Tag: crises

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All vitality crises pale compared to Covid

All energy crises pale in comparison to Covid

LONDON – Oil and gas giant BP released its benchmark Statistical Review of World Energy on Thursday, describing 2020 as “a year like no other” due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global energy.

Over the past seven decades, BP claimed to have witnessed some of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the global energy system, including the 1956 Suez Canal crisis, the 1973 oil embargo, the 1979 Iranian revolution and the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

“All moments of great turbulence in global energy,” said Spencer Dale, chief economist at BP, in the report. “But all pale compared to the events of last year.”

To date, more than 185 million Covid-19 cases have been reported worldwide with over 4 million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The actual number of Covid-19 infections and deaths is believed to be far higher – and continues to rise.

The pandemic also resulted in massive economic losses, with global GDP estimated to have fallen by around 3.3% over the past year. This is the biggest peacetime recession since the Great Depression.

The Covid pandemic is having a dramatic impact on global energy. Here are some highlights from the report:

Energy developments

BP said the coronavirus crisis last year caused primary energy and CO2 emissions to fall at the rate they have since World War II. However, the relentless expansion of renewable energies went “relatively unscathed”, with solar energy recording the fastest increase of all time.

The oil and gas company said that global energy demand had fallen by 4.5% and global CO2 emissions from energy consumption had shrunk by 6.3%.

“These declines are enormous by historical standards – the largest declines in both energy demand and carbon emissions since World War II. In fact, the decrease of over 2 Gt CO2 means that last year carbon emissions were back to 2011 levels, ”said Dale.

“It is also noticeable that the carbon intensity of the energy mix – the average carbon emissions per unit of energy used – has decreased by 1.8%, also one of the largest decreases in post-war history,” he added.

For some, the decline in global CO2 emissions briefly raised hopes for so-called “peak carbon”, although the desire to limit global warming – and achieve a key goal of the groundbreaking Paris Agreement – is rapidly deteriorating.

It does so as politicians and business leaders publicly acknowledge the need to transition to a low-carbon society, with policymakers under increasing pressure to deliver on the promises made under the Paris Agreement ahead of this year’s COP26.

“There are worrying signs that last year’s COVID-induced decline in carbon emissions will be short-lived as the global economy recovers and lockdowns are lifted,” said Bernard Looney, CEO of BP, in the report .

“The challenge is to reduce emissions sustainably and in a year-on-year comparison without massively affecting our livelihoods and our everyday lives,” he added.

oil

An overview of Gunvor Petroleum or Rozenburg Refinery in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Europe’s largest port covers 105 square kilometers (41 square miles) and stretches for 40 kilometers (25 miles).

Dean Mouhtaropoulos | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Oil demand fell most in the US with a decline of 2.3 million barrels, followed by the EU and India with 1.5 million barrels and 480,000 barrels respectively.

BP said global oil production has shrunk by 6.6 million barrels, with two-thirds of that decrease being attributable to the oil producing group OPEC.

The price of international benchmark Brent crude averaged $ 41.84 in 2020, according to the energy giant, its lowest level since 2004. The oil contract was last traded at $ 73.70.

Renewable energy

“Arguably the most important element of the energy system needed to address both aspects of the Paris Agreement – responding to the threat of climate change and supporting sustainable growth – is the need for rapid growth in renewable energy,” said Dale of BP in the report.

Renewable energies, including biofuels and excluding hydropower, rose 9.7% in 2020, BP said. This was slower than the 10-year average of 13.4% year-over-year, but the increase in terms of energy was similar to the years before the pandemic.

Solar power rose by record levels, but wind was found to be the largest contributor to renewable energy growth.

In terms of capacity, solar power grew 127 gigawatts in 2020 while wind power grew 111 gigawatts – nearly double the highest annual increase to date, BP said. “The main driver was China, which has accounted for about half of the global increase in wind and solar capacity,” said Dale.

Speaking of BP’s latest annual Statistical Review of World Energy, Dale said, “The significance of the past 70 years pales when we look at the challenges the energy system will face for the next 10, 20, 30 years as the world continues after that strives to achieve net zero. “

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Politics

Rising From Pandemic, New York Seeks a New Mayor to Face Looming Crises

Rising From Pandemic, New York Seeks a New Mayor to Face Looming Crises

The New York City mayor’s race began in the throes of a pandemic, in a shuttered city convulsed by a public health catastrophe, economic devastation and widespread protests over police brutality.

