Biden pitches investments in clean energy
DENVER » While legislators craft the details back in Washington, President Joe Biden is pitching his massive domestic spending package with a visit to a renewable energy lab in Colorado to highlight how the investments in clean energy in his plan would help combat climate change.
The trip to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Denver capped off the president’s two-day swing to the West, and offered Biden the chance to continue linking the need to pass the spending package to the urgent threat posed by climate change. Biden spent Monday in Boise, Idaho, and Sacramento, California, receiving briefings on the devastating wildfire season and viewing the damage by the Caldor Fire to communities around Lake Tahoe.
“We can’t ignore the reality that these wildfires are being supercharged by climate change,” Biden said, noting that catastrophic weather doesn’t strike based on partisan ideology. “It isn’t about red or blue states. It’s about fires. Just fires.”
During both of his Monday stops, Biden held out the wildfires across the region as an argument for his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and additional $3.5 trillion package of spending. The president said that every dollar spent on “resilience” would save $6 in future costs. And he made the case that the rebuilding must go beyond simply restoring damaged systems and instead ensure communities can withstand such crises.
“These fires are blinking ‘code red’ for our nation. They’re gaining frequency and ferocity,” Biden said after concluding his tour of the Caldor Fire damage. “We know what we have to do.”
The climate provisions in Biden’s plans include tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles, investments to transition the economy away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources such as wind and solar power, and creation of a civilian climate corps.
Biden has set a goal of eliminating pollution from fossil fuel in the power sector by 2035 and from the U.S. economy overall by 2050.
While in California, Biden also campaigned for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faced a recall election Tuesday.