Biden moves on climate change have hemp industry seeing opportunity

Hemp advocates say the plant’s carbon-gobbling properties position the crop to play an important role in plans outlined by President Joe Biden to tackle the climate crisis.

Biden created the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy Wednesday and signed a series of executive orders aimed at tackling the climate crisis.

After signing an order to re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement on his first day in office, Biden signaled that more executive actions were coming, to establish the climate crisis as “an essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security.”

Biden’s climate plans also include:

• A new national intelligence estimate on the security implications of the climate crisis.
• Directing all federal agencies to integrate climate strategies into their work.
• A Leaders’ Climate Summit on Earth Day, April 22.
• A new a Civilian Climate Corps Initiative, putting citizens to work restoring public lands and waters, increasing reforestation and protecting biodiversity – and sequestering carbon through regenerative agriculture.

Hemp advocates want the industry to have a seat at the table to help with climate change initiatives, citing the crop’s phytoremediation and carbon sequestration properties that help neutralize pollution.

“The ability to harness hemp’s power to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and remediate toxins from the soil could finally become a functioning reality instead of a theoretical possibility,” Texas cannabis attorney Lisa Pittman told Hemp Industry Daily in an email.