Biden’s warning on oil tests voter resolve
Reversing climate change is cast in opposition to jobs and industry
OKLAHOMA CITY — Joe Biden is confronting the harsh political realities of combating climate change.
The Democratic presidential nominee has spent months touting a $2 trillion plan to boost investment in clean energy and stop all climate-damaging emissions from the U.S. economy by 2050. The plan implied that he would wean the U.S. off oil and gas, but Biden wasn’t so explicit about the industry’s fate — until Thursday night.
During the final moments of the presidential debate, Biden said he would “transition away from the oil industry.”
President Donald Trump, trailing Biden in many national and battleground state polls, immediately sensed an opportunity to appeal to voters in competitive states like Texas and Pennsylvania that produce oil and gas.
“Basically what he is saying is he is going to destroy the oil industry,” Trump said. “Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania? Oklahoma? Ohio?”
With less than two weeks until the election, Biden’s comment is prompting a sudden test of whether voters who increasingly say they are worried about the climate crisis will embrace steps to confront it. During a season of worsening wildfires, hurricanes and other disasters, scientists are issuing urgent warnings that big cuts in burning oil, gas and coal are needed right away.
Republicans, eager to shift focus away from the president’s handling of the intensifying coronavirus pandemic, say Biden’s plan would cost jobs.
Biden “just killed paycheck(s) earned by hardworking families in Texas,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, tweeted after Thursday’s final presidential debate saw Trump and Biden spell out their worlds-apart stances on climate-damaging fossil fuels.
“Joe just wants to transition away from Texas. Remember that on election day,” Abbott wrote.
Even some Democrats distanced themselves from Biden’s comment. Rep. Kendra Horn, a Democrat who flipped a Republican seat in Trump-loyal Oklahoma in 2018, tweeted: “We must stand up for our oil and gas industry.”
So did Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a first-term Democratic congresswoman in a toss-up race in New Mexico, in the oil- and gasrich Permian Basin.
“We need to work together to promote responsible energy production and stop climate change, not demonize a particular industry,” she tweeted, adding that she was ready to “stand up to” the Democratic Party.
Polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago shows a majority of Americans acknowledge people are causing global warming and link global warming to worsening natural disasters.
But Biden, who has mostly been disciplined in keeping the focus on Trump, seemed to sense the political peril. Shortly after the debate, he told reporters he wasn’t talking about any kind of fossil fuel ban.
“We’re not getting rid of fossil fuels for a very long time,” he said.
Biden’s energy plan spells out the time frame — three decades.