Oil and gas companies knew they would face a fight with U.S. President Joe Biden, who had campaigned on tackling climate change. Nobody expected fossil fuel to come under such an immediate attack.
Biden didn’t quietly sidetrack the Keystone XL pipeline with legal maneuvers. The new president yanked the permit on his very first day in office, blocking a project that would have delivered crude from Alberta’s oil sands before even speaking to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
He didn’t simply rejoin the Paris climate pact, as he promised during the campaign, but had his climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, commit Wednesday to "the most aggressive” carbon cut the U.S. can make. That came just before Biden signed a climate-related executive order suspending new oil and gas leases on public lands, directing federal agencies to purchase electric cars by the thousands and seeking to end fossil-fuel subsidies.