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Joe Biden’s promise to “transition” the oil industry during Thursday’s presidential debate has caused quite a stir among conservatives and has been praised by environmentalists as a sincere recognition of the scale of the climate crisis.
Biden, the Democratic candidate for the White House, was included in his statement by Donald Trump, who asked him during the televised debate if he would “shut down the oil industry.” Biden responded “I would transition the oil industry, yes,” adding that the industry “pollutes significantly.”
Trump seized on the comment, saying it “is a great statement” and urging voters in energy-producing states, including Texas and Pennsylvania, to take note. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, said “Biden just lost Pennsylvania tonight,” in reference to the crucial transitional state, while Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, said Biden “just killed the checks. Earned by Working Families in Texas “.
Biden tried to repair the potential political damage after the debate when he told reporters that he wanted to end subsidies on fossil fuels rather than on the industry itself.
But two vulnerable House Democrats running in oil-producing states, Kendra Horn in Oklahoma and Xochitl Torres Small in New Mexico, quickly used twitter to distance themselves from Biden’s comments, perhaps aware of the persistent attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she was portrayed as happy to eliminate jobs in coal mining.
Climate activists have pointed out that the phase-out of the oil industry is simply a logical consequence of Biden’s climate action plan, which calls for 100% clean energy in 15 years and the denial of all gases that warm the planet in the US. By 2050. Even some major oil companies, like BP, have adopted a similar goal of net zero by 2050.
Scientists have warned that emissions must reach zero globally by mid-century to avoid the worst ravages of the climate crisis, including mass suffering and the displacement of people due to heat waves, floods and wildfires.
Biden’s comments on the oil industry “now count as conventional wisdom,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of climate group 350.org. “That matters.”
States like Texas, where Democrats are trying to stop being reliable Republicans, have large numbers of workers in the oil and petrochemical industries.
But the economic and political terrain is changing: Texas is also the largest wind energy producing state in the US, while polls show that nearly eight in 10 Americans want the country to focus on boosting renewables in instead of fossil fuels, including a clear majority of Republican voters.
The impacts of the climate crisis, which this year were painfully felt through record wildfires in the western US and a hyperactive season of destructive hurricanes in the Atlantic, are causing increasing alarm among voters, especially the Democrats and the youth.
This trend has worried some Republican strategists who admit that Trump’s approach to scrapping climate science and dismantling environmental protections is politically unsustainable.
During Thursday’s debate, Trump accused Biden of wanting to “tear down buildings and construct buildings with tiny little windows” while attacking wind turbines for “killing all the birds.” Biden’s $ 2 trillion climate plan involves modernizing buildings to make them more energy efficient, but it does not require windows to be reduced, and while turbines kill thousands of birds, many more are killed by other infrastructure such as power lines and, ironically, windows.
In what may be the most substantive climate debate during a presidential debate, candidates were also asked about the disproportionate impact of pollution on communities of color. Biden recalled that many people in his home state of Delaware were “dying and getting cancer” from nearby industrial facilities while he was growing up there.
“Joe Biden understands what it’s like to live on a fence; Donald Trump didn’t even understand the question, ”said Lori Lodes, executive director of the Climate Power 2020 campaign group, describing communities that live adjacent to polluting industrial sites.
“Black, brown and indigenous people have been living and dying from pollution and toxic chemicals dumped into their communities by CEOs of oil and gas that Trump blindly supports.”
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