers have used SEPs for decades in settlement agreements, allowing companies accused of pollution violations to voluntarily conduct environmentally beneficial projects in affected communities—sometimes in exchange for lower fines.
Despite the projects’ popularity among government, nonprofit, and industry lawyers alike, the Trump administration in March decided to prohibit them. Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark, the political appointee atop the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said the projects unlawfully divert money that would otherwise flow to the U.S. Treasury.
Many lawyers in private practice and government are eager to see SEPs return. Beveridge & Diamond PC attorney John Cruden, who led the environment division under President Barack Obama, called on the Biden administration to quickly rescind Clark’s policy.
If SEPs are revived, “they are a perfect place to advance environmental justice, a central platform issue for the Biden Administration,” Cruden said in an email. “And, in appropriate cases, you could also use SEPs to advance climate/greenhouse gas issues.” READ MORE
