Biden embraces aggressive steps in new climate plan
Joe Biden unveiled a proposal Tuesday to transform the nation’s energy industry, pledging to eliminate carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 and spend $2 trillion to turbocharge the clean energy economy.
The plan would significantly reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels, and the 15-year timeline for a 100 percent clean electricity standard is far more ambitious than anything Biden has previously proposed.
It was Biden’s latest attempt to channel the liberal energy in his party, as well as a response to calls for sweeping plans to lift a struggling economy. The blueprint was quickly hailed by environmentalists and liberals as a big step forward in the climate fight, and just as quickly denounced by Republicans as an unwieldy plan that would raise energy costs.
“We’re not just going to tinker around the edges,” Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Del. “We’re going to make historic investments and seize the opportunity and meet this moment in history.”
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee proposed upgrading 4 million buildings and weatherizing 2 million homes over four years, which his campaign estimates would create 1 million jobs. Homeowners would be given cash rebates to upgrade home appliances and install more efficient windows. Car owners would receive rebates to swap their old, less efficient cars for newer ones that release fewer pollutants.
Biden also said he would create a new “Environmental and Climate Justice Division” within the Justice Department to prosecute anti-pollution cases. “These aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams,” he said. “These are actionable policies that we can get to work on right away.”
Many of Biden’s proposals build on the recommendations of a task force made up jointly of allies of Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Those recommendations include plans to dramatically expand solar and wind energy, including the installation of 500 million solar panels and 60,000 wind turbines.
Biden’s plan is likely to trigger a vigorous debate with President Donald Trump, who has a much different approach to the country’s energy sector and climate policy.
Trump, a strong backer of fossil fuels, has sought to roll back Obama-era policies aimed at decreasing carbon dioxide emissions and setting new standards for household items such as lightbulbs. He has also downplayed the science behind climate change, and in 2017 he pledged to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate pact.
Trump’s embrace of the coal industry was one of his signature issues in 2016, part of his portrait of Hillary Clinton as disdainful of the country’s industrial workers. It’s not clear whether Trump can successfully level similar attacks against Biden, or whether the political landscape has shifted to make that difficult.
In 2016, Republicans attacked Clinton for her comment that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” though Clinton was suggesting this would happen because of market forces, not as part of her plan.
Trump, meanwhile, pledged to revive the ailing coal industry, telling miners in West Virginia that “we are going to get those mines open” if he were elected. But the coal industry has continued to struggle under Trump, largely because of competition from natural gas and renewable energy.
The Trump campaign was quick to go after Biden’s proposal Tuesday.
“His plan is more like a socialist manifesto that promises to massively raise taxes, eliminate jobs in the coal, oil or natural gas industries, and crush the middle class,” said Hogan Gidley, the campaign’s national press secretary. “He’s pushing extreme policies that would smother the economy just when it’s showing signs of roaring back.”
Biden said Tuesday that the proposal was aimed at twin goals of rebuilding the economy and fighting climate change. Much of the spending, he said, would go toward repairing bridges and roads and improving public transportation systems.
He claimed that his proposal was doing what Trump has not, in what became a running joke as the White House week after week said the president would focus on repairing the country’s infrastructure, only to digress into other subjects.