More than 150 world leaders, including Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Ford Motor Company executive chairman Bill Ford, signed an open letter to President Joe Biden to pledge their support to the new administration’s goals to combat climate change.
In particular, the open letter, released Sunday, underscored the potential job growth new climate change mitigation technology will provide.
“You’ve famously said: ‘When I hear the words climate change, I hear jobs.’ We agree,” the open letter says. “While the climate crisis presents incredible challenges, it is also the greatest economic opportunity for innovation, job creation, new businesses, and investment in our communities.”
Biden made combating climate change one of the pillars of his campaign and outlined a $2 trillion plan that would create jobs by rebuilding infrastructure in the United States in a sustainable manner, upgrading buildings and weatherizing homes, investing in the development and commercialization of clean energy technology, to name a few initiatives.
“Your commitment to build back better with clean energy jobs and tackling the legacy of environmental injustice is the consequential action that science and our future demands,” the open letter says. “We will work alongside you to realize this ambitious pursuit.”
The coronavirus pandemic decimated the job market in the United States, and while there has been some recovery from the nadir in the spring, there are still many millions of jobs which have not yet come back.
In addition to business leaders, some celebrity activists signed the open letter to Biden including Zooey Deschanel and Leonardo DiCaprio.
On Biden’s first day in office, he rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, an international treatise to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius when compared to pre-industrial levels.
“By rejoining the Paris Agreement on day one, you have moved the United States in the right direction,” the open letter reads. “But, as you have stated, it is simply not enough, and we must ‘do all we possibly can.'”
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