David J. Hayes (JD ’78) is back at Stanford Law School to serve as a visiting lecturer. He previously served as the Special Assistant to President Biden on Climate Policy in the White House. His varied career, which includes private practice, government service, as well as academia, has made him an important national voice on climate change policy.
Hayes was part of the Biden administration and worked with the National Climate Advisor, the cabinet-level National Climate Task Force, on a wide range of policies. These included reducing methane emissions and speeding up the transition to a clean energy economy by facilitating offshore wind, transmission, and other projects. His greatest accomplishment was the creation of the first ever, “whole-of-government” effort to increase the United States’ resilience to climate change.
His most recent position paper, “Forging New Ground”: Implementing Climate Resilience Agenda across the U.S. Federal Government, provides an “insider’s view of” that effort.
He describes in the November 2022 paper how the administration has created new interagencyworking teams to assist communities facing the worst climate impacts. These include wildfires, droughts, floods and extreme heat. Hayes’ paper calls on the Biden administration and Congress to collaborate with them to expand and institutionalize the administration’s climate resilience program, in close collaboration with tribal, state, and local leaders.
Hayes discusses the paper and his time at the Biden White House.
We are pleased to welcome you back to Stanford Law School. Could you tell us a bit about your nearly two-year tenure as the Special Assistant of President Biden to Climate Policy, and your time at the Department of the Interior under Presidents Obama or Clinton?
It was truly a blessing to have worked in the White House at a moment of significant executive and legislative progress towards tackling the climate crisis. My experience in the White House was very different to my previous stints as the Department of the Interior’s Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer. Interior, a large organization with 70,000 employees, has a broad mission to manage the nation’s cultural- and natural resources. It also includes more than 20% of the country’s landmass. The Interior Department was a great place to work. I enjoyed helping resolve land, wildlife, and water resource conflicts. These conflicts often impacted many core values of the nation and affected the lives and livelihoods many Americans. Also, and pertinent to my recent role in the White House, knowing how large agencies work enabled me to engage with leadership at EPA, Energy, Defense, Transportation, Commerce, Interior and other major departments and help construct the type of cross-agency, “whole-of-government” collaborations needed to take on the climate crisis.
What is the most important thing you can say about the new architecture that the Biden administration has created to combat climate change?
An Executive Order issued by President Biden shortly after his election acknowledged the enormous bureaucratic challenge of coordinating federal efforts to combat climate change. This included reducing emissions, shifting to clean energy, and dealing with climate impacts. These climate issues affect every federal agency. Therefore, President Biden has made it a priority to have the White House Climate Policy Office coordinate federal agencies in order to address the climate crisis using a comprehensive government-wide approach. This was a major focus of the White House.
The Obama administration has created a new approach to climate resilience. It deploys the cabinet-level National Climate Task Force, which oversees new interagency groups that focus government resources. This includes billions of dollars in new funding available under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. Specific climate impacts will be addressed (drought and flood, wildfires, extreme heat and coastal impacts), as well as infrastructure investments and federal operations.
The Administration’s “Justice40” commitment to ensure that 40% of the climate benefits go to communities in need is the guideline for
These wheels are now in motion. What are the next steps?
In my paper, I recommend that these foundational efforts are supplemented with Congressional enactment the bipartisan National Climate Adaptation and Resilience Act. The President would appoint a Chief Resilence Officer to create a national resilience strategy.
The best way to institutionalize this new resilience force is through congressional codification of the administration’s climate resilience interagency work groups. This is exactly what Senators Chris Coons (and Lisa Murkowski) are proposing in bipartisan legislation.
Our ultimate goal is to help local communities address their particular needs. We are particularly interested in those communities that are disproportionately affected due to climate change.
Why does the interagency approach matter so much?
While the federal government has a centralized capability to respond effectively to disasters–for example, the Federal Emergency Management Administration–there is no single federal agency responsible for helping communities develop defensive strategies that will make them more resilient to future climate-related impacts. True resilience strategies require a variety of federal programs and agencies, many of whom have not received the same level of attention as traditional disaster response operations.
In focusing a “whole-of-government” emphasis on improving resilience to specific climate impacts, the President is constructing a new climate resilience architecture or administrative ecosystem, if you will, in the federal government. It is based on the climate hazards that pose the greatest climate risks, such as extreme heat, drought and flood, wildfires, or coastal impacts. Every one of these impacts requires different strategies, resources, and governmental authorities.
Why not combine all these issues into a single task force?
This would have been the traditional approach: all these resilience issues should be grouped under one White House-led taskforce. Instead, the National Climate Task Force created interagency working teams that are focused on five of the most serious climate risks facing communities.
Each of the interagency groups was led by cabinet secretaries, who were joined by funding agencies and other agencies with complementary programs. Agencies that had never worked together in the past to develop longer-term strategies are now pooling their funding and sharing their expertise to help communities meet those needs.
In the 1970s, environmental law wasn’t a mature area when you went to Stanford Law School. How did you get to focus on climate, environment, and clean-energy law?
When I was in law school, environmental law was just starting to be a subject of study. Course offerings were limited. Stanford, however, had a strong public policy orientation and a strong public service orientation back then. I was a summer intern in Washington, DC during college. This experience drew me to the political process and showed me the importance of lawyers in advancing public policy. Paul Brest and Paul Goldstein, professors at law school, reaffirmed my desire to pursue a career in government service and policy issues. I graduated right around the time of the first oil crisis. There was the embargo on oil and long gas lines. After my clerkship, I began working in a law office and was fascinated by the relationship between energy resources and national security, as well as their impact on Americans from all walks of society. This was a new and exciting area of law. I became involved in pro bono and political campaigns. After Bill Clinton’s election, I had my first chance to be a Democratic appointee.
After graduating from Stanford Law School in 2013, you returned as a visiting lecturer in 2013. You have also had affiliations with Stanford University Institutes, and are now back at Stanford Law School. What draws you back?
Stanford’s unique approach to learning is interdisciplinary. It’s exciting to work in an environment that brings together world-class resources from engineering and business law and the social sciences in order to tackle the most important and difficult issues facing us all, including climate change. This institution is a great place to teach and do scholarship. Who can resist being here?
Can you tell us a bit about your teaching practice?
In the winter and spring quarters, I will teach a practicum at law school that examines opportunities and pitfalls in current efforts to promote “climate smart” agriculture and forestry practices. These practices reduce greenhouse gas emissions, capture and store carbon in soils and biomass. This area is receiving significant private and public investment, including $20 billion in federal funds in the newly-enacted Inflation Reduction Act. Despite the development of new technologies and standards-setting opportunities, data collection and verification techniques for reliably quantifying climate benefits associated with specific agricultural or forestry practices is difficult. This practicum will provide recommendations on how to improve the state of knowledge and possibly develop certification or other mechanisms that encourage and validate best practices. It will be held at the law school, but students will also come from other areas of the University, such as the Doerr Sustainability School.
David Hayes was Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer at the U.S. Department of the Interior under Presidents Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton. Between his government service, he served in a variety of roles, including the global chair of Latham & Watkins’ Environment, Land and Resources section. From 2013 to 2017, he was a Stanford Law School lecturer. He is also affiliated with the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy, and the University’s Woods Institute for the Environment. His recent position paper was published.