Joe Biden vs. Climate Change

We all know that climate change is a big deal, but addressing it is an even bigger issue. In the United States, especially, there hasn’t been significant progress made ever since the problem was first brought to national attention decades ago. In fact, seeing the outright denial of climate change and, therefore, lack of substantial political action has been quite disappointing, to be frank. Let me make clear that this is purely my opinion, but I think it’s kind of ironic how the people we elect into office, people we trust to make decisions in our best interest, have severely underperformed in tackling an issue that has devastated several vital parts of our country and will also increasingly continue to do so. 

Nonetheless, it is good to remember that every cloud has a silver lining (you know we like our clichés). In November 2020, Joe Biden was elected to be President of the United States (not a political statement), defeating the incumbent President Donald Trump. Many activists and environmentalists see Biden’s victory as a victory in fighting climate change as Biden has made himself appear deeply concerned and focused on the climate crisis. On the other hand, there are skeptics on both sides of the spectrum who either say that Biden’s plan is too big or too small. 

As self-proclaimed experts in this subject, we have done the painstaking work of extracting the most important parts, condensing them into digestible chunks, and laying them out in such a beautiful manner that only experts like ourselves can truly appreciate. But, don’t worry, there’s no need to thank us. We’ve already thanked ourselves. You’re welcome. 

In this post, we will take a look at the main ideas of President Biden’s climate agenda, covering everything from common themes to specific policies. We hope you enjoy it 🙂

***DISCLAIMER: This is just an overview of the Biden administration’s climate change plan. We used a lot of the language directly from the Joe Biden campaign website in order to ensure integrity and accuracy. We tried our best to be as unbiased and objective as possible, but at the same time, there’s no way to avoid the fact that it is also our interpretation. For their full plan you can go to this website, but don’t be mad at me when you take seventeen years to finish reading their page.***

Goals

I think that the best way to get started is by taking a look at the goals that the Biden administration is aiming to accomplish. This approach will allow us to see the final destination that they are hoping to reach and will give us a better understanding of the purpose of the steps along the way. 

The main goal of the Biden Administration is to make the United States a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy by 2050. This goal is directly in line with the 2018 IPCC report and Paris Climate Agreement to keep global warming below 1.5^o Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The part about keeping emissions at “net-zero” means that the United States should emit as many greenhouse gases as it reduces. This goal is ambitious, to say the least, especially in today’s political climate. 

Nonetheless, just like any other big plan, there needs to be smaller and more tangible goals along the way. These include the following:

• Achieve a 50-52% reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030 
• Conserving 30% of American lands and waters by 2030
• Doubling offshore wind by 2030
• Reducing the carbon footprint of the U.S. building stock 50% by 2035

Each of these goals is set for the next 15 years, which means that in order to accomplish them, the Biden administration needs the ball to start rolling ASAP. It’s always nice to hear all the GrEAt things lawmakers are going to do and how they are going to ImPrOVe our lives, but what’s even better is seeing the plans actually implemented.

Common Themes

In any political campaign, there’s going to be a few common themes that the candidate really stresses whenever they are talking about a certain issue, and the same holds true for climate change. The Biden campaign focused on making climate change a core component of their political decisions and made sure that this was known to everyone willing to listen, as exemplified by the fact that they promised not to accept contributions from oil, gas, and coal executives. 

Let’s take a look at the top 5 common themes we identified:

1. Clean Energy Revolution

One of the things you see and hear the most from the Biden administration regarding climate change is the idea of a Clean Energy Revolution. This is pretty bold phrasing but what it essentially entails is an upheaval of current energy systems and complete adoption of clean energy. As we know, switching to clean energy is essential to limiting greenhouse gas emissions and by making it a core theme, the Biden administration is showing that they are not underestimating the magnitude of change that is required. 

2. Jobs & Economic Growth

The Biden administration has also emphasized that adapting the country to meet sustainable standards is not only good for the environment and safety but also for the economy. The combination of switching to clean energy, revamping infrastructure, and more will lead to large-scale job creation. These new jobs can be used to allow the United States to lower the unemployment rate and boost productivity, hoping to positively impact the economy overall. 

3. Environmental Justice

This subject has come to prominence especially over the past year where race has increasingly become a topic of conversation within the United States. Environmental justice focuses on making sure that certain races and social classes are not disproportionately affected by both climate change and the fight against it. Historically, it has been proven people of color and poorer people have long been subject to unfair treatment in a variety of ways related to the environment. This is not to say that people outside of these groups are not also affected, this is just the argument that the Biden administration is presenting. (We will have a post discussing this subject in further detail in the near future.) 

4. Global Cooperation

As we all know, climate change is not an issue confined to the borders of a single country. In fact, the United States only makes up 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, around half as much as China. This means that the United States cannot be the only country combating climate change — it has to be a global effort. The United States’ role in achieving cooperation is