Biden is betting on a hot topic: climate change
Democratic nominee moves further left as science gets more political
WASHINGTON — For years, Joe Biden was pilloried by environmentalists as too moderate on climate change, too worried about maintaining jobs and unwilling to push the tough policies required to keep the planet from warming to dangerous levels.
But not anymore. The former vice president and Democratic nominee for president, is calling for $2 trillion in federal spending over the next four years to get the United States on the path to eliminating carbon emissions by midcentury — likely requiring a massive shift away from oil and other fossil fuels in favor of wind turbines, solar panels and nuclear power.
One environmentalist called it a more “aggressive and comprehensive” plan to address climate change than any previous Democratic presidential nominee.
How a longtime centrist like Biden shifted toward the more radical strategies of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., reflects how much the politics of climate change have shifted in recent years, as climate forecasts worsen and improvements in clean energy technology enable a transition that might have seemed impossible just a decade ago.
Where once climate change was of distant consequence, wildfires in California and Oregon, major floods in the Midwest and record number of major storms in the Atlantic — including five that hit the Gulf Coast this summer — have provided what scientists say is a glimpse of the future on a warming planet.
National polls show that climate change is of increasing concern to Americans, particularly young people who will have just entered middle age in 2050, the year when climate change is projected to turn catastrophic. They view greenhouse gas emissions as a personal, existential issue.
“Climate change and climate-fueled disaster are at everyone’s doorstep,” said Melinda
Pierce, legislative director at the Sierra Club. “There was an evolution when you look at what Biden first put out last year. What he has done this summer is really up the ambition.”
Federal climate policy has profound implications for the oil and gas industry, around which Texas’ economy runs.
Among his proposals, Biden wants to end federal tax breaks for the oil and gas industry and stop new drilling on federal lands. He wants to expand federal incentives for electric vehicles to push gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles off the roads and make the power sector carbon-free by 2035 — meaning the shutdown of natural gas plants unless carbon capture technology becomes cost effective.
But even as he pushes aggressive climate policies, Biden has his eyes on another key constituency viewed as critical to winning battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio: working-class voters. He has resisted many on the left who want to eliminate the oil and gas industry and the hundreds of thousands of jobs in refineries, power plants, chemical facilities and oil and gas fields.
To that end, Biden appears to be looking for a means of addressing climate change that grows the economy in the process.
The deep recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic offers something of an opportunity. Biden is proposing to marry a sprawling economic stimulus package with projects such as modernizing the U.S. power grid to handle more solar and wind power as well as pumping money into the development of American-made electric vehicles — the costs of which have come down dramatically in recent years.
So far, his plan has met with approval from labor unions, a key Democratic constituency whose jobs are often married to polluting factories and oil refineries that the party’s environmental wing would just as soon see shut down.
Lonnie Stephenson, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents refinery workers around the country, has agreed to serve as co-chair of the Biden campaign’s climate advisory council. At the same time Biden’s advisers in
clude some who argue for natural gas as a transition fuel, including former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who last year labeled the Green New Deal’s goal of getting U.S. emissions to zero by 2030 as impractical.
Last month, the former vice president told a crowd in western Pennsylvania, the heart of the gasrich Marcellus shale, that he had no plans to ban the practice of hydraulic fracturing, “no matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me.”
“If I were in the oil and gas industry, and I was contemplating a Biden presidency, my question would be does he want to destroy the industry? And my answer would be no,” said Scott Segal, a Washington energy attorney whose firms represents refineries and power companies. “His goal is to balance clean air objectives with job creation, so he has been able to walk a proactive but pragmatic line on climate change.”
Even as Biden attempts to
thread the climate needle — dramatically lowering greenhouse gas emissions without leading workers in the fossil fuel industry to the unemployment line — he faces a Congress that has shown little ability to come together on climate change.
On the Republican side, many conservatives continue to question the severity of the issue. As wildfires raged on the West Coast, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., went on the radio to criticize “the geniuses in the Democrat Socialist Party” for “saying global warming is causing these forest fires,” according to Politico.
At the same time, Democrats have shown themselves far from monolithic on the issue. For all the attention garnered by Ocasio Cortez’s Green New Deal, many Democrats, including Biden, never endorsed it. At the Democratic National Convention last month, a pledge to end subsidies for fossil fuels was removed from the party’s platform, prompting ques
tions about how far centrist Democrats in Congress are willing to go to reduce fossil fuels.
“Within the Democratic Party there is consensus conceptually that climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed but there’s not a consensus on how to get there,” said Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, which represents the largest U.S. independent oil companies. “There are many who don’t speak as loudly but want to take a more pragmatic approach to climate. They understand the downside of some of the more aggressive climate policies that have been proposed.”
Biden’s best shot at getting his climate plan passed would come if Democrats both win a majority in the Senate and maintain control of the House. But even if they do, their policies are unlikely to be sustained over the long run if they don’t get the GOP on board.
Over the past year, some Republicans, such as Texas Rep. Dan
CrenshawofHoustonandRep. Bill Flores of Waco, have expressed their growing concerns about global warming — breaking with the climate skepticism that many in their party still espouse.
While they are resistant to much of Biden’s climate policy, they share common ground in areas such as research spending for clean energy technology and the importance of developing carbon capture systems for power plants — giving Biden a potential avenue for a bipartisan deal.
“Biden spent 30 years in the senate,” Segal said. “I think he’s cognizant of (the limits of presidential power) and will try to advance polices in coordination with electoral leaders.”
Coming soon: How President Donald Trump has broken with past Republican presidents on environmental regulation and how it has changed America.