Now, with voters heading to the primary polls on Tuesday, New York finds itself in a very different place. As the city roars back to life, its residents are at once buoyed by optimism around reopenings, but also anxious about public safety, affordable housing, jobs — and the very character of the nation’s largest city.

The primary election marks the end of an extraordinary chapter in New York’s history and the start of another, an inflection point that will play a defining role in shaping the post-pandemic future of the city. The leading mayoral candidates have promoted starkly divergent visions for confronting a series of overlapping crises, making this primary, which will almost certainly determine the next mayor, the most significant city election in a generation.

Public polling and interviews with elected officials, voters and party strategists suggest that on the cusp of Tuesday’s election, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, is the front-runner, fueled by his focus on public safety issues and his ability to connect in working- and middle-class communities of color.

Yet even on the last weekend of the race, the contest to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio appears fluid and unpredictable, and credible polling remains sparse.

Two other leading candidates, Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia, campaigned together on Saturday in Queens and Manhattan, a show of unity that also injected ugly clashes over race into the final hours of the election, as Mr. Adams accused his rivals of coming together “in the last three days” and “saying, ‘We can’t trust a person of color to be the mayor of the City of New York.’”

Mr. Yang, at a later event, noted that he had been “Asian my entire life.” (Mr. Adams later clarified that he meant that Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia were trying to prevent a Black or Latino candidate from becoming mayor.)

The primary election will ultimately offer a clear sense of Democratic attitudes around confronting crime, a major national issue that has become the most urgent matter in the mayoral primary.

The outcome will also show whether New Yorkers wanted a political outsider eager to shake up City Hall bureaucracy, like Mr. Yang, or a seasoned government veteran like Ms. Garcia to navigate staggering challenges from issues of education to evictions to economic revival.

And it will reveal whether Democrats are in the mood to “reimagine” a far more equitable city through transformational progressive policies, as Maya D. Wiley is promising, or if they are more focused on everyday municipal problems.

In recent polls and last-minute fund-raising, Ms. Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, and Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, seem to be gaining late traction, while Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, remains a serious contender even amid signs that his momentum may have stalled.

But other factors may muddy the outcome.

For the first time in New York City, the mayoral nominee will be determined by ranked-choice voting, which allows New Yorkers to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. Some New Yorkers remain undecided about how to rank their choices, and whether to rank at all.

And with many New Yorkers accustomed to a primary that usually takes place in September, it is not at all clear what the composition of a post-pandemic June electorate will look like.

For such a high-stakes election, the contest has felt at once endless and rushed. For months, it was a low-key affair, defined by dutiful Zoom forums and a distracted city.

But if there has been one constant in the last month, it has been the centrality of crime and policing to the contest.

“Public safety has clearly emerged as a significant issue,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, New York’s highest-ranking House member, when asked to name the defining issue of the mayor’s race. “How to balance that aspiration with fair, respectful policing, I think has been critical throughout the balance of this campaign.”

Six months ago, few would have predicted that public safety would be the top issue of the race, only a year after the“defund the police” movement took hold in the city. Crime rates are far lower than in earlier eras, and residents are confronting a long list of challenges as the city emerges from the pandemic.

But amid a rise this spring in shootings, jarring episodes of violence on the subways, bias attacks against Asian Americans and Jews — and heavy coverage of crime on local television — virtually every public poll shows public safety has become the biggest concern among Democratic voters.

Mr. Adams, Ms. Garcia, Mr. Yang and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, vigorously disagree with the “defund the police” movement. But no one has been more vocal about public safety issues than Mr. Adams, a former police captain who has declared safety the “prerequisite” to prosperity.

Mr. Adams, who had a complex career at the Police Department and battled police misconduct as a leader of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, an advocacy group, says that he was once a victim of police brutality himself, and argues that he is well equipped to manage both police reform and spikes in violence.

In recent weeks, however, Mr. Adams has come under growing scrutiny over questions of transparency and ethics tied to taxes and disclosures around real estate holdings. That dynamic may fuel doubts about his candidacy in the final days, as his opponents have sharply questioned his judgment and integrity.

If he wins, it will be in part because of his significant institutional support, as a veteran politician with union backing and relationships with key constituencies — but also because his message connects at a visceral level in some neighborhoods across the city.

