Joe Biden and the reality of climate change

Not so long ago, the dangers posed by global warming and climate change loomed off in the future, allowing Americans to put off finding solutions. But tomorrow has arrived, and the new reality is impossible to deny.

The years from 2015 through 2020 were the hottest six years on record for the planet. The past year ushered in the country’s worst season ever for wildfires, along with a record number of tropical storms in the Atlantic. The Great Lakes are warming, and their water levels are at or close to record highs.

Yet Donald Trump’s administration didn’t just fail to take the steps needed to slow climate and mitigate its effects. It implemented policies to make things worse. He withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accord, which committed nearly all the world’s nations to curb greenhouse gas emissions. His Environmental Protection Agency mounted an effort to repeal the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which was designed to slash carbon emissions from power plants.

It rolled back an Obama-era rule curbing releases of methane, a potent source of warming. It relaxed limits on tailpipe emissions from cars. Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at the Columbia Law School, has said, “Donald Trump has been to climate regulation as General Sherman was to Atlanta.”

That leaves President-elect Joe Biden with a formidable task — to undo the damage caused by his predecessor, redouble our national commitment to limit climate change, and to take this action mindful of the economic and financial costs.

Americans understand the need for action. A June poll by the Pew Research Center found that “broad majorities of the public — including more than half of Republicans and overwhelming shares of Democrats — say they would favor a range of initiatives to reduce the impacts of climate change.”

The incoming president wants to “put the country on a sustainable path to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050.” He has promised to hold a global climate summit within 100 days of taking office. He has named former Secretary of State John Kerry as his global climate envoy and former EPA chief Gina McCarthy as head of a new White House office on climate policy.

Some things are working in Biden’s favor. The cost of solar and wind power has plummeted over the past decade, making renewable energy far more competitive with coal and natural gas. Auto companies are investing heavily in electric vehicles. The pioneering Tesla company is now worth more than the nine biggest carmakers combined.

Despite Trump’s promises to bring back coal, dozens of coal-fired power plants have closed during his presidency. The oil industry has written down $245 billion in assets, recognizing that the recent decline in demand is irreversible.

The incoming president also got a gift from the outgoing Congress. In December, a bill passed to sharply curtail the use of a chemical used in refrigerators and air conditioners that contributes to global warming. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York called this “the single biggest victory in the fight against climate change to pass this body in a decade.”

Biden has a range of proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He wants to tighten energy efficiency standards for appliances and buildings, ban any new oil and gas leases on federal lands, increase mass transit funding and develop technologies to boost nuclear power and capture carbon emissions.

Though all of these ideas make sense in principle, he needs to insist that each initiative pass a strict cost-benefit test. Otherwise, a vital cause may be used as a pretext for all sorts of wasteful pork-barrel projects.

Biden should remember the solar-panel maker Solyndra, which went bankrupt in 2011, leaving taxpayers on the hook for $528 million in federal loans. A Washington Post investigation of the project found that “Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level” and that “when warned that financial disaster might lie ahead, the administration remained steadfast in its support for Solyndra.” Let’s not repeat the mistake.

Of even greater importance is the need for Biden to seek balance in his priorities and not allow the fight against climate change to needlessly damage growth and destroy jobs. In recent years progressive Democrats seized on the idea of spending trillions in the form of a Green New Deal to combat global warming by reinventing much of the U.S. economy on the fly. It is a wildly expensive and unrealistic approach that Biden should avoid. He wobbled on his messaging during the campaign but steered clear of an endorsement.

Now that he’s about to become president, he’ll have the chance to lead Democrats and Republicans in the right direction. The best climate option, and the one least susceptible to corruption and mismanagement, is also the hardest political sell: levying a tax on carbon fuels to gradually raise their price. That would stimulate a burst of capitalist innovation to get the greatest efficiency gains for the least expense. It’s an approach Republicans ought to prefer to top-down regulation, but the GOP’s allergy to new taxes makes it unlikely.

As president, Biden can do much to focus our national attention on climate change.

“He should bring home the message that it’s a real problem, and it will take decades of work to deal with it,” says David Bookbinder, chief counsel of the Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank. “Making that clear would be an enormous step forward.” The American people, we suspect, would respond positively.

Their support will be needed. Combating climate change is an urgent obligation that the Trump administration shirked. Biden has made a commitment to accept the challenge, and that’s a very good start.