I am really loving the speed and preparation with which the Biden administration is staffing up the government and rooting out Trump appointees. It’s almost breathtaking in its efficiency and focus. This is going to make it much easier to implement President Biden’s agenda, including the aggressive “whole-of-government” climate ambitions he rolled out on Wednesday.

Philip Bump of the Washington Post says, “Biden’s administration has quickly and unquestionably become the one most focused on climate change in U.S. history,” and this is unquestionably true as even the left flank of the Democratic Party acknowledges.

It’s true that Biden isn’t going to ban fracking. But that’s in part because he’s looking to smooth the transition to a clean energy economy rather than exacerbate the disruption and dislocation it will cause. As part of that, Biden established a Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization which will not only look to clean up the environmental damage done in energy-producing communities, but turn their brownfields “into new hubs for the growth of our economy.”

The White House will also establish an interagency working group to help communities transition away from coal and other fossil fuels, the individuals said, headed by [White House National Climate Advisor Gina] McCarthy and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese.

Speaking to the U.S. Conference of Mayors this past weekend, McCarthy assured local officials from across the country that the administration would work to convince average Americans they will benefit from a transition to clean energy.

“People have been in pain long enough. We are not going to ask for sacrifice,” she said. “And if we fail to win the heart of middle America, we will lose.”

To get a sense of the potential here, it pays to look at the reaction from Gillette, Wyoming, Mayor Louise Carter-King. She governs a city that fancies itself the “Energy Capital of the Nation,” and they have a strong interest in the status quo. But Carter-King knows the dirty energy industry is on life support.

“I think we’ve found out it doesn’t really matter who is in the Oval Office,” she said in an interview, noting that while the Trump administration lightened regulations on coal and oil and gas companies, the energy industry that has helped this city thrive for decades still suffered job losses. “It’s just a free market, and that’s just all there is to it.”

She’s not thrilled to see the new emphasis on clean, renewable energy from the Biden administration, but she’s not taking an adversarial position.

While Wyoming remains one of the reddest states in the country — President Donald Trump won more than 70 percent of the vote in November — Carter-King said she welcomes Biden’s promises to help create new, solid jobs in places where the nation’s shift to cleaner forms of energy could mean lost jobs in the fossil fuel sector.

“We do want to work with the new administration on what we can do here. … Working together, we can get so much further than [having] some sort of standoff,” she said. “President Biden has promised to help communities like ours, so I’d like to hold him to that.”

The politics work for Biden, and they have to because his legislative agenda on climate has to go through Sen. Joe Manchin whose West Virginian constituents are as dependent on the old energy economy as the citizens of Wyoming. Manchin isn’t just a necessary vote in the 50-50 Senate, he’s the incoming chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. If Biden didn’t make it a priority to create replacement jobs, Manchin would insist. In fact, it’s Manchin’s recognition that the old economy cannot be saved that led him to team up with outgoing Energy Committee chairwoman Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to make sure the December coronavirus bill included “billions for solar, wind and battery storage.” Manchin knows that the people of his state will be left behind if he doesn’t use his powerful perch to get them new employment opportunities.

In this sense, Biden and Manchin’s interests mesh, and the same could be true for the mainly Republican senators who represent coal, oil and gas-producing states. More likely, they let partisan pressure prevent them from working constructively on climate legislation, but their constituents should benefit from Manchin’s efforts anyway.

It could be decades before Democrats are competitive in places like Gillette, Wyoming, but the changeover could come quicker than anyone thinks, precisely because Biden is taking their needs seriously and his policies will become their new lifeblood.

As for progressives, they’ll always find reasons to grumble and often without the slightest realism about what’s possible in Washington, DC. But they’re feeling positive about Biden’s appointments and his approach. We’ve rejoined the Paris Agreement, cancelled the XL Pipeline and paused all new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or offshore waters. There’s a new White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and National Climate Task Force. Environmental justice will now be “part of the mission of every agency” and  federal agencies will “develop programs, policies, and activities to address the disproportionate health, environmental, economic, and climate impacts on disadvantaged communities.”

Maybe most importantly, Biden has reestablished the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and issued a presidential memorandum that “directs agencies to make evidence-based decisions guided by the best available science and data.”

All of this is in the service of Biden’s ambition to launch “a clean energy revolution that achieves a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and puts the United States on an irreversible path to a net-zero economy by 2050.”

So, nitpick if you must, but I think Biden’s habitual critics should be generous enough to admit they’re pleasantly surprised.