“Mr. Adams! You got my vote!” Blanca Soto, who turns 60 on Monday, cried out as she walked by an Adams event in Harlem on Thursday.

“I am rooting for him because he’s not going to take away from the police officers,” said Ms. Soto, a health aide, who called safety her top issue. “I do want to see more police, especially in the subways. We had them there before. I don’t know what happened, but everything was good when that was going on.”

Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller; Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary; Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive; and Ms. Wiley have taken a starkly different view on several policing matters. They support varying degrees of cuts to the Police Department’s budget, arguing for investments in communities instead. The department’s operating budget has been about $6 billion. Ms. Wiley, Mr. Stringer and Ms. Morales have also been skeptical of adding more police officers to patrol the subway.

Ms. Wiley argues that the best way to stop violence is often to invest in the social safety net, including in mental health professionals, violence interrupters and in schools.

Understand the N.Y.C. Mayoral Race

Ms. Wiley, who has been endorsed by some of the most prominent left-wing leaders in the country, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, is seeking to build a coalition that includes white progressives as well as voters of color across the ideological spectrum.

Rival campaigns have long believed that she has the potential to build perhaps the broadest coalition of voters in the race, but polls suggest that she has not yet done so in a meaningful way.

Mr. Jeffries, who has endorsed Ms. Wiley and campaigned with her, said that she offers change from the status quo, “a fresh face” who is both prepared “and is offering a compelling vision for investing in those communities that have traditionally been left behind.”

Mr. Jeffries has said that he is ranking Mr. Adams second, and that if Mr. Adams were to win, it would be on the strength of Black and Latino communities “who have increasingly felt excluded from the promises of New York City, as it has become increasingly expensive.”

A number of campaigns and political strategists see Latino voters as the crucial, late-breaking swing vote, and the leading candidates all see opportunities with slices of that diverse constituency, with candidates including Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley airing new Spanish-language ads in recent days — an Adams spot criticizes Ms. Garcia in Spanish — and Mr. Yang spending Thursday in the Bronx, home to the city’s largest Latino population.

Mr. Yang, who would be the city’s first Asian American mayor, is betting that he can reshape the electorate by engaging more young, Asian American and Latino voters as he casts himself as a “change” candidate.

Mr. Yang was a front-runner in the race for months, boosted by his strong name identification and air of celebrity, as well as a hopeful message about New York’s potential and an energetic in-person campaign schedule.

But as New York reopened and crime became a bigger issue in voters’ minds — and as Mr. Yang faced growing scrutiny over gaffes and gaps in his municipal knowledge — he has lost ground.

His tone in the homestretch is a striking departure from the exuberant pitch that defined his early message, as he sharpens his criticism of Mr. Adams and tries to cut into his advantage on public safety issues. Mr. Yang, who has no city government experience, has also sought to use that outsider standing to deliver searing indictments of the political class.

Ms. Garcia has moderate instincts — she was one of the few leading mayoral candidates to favor President Biden as her first choice in the presidential primary — but she is primarily running as a pragmatic technocrat steeped in municipal knowledge.

She has been endorsed by the editorial boards of The New York Times and The New York Daily News, among others, and has generated palpable traction in politically engaged, highly educated corners of the city, like the Upper West Side, even as Mr. Stringer and Mr. Donovan have also vied for the government experience mantle.

“I don’t think New York does that well, as progressive as I am, with a series of progressives who think that we should spend more time dealing with those kinds of issues rather than actual stuff that needs to be done,” said William Pinzler, 74, as he prepared to vote for Ms. Garcia at Lincoln Center. “Kathryn Garcia picked up the garbage.”

But Ms. Garcia, who has struggled to deliver a standout moment during several televised debates, is in many ways still introducing herself, and it is not yet clear whether she can attract the same kind of support citywide.

Asked what lessons national Democrats may take from the results of Tuesday’s contest, Representative Grace Meng, who has endorsed Mr. Yang as her first choice and Ms. Garcia as her second, and appeared with them on Saturday, pointed to questions of both personal characteristics and policy visions.

“How much people prioritize a leader with experience or vision to get us out of the pandemic, but also to address issues like public safety and education — I think that it’ll kind of be a filter through which we see the next round of elections nationally,” she said. “Wherever they may be.”

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Health

In Crises, Vaccines Can Be Stretched, however Not Simply

In Crises, Vaccines Can Be Stretched, but Not Easily

In desperate times, there are many ways to stretch vaccines and speed up inoculation campaigns, according to experts who have done it.

