Joe Biden announced a new plan on Tuesday to spend $2 trillion over the course of four years to reduce fossil fuel use across the United States and create jobs. The plan connects tackling climate change with the economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis as well as addressing racism.
What We Know:
- In a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden built on his plans for reviving the economy in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, with a new focus on enhancing the nation’s infrastructure and emphasizing the importance of significantly cutting fossil fuel emissions. “These are the most critical investments we can make for the long-term health and vitality of both the American economy and the physical health and safety of the American people,” Biden said. “When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster is ‘hoax’. When I think about climate change, the word I think of is ‘jobs’.” Biden’s plan includes initiatives to significantly escalate the use of clean energy in the transportation, electricity, and building sectors.
- The climate plan is so far the second piece of Biden’s platform for economic recovery. Throughout his speech, Biden and his team took aim at President Donald Trump who has struggled to deliver on his pledges to pay for major improvements to American infrastructure. “Seems like every few weeks when he needs a distraction from the latest charges of corruption in his staff, or the conviction of high-ranking members of the administration and political apparatus, the White House announces, quote, ‘It’s Infrastructure Week’,” Biden said. “He’s never delivered. Never really even tried. Well, I know how to get it done.”
- In his remarks, Biden sought to signal that he understands the urgency of global climate challenges while also casting the issue as the next great test of American ingenuity. “I know meeting the challenge would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to jolt new life into our economy, strengthen our global leadership, protect our planet for future generations,” Biden said. “If I have the honor of being elected president, we’re not just going to tinker around the edges. We’re going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity, meet this moment in history.”
- Before Biden spoke, Trump’s allies painted the plan as a costly threat to jobs in the energy sector and Trump’s campaign sought to link the proposal to the far-reaching previous climate plan known as the Green New Deal. During an appearance in the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday, Trump began a rambling attack on his opponent while also seeking to portray Biden and his environmental plan as radical. “Biden’s agenda is the most extreme platform of any major party nominee, by far, in American history,” Trump said. “I think it’s worse than actually Bernie’s [Sanders] platform.”
- Biden does not face overwhelmingly acceptance from the democratic party as many liberals have been unenthusiastic about his candidacy as he opposes a range of progressives’ top priorities like “Medicare for all” or defunding the police. But his climate plan does appear to have helped his platform with progressive Democrats. Governor Jay Inslee of Washington, a prominent environmentalist, called the proposal “visionary”.
- The plan outlines specific and aggressive targets, including achieving an emissions-free power sector by 2035 and upgrading four million buildings over four years to meet the highest standards for energy efficiency. In the plan, Biden discussed converting government vehicles into electric vehicles as well as a general overhaul of the American auto industry to push Americans toward more hybrid and electric cars. Biden promised that “the U.S. auto industry and its deep bench of suppliers will step up, expanding capacity so that the United States, not China, leads the world in clean vehicle production” to fulfill promises of “America First” job policies. The 14-page plan also commits to creating one million new jobs in the auto industry, including parts and materials manufacturing for electric vehicles, millions of union jobs to build infrastructure, one million jobs to upgrade four million buildings over four years, additional construction jobs for 1.5 million new sustainable housing units, and 250,000 jobs “plugging abandoned oil and natural gas wells and reclaiming abandoned coal, hard rock, and uranium mines.”
- Biden also addresses racism in this climate plan. He expressed the need to link environmental advocacy to racial justice, describing how pollution and other toxic harms that disproportionately affect communities of color. The climate plan calls for establishing an office of environmental and climate justice at the Justice Department and developing a broad set of tools to address how “environmental policy decisions of the past have failed communities of color.” Biden set a goal within the plan for disadvantaged communities to receive 40 percent of all clean energy and infrastructure benefits he was proposing. He also made explicit references to tribal communities and called for expanding broadband access to tribal lands.
- Biden’s original climate plan called for spending $1.7 trillion over 10 years with the goal of achieving net-zero emissions before 2050. The new blueprint plan significantly increases the amount of money and accelerates the timetable. Senior Biden campaign officials said the proposal was the product of discussions with climate activists and experts, union officials and representatives from the private sector, and mayors and governors. In order to pay for it, campaign officials said, Biden proposes an increase in the corporate income tax rate from 21 percent to 86 percent, “asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share,” and using some still-undetermined amount of stimulus money.
- The legislation would require congressional cooperation as the proposal included a combination of executive actions and legislation. If Republicans maintain control of the Senate or retake the House of Representatives, the plan might face a difficult path in the current partisan political environment. Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and the House Republican whip, suggested the plan was a boondoggle.
- Campaign officials said they expected to achieve the goal for a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions throughout the economy by 2050 by encouraging the installation of “millions of new solar panels and tens of thousands of wind turbines.” The plan also intended to keep existing nuclear energy plants in place.
The economy, and by extension the climate plan, is expected to be a key theme of the 2020 US presidential election as fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has pushed tens of millions of Americans into unemployment. The election is due to be held on November 3.
