When Hillary Clinton proposed a climate plan in the run-up to the 2016 election that included $ 60 billion for clean energy infrastructure and an additional $ 30 billion to rebuild coal mining communities, she received mixed criticism: an “ambitious” plan. but one with “holes”.
The plan proposed some of the biggest investments in clean energy technology put forward by a top presidential candidate, a sign of how far the issue of climate change had gone in politics but, for activists, also a sign of how far it was still to go. .
Last week, almost exactly five years later, Joe Biden, the alleged Democratic presidential candidate, launched a $ 2 trillion plan that climate activists say could create the kind of change needed to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.
“We are talking about big investments in every corner of the country and in every zip code,” said Steve Capanna, director of climate analysis and policy for the United States at the Environmental Defense Fund, a New York-based advocacy group. “That’s a great way to put people of different income levels and diverse skill sets to work in a way that will rebuild itself better than simply being back to the way it was before.”
Biden’s plan spans four years and includes some lofty goals, including reaching a 100 percent clean electricity standard by 2035.
“The first key piece to decarbonizing the United States is cleaning our electrical system,” said Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who specializes in climate policy. “I can’t even describe how excited I was to see that in the plan.”
Biden’s proposal has received high praise from climate scientists and environmental advocates, who say it would put the United States on a challenging but achievable path to build a clean energy economy and help restore the country’s reputation in the global stage.
The climate plan is significantly more aggressive than the climate roadmap that Biden established last year, which proposed spending $ 1.7 trillion in 10 years.
“The United States federal budget is $ 4 trillion a year, on average,” Stokes said. “Biden pledges to spend an eighth of the budget on climate change in his first term. That is huge.”
Biden’s proposal builds on the platforms of several of his former top opponents, notably Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who led a campaign focused on climate change, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a mass Democrat.
Although Clinton’s climate goals were seen as bold at the time, Biden’s stance shows that climate change has become a priority this election cycle and a central issue among Democrats, if not among Americans overall. The Pew Research Center recently found that two-thirds of people surveyed in the United States said the government should do more to tackle climate change.
Stokes said the plan’s emphasis on energy efficiency, which includes proposals to upgrade 4 million buildings in four years, is critical because it would likely mean less money would need to be spent on new technologies and infrastructure.
The 2035 timeline is also challenging but “very doable,” Stokes said.
A report released last month by the University of California, Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy, said the United States can achieve 90 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 with the technologies that exist today. Stokes said Biden’s proposal to encourage innovation and establish a government-led Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop new technologies could help make up the difference.
Nathan Hultman, director of the University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability, said one of the plan’s strengths is its recognition that tackling climate change requires solving many different but related problems, from transportation to agriculture, the employment and social justice.
“We have to solve multiple problems simultaneously,” said Hultman. “That should be the most important element of any climate plan.”
Reviving the US economy and creating jobs in all industries are characteristic of Biden’s climate plan, issues that would be important in any election, but which are especially important as the country remains mired in a pandemic that has killed over 140,000 people in the US jobless and sent the economy spiraling into recession.
The investments outlined in the Biden plan will accelerate the economic recovery while making US industries more sustainable and resilient, said Gerald Torres, professor of environmental justice at the Yale School of the Environment.
“We are now in a position where we can say: what kind of country do we want to rebuild?” he said.
The climate plan also incorporates key components of environmental justice that aim to engage and protect communities of color, which are disproportionately affected by climate change. That includes spending 40 percent of clean energy benefits on those frontline communities.
The proposal calls for the establishment of an environmental and climate justice office at the Justice Department, a move Torres said would be important beyond symbolism.
“He points out that environmental justice is something that must be integrated into thinking about environmental management,” he said. “It shows that there is real promise there.”
Biden’s plan also includes steps to engage with global partners on climate change by re-entering the Paris Agreement. President Donald Trump announced plans in 2017 to renounce the historic climate deal, but Biden has promised to bring the United States back to the fold.
Hultman said the move would help restore America’s credibility internationally.
“The Paris Agreement remains our strongest approach to solving climate change on a global scale,” he said. “The past four years have raised a series of questions with our allies and the global community about our reliability. Rejoining the Paris Agreement is an important signal, but the substance is just as important.”
Hultman added that the ambitious climate plan could be a game changer not only among voters who care about climate action, but also among those who have seen in recent events the importance of the country’s investments and political decisions to ensure the health and safety of its people.
“It will be difficult, but going to the moon was difficult, and we did it,” said Hultman. “It is important to remember that there are benefits to achieving these goals. There are tremendous benefits to the growth of the economy and the stabilization of the climate before reaching a result that we cannot reverse.”