Splitting doses, delaying second shots, injecting into the skin instead of the muscle and employing roving vaccination teams have all saved lives — when the circumstances were right.

During cholera outbreaks in war zones, Doctors Without Borders has even used “takeaway” vaccination, in which the recipient is given the first dose on the spot and handed the second to self-administer later.

Unfortunately, experts said, it would be difficult to try most of those techniques in the United States right now, even though vaccines against the coronavirus are rolling out far more slowly than had been hoped.

Those novel strategies have worked with vaccines against yellow fever, polio, measles, cholera and Ebola; most of those vaccines were invented decades ago or are easier to administer because they are oral or can be stored in a typical refrigerator.

The new mRNA-based coronavirus vaccines approved thus far are too fragile, experts said, and too little is known about how much immunity they confer.

The incoming Biden administration should focus on speeding up the production of more robust vaccines “rather than playing card tricks” with current ones, said Dr. Peter J. Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the inventor of a coronavirus vaccine.

There are two strategies that might work with the current vaccines, but each is controversial.

The first is being tried in Britain. In December, faced with shortages and an explosive outbreak, the country’s chief medical officers said they would roll out all of the vaccine they had, giving modest protection to as many Britons as possible. Second doses, they said, would be delayed by up to 12 weeks and might be of a different vaccine.

There is some evidence for the idea: Early data from the first 600,000 injections in Israel suggest that even one dose of the Pfizer vaccine cut the risk of infection by about 50 percent.

Nonetheless, some British virologists were outraged, saying single doses could lead to vaccine-resistant strains. The Food and Drug Administration and many American vaccinologists also oppose the idea.

Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, raised a different objection to the British plan. Single doses, he warned, might inadequately “prime” the immune system; then, if those vaccine recipients were later infected, some might do worse than if they had not been vaccinated at all.

He recalled a 1960s incident in which a weak new vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, a cause of childhood pneumonia, backfired. Some children who received it and later became infected fell sicker than unvaccinated children, and two toddlers died.

“It may be only one in 1,000 who get inadequate priming, but it’s a concern,” Dr. Slaoui said. As an alternative — the second strategy for stretching the vaccines — he proposed using half-doses of the Moderna vaccine.

There is strong evidence for doing that, he said in a telephone interview. During Moderna’s early trials, the 50-microgram vaccine dose produced an immune response virtually identical to the 100-microgram one.

Moderna chose the higher dose as its standard partly to be extra sure it would work; company scientists at the time had no idea that their product would prove 95 percent effective. The higher dose would also have a longer shelf life.

But the vaccine works better than expected, and shelf life is not an issue, so Dr. Slaoui suggested using the lower dose.

“The beauty is, you inject half and get the identical immune response,” he said. “We hope that, in a pandemic situation, the F.D.A. may simply accept it rather than asking for a new trial.”

Covid-19 Vaccines ›

Answers to Your Vaccine Questions

If I live in the U.S., when can I get the vaccine?

While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is getting made, this article will help.

When can I return to normal life after being vaccinated?

Life will return to normal only when society as a whole gains enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they’ll only be able to vaccinate a few percent of their citizens at most in the first couple months. The unvaccinated majority will still remain vulnerable to getting infected. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines are showing robust protection against becoming sick. But it’s also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they’re infected because they experience only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists don’t yet know if the vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for the time being, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid indoor crowds, and so on. Once enough people get vaccinated, it will become very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve that goal, life might start approaching something like normal by the fall 2021.

If I’ve been vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask?

Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that will potentially get authorized this month clearly protect people from getting sick with Covid-19. But the clinical trials that delivered these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. That remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected by the coronavirus can spread it while they’re not experiencing any cough or other symptoms. Researchers will be intensely studying this question as the vaccines roll out. In the meantime, even vaccinated people will need to think of themselves as possible spreaders.

Will it hurt? What are the side effects?

The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered as a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection won’t be any different from ones you’ve gotten before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported any serious health problems. But some of them have felt short-lived discomfort, including aches and flu-like symptoms that typically last a day. It’s possible that people may need to plan to take a day off work or school after the second shot. While these experiences aren’t pleasant, they are a good sign: they are the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and mounting a potent response that will provide long-lasting immunity.

Will mRNA vaccines change my genes?

No. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse to a cell, allowing the molecule to slip in. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any moment, each of our cells may contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce in order to make proteins of their own. Once those proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules our cells make can only survive a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a bit longer, so that the cells can make extra virus proteins and prompt a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only last for a few days at most before they are destroyed.

Many experts disagreed with the idea, including Dr. Walter A. Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta. “We need to know more before we can feel comfortable doing that,” he said.

“Let’s stick to the science,” added Dr. Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “There are no efficacy data on a partial dose.”

Although, like Dr. Slaoui, Dr. Offit opposed delaying second doses, he expressed doubt that doing so, as the British have, would raise the risk of worse outcomes in the partially vaccinated.

Trials in which monkeys or other animals were vaccinated and then “challenged” with a deliberate infection did not cause enhanced disease, he noted. Also, the four coronaviruses that cause common colds do not cause worse disease when people get them again. And people who have Covid-19 do not get worse when they receive antibody treatments; generally, they get better.

As is often the case, experts disagree about how and what a new vaccine will do. Some point to hard evidence that both fractional doses and delayed doses have worked when doctors have tried them out of desperation.

For example, yellow fever outbreaks in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been stymied by campaigns using as little as 20 percent of a dose.

One shot of yellow fever vaccine, invented in the 1930s, gives lifelong protection. But a one-fifth dose can protect for a year or more, said Miriam Alia, a vaccination expert for Doctors Without Borders.

In 2018, almost 25 million Brazilians, including those in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, faced a fast-moving outbreak at a time when there were fewer than six million shots in the global supply. The Brazilian government switched to one-fifth doses and sent mobile teams into the slums urging everyone they met to take them, and filling out minimal paperwork. It worked: By 2019, the threat had faded.

The tactic has also been used against polio. Since 2016, there has been a global shortage of the injectable polio vaccine, which many countries use in conjunction with the live oral one. The World Health Organization has overseen trials of different ways to stretch existing supplies.

India first tried half-doses, said Deepak Kapur, chairman of Rotary International’s polio eradication efforts in that country. Later studies showed that it was possible to drop to as low as one-fifth of a dose as long as it was injected just under the skin rather than into the muscle, said Dr. Tunji Funsho, chief of polio eradication for Rotary International’s Nigeria chapter.

“That way, one vial for 10 can reach 50 people,” Dr. Funsho said.

Skin injections work better than muscle ones because the skin contains far more cells that recognize invaders and because sub-skin layers drain into lymph nodes, which are part of the immune system, said Mark R. Prausnitz, a bioengineer at Georgia Tech who specializes in intradermal injection techniques.

“The skin is our interface with the outside world,” Dr. Prausnitz said. “It’s where the body expects to find pathogens.”

Intradermal injection is used for vaccines against rabies and tuberculosis. Ten years ago, Sanofi introduced an intradermal flu vaccine, “but the public didn’t accept it,” Dr. Prausnitz said.

Intradermal injection has disadvantages, however. It takes more training to do correctly. Injectors with needle-angling devices, super-short needles or arrays of multiple needles exist, Dr. Prausnitz said, but are uncommon. Ultimately, he favors micro-needle patches infused with dissolving vaccine.

“It would really be beneficial if we could just mail these to people’s homes and let them do it themselves,” he said.

A bigger disadvantage, Dr. Slaoui, is that intradermal injection produces strong immune reactions. These can be painful, and can bleed a bit and then scab over and leave a scar, as smallpox injections often did before the United States abandoned them in 1972.

The lipid nanoparticles in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would be particularly prone to that effect, he said.

“It’s not dangerous,” he added. “But it’s not appealing and not practical.”

What the United States can and must do now, health experts said, is train more vaccinators, coordinate everyone delivering shots and get better at logistics.

Thanks to battles against polio, measles and Ebola, some of the world’s poorest countries routinely do better vaccination drives than the United States is now managing to do, said Emily Bancroft, president of Village Reach, a logistics and communications contractor working in Mozambique, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo and also assisting Seattle’s coronavirus vaccine drive.

“You need an army of vaccinators, people who know how to run campaigns, detailed micro-plans and good data tracking,” she said. “Hospitals here don’t even know what they have on their shelves. For routine immunization, getting information once a month is OK. In an epidemic, it’s not OK.”

