Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Biden works to woo climate activists
Likely nominee, making ‘progress’ with task force
WASHINGTON — From the earliest days of his presidential campaign, progressive climate advocates viewed Joe Biden with deep skepticism. He declined to fully endorse the Green New Deal. He opposed a total ban on fracking. Young activists were scathing in their criticism of him, and he was at times openly dismissive of their concerns.
But less than four months before Election Day, Biden is moving urgently to unite and energize his party around his candidacy, aware of the need to engage younger, more liberal voters — and to ensure they turn out in November. On climate issues, there are signs that Biden’s allies and some of the party’s leading progressives have quietly started to forge new common ground.
In recent weeks, supporters of Biden and of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, his chief rival in the Democratic presidential primary race, have met privately over Zoom, part of several joint task forces the two contenders established to generate policy recommendations on core domestic priorities and to facilitate party unity.
After two months, task force members representing both camps say they have finalized a set of ambitious, near-term climate targets they hope Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will incorporate in his platform.
“I do believe we were able to make meaningful progress,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who headed the climate panel with former Secretary of State John Kerry, said last week. Rep. Donald McEachin, D-Va., a Biden ally who was also on the task force, called it a “collaborative process” that developed wide-ranging policies.
Still, Ocasio-Cortez, who has previously clashed with Biden over his approach to combating climate change, struck a note of caution.
“Now, what he does with those recommendations, ultimately, is up to him,” she said. “And we will see what that commitment looks like.”
Those goals, according to three people familiar with the task force’s decisions, include committing to seeing the United States’ electricity sector powered fully by renewable energy by 2035 and a rapid transition to energy-efficient buildings. They also seek a day one promise to begin developing new vehicle efficiency standards — and to include labor unions in the discussions — to replace and improve upon the Obama administration measures that President Donald Trump has weakened.
The group, which convened amid economic collapse during the coronavirus pandemic and protests against racism and police brutality, was especially attuned to linking the climate crisis to jobs as well as to the struggle to help low-income communities that already face outsize health consequences from pollution, task force members said.
“I think where we have really made a lot of progress is in areas with respect to environmental justice and addressing front-line communities,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Biden, the former vice president under Barack Obama, last year proposed a $1.7 trillion plan aimed at achieving 100% clean energy and eliminating the country’s net carbon emissions by 2050.
But how he responds to the task force’s recommendations — and whether progressives in the group walk away feeling heard — will test his campaign’s ability to navigate an issue of great importance to ascendant forces in the Democratic Party.
Biden has made a number of overtures to climate activists recently. He has increasingly linked environmental issues to racial justice, and he said at a recent climate-focused fundraiser that, if elected, in his first 100 days as president, he would send Congress “a transformational plan for a clean energy revolution.” He recently announced the formation of an advisory council focused on mobilizing climate-focused voters.
Former Vice President Al Gore said Biden had asked shortly before Earth Day for his endorsement, which Gore gave, and that since then the two men have had multiple conversations about climate change. Gore said Biden had asked for advice and suggestions in climate policy areas, though he declined to offer specifics.
“I think he’s got the science pretty well down, and he understands the rich potential for creating millions of jobs,” Gore said, adding, “I get the impression that he has made a decision to lean forward on climate.”
Some of Biden’s allies have suggested he is committed to fighting climate change but also understands the challenge of enacting far-reaching deals in a partisan climate.
From the start of his presidential run, Biden has walked a fine line between championing climate change action and trying to engage union members who still rely on jobs in fossil fuel industries, as well as moderate Republicans who may dislike Trump yet oppose aggressive action on curbing greenhouse gases.
The future of natural gas, and its implications for jobs, is a major fault line that separates the Obamaera climate policy leaders from the new generation of activists.
Natural gas produces about half the emissions of coal. Much of the Obama administration’s energy strategy centered on promoting it as a “bridge fuel” to wean the country off dirtier fossil fuels until the price of renewables dropped.
Today, the average cost of new wind or solar power is cheaper than the costs to keep running most coalfired plants, according to an analysis last year by two energy research groups. And renewable energy generation in the United States has now surpassed coal, according to the federal Energy Information Agency.
Yet in places like Pennsylvania — a state Trump won by less than 1 percentage point in 2016 — the natural gas industry is responsible for thousands of high-paying union jobs. So when Biden, during a pointed exchange with Sanders on the debate stage in March, declared “no new fracking,” some allies were alarmed, including former Gov. Ed Rendell, who said he called the campaign to voice concern.
Biden has proposed ending new fracking leases on federal lands, but not a national ban, something his campaign quickly clarified.
Andrew Baumann, a Democratic strategist and pollster, said that there were limits to how far Biden could push on climate matters without encountering political risk — but that he was “pretty far away from that.”
“It is possible to go too far,” he said. “But the amount that is there to go bolder before you reach that level is really a lot bigger than people think.”