The video rollouts of President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, and National Economic Council director, Brian Deese, began biographically. But they quickly shifted to focus on an issue that could distinguish Biden’s core economic team from its predecessors: climate change.
Yellen promised an agenda to promote "investments that will create jobs and address the tremendous challenge of climate change.” Biden introduced Deese by calling him the first NEC director who is a "true expert on climate policy.”
Both were clear signs that, even as Biden confronts the immediate task of accelerating the pandemic recovery, he has placed the longer-running climate challenge at the center of his administration’s economic priorities.