In 2017, the United Nations Children’s Fund recruited 190,000 vaccinators to give polio vaccines to 116 million children in one week. In the same year, Nigeria injected measles vaccine into almost five million children in a week.

In rural Africa, community health workers with little formal education delivered injectable contraceptives like Depo-Provera. The basics can be taught in one to three days, Ms. Bancroft said.

Training can be done on “injection pads” that resemble human arms. And data collection must be set up so that every team can report on a cellphone and it all flows to a national dashboard, as happens now in the poorest countries.

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Politics

Biden Cupboard nominees pledge to make use of federal powers to handle crises

Biden Cabinet nominees pledge to use federal powers to address crises

US President-elect Joe Biden speaks to reporters as he announces candidates and candidates during a press conference at his interim headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware on December 11, 2020.

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WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden introduced several of his candidates to head domestic affairs agencies on Friday, highlighting how members of his cabinet would use the powers of the federal government to help Americans in need.

Accompanied by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris at the event at a Wilmington, Delaware hotel, Biden began making brief remarks on the coronavirus pandemic before introducing his candidate to lead the Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.

He also introduced his nominee for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio; his candidate for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Denis McDonough; and for US sales representative Katherine Tai.

Biden also announced that Susan Rice, a former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, has agreed to serve as director of the White House Home Affairs Council, a powerful position in the west wing that will give Rice broad influence on a number of issues .

Taken together, Biden said his candidates bring “deep experience and bold new thinking” to federal agencies and the White House. “Most of all, they know how the government can and should work for all Americans.”

Biden stressed how any member of his cabinet would help Americans face multiple overlapping crises: the coronavirus pandemic, a deep recession, and an impending spike in evictions and food insecurity.

For example, Fudge will “use every lever at her disposal to help the millions of Americans facing eviction – trying to pay their mortgage and find their way through this crisis,” Biden said.

U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge speaks on December 11, 2020 after being named Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by U.S. President-elect Joe Biden (R) in Wilmington, Delaware.

Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

And Vilsack “knows the full range of resources available in the [Department of Agriculture] Get immediate assistance to those most in need and address crises in rural America. “

The nominees also made brief comments, emphasizing how various federal agencies would help a nationwide recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Rice spoke last and tied everything together.

US President-elect Joe Biden (R) watches as former National Security Advisor to Obama Susan Rice makes remarks after being unveiled as Biden’s decision to present his home affairs council on December 11, 2020 at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware, to direct.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

“Today we face a profound series of crises: a relentless pandemic, a troubled economy, urgent demands for racial justice and justice, a climate that needs healing, a democracy that needs to be repaired, and a world that needs renewed Americans for leadership “, she said.

“Our top priorities will be to help end the pandemic and revitalize an economy that cares for all, brings dignity and humanity to our broken immigration system, promotes racial justice, justice and civil rights for all, and ensures that healthcare is affordable and to be accessible and educate and train Americans to compete and thrive in the 21st century, “Rice continued.

“I firmly believe that we can all move up or down together – absolutely all of us.”

Just 40 days before his inauguration, Biden is putting together a cabinet that is unprecedented in its racial and gender diversity. Tai, Fudge, and Rice are all women of color.

Earlier this week, Biden announced that retired General Lloyd Austin was his decision to run the Pentagon, making Austin the first black man to ever be appointed Secretary of Defense.

However, Biden has come under heavy pressure from civil rights groups to add even more diversity to his cabinet, particularly nominating an Asian American for a top position in the cabinet.

On Friday, several groups representing Asian Americans and Pacific islanders released a joint statement criticizing “the remarkable absence of Asian American cabinet secretaries” in the Biden administration.

“President-elect Biden is well on the way to being the first president in over 20 years to fail to nominate an Asian American for the role of cabinet secretary in his administration,” said the statement made by the National Council Asia Pacific has submitted to CNBC Americans.

But Asian Americans aren’t the only group currently pressuring Biden to be more prominent in his White House: on Tuesday, he and Harris met with leaders of older civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the National Urban League.

They called on Biden to create a new position in the White House, a racial justice advisor who should be tasked with coordinating government-wide efforts to combat systemic racism.

Biden has so far refused to comment on the specific recommendations and inquiries he receives from lawyers. But he told CNN last week, “Every advocacy group out there is pushing for more and more of what they want. That is their job.”

However, in the same interview, Biden also defended his cabinet selection, noting that they were already “the most diverse cabinet ever announced in American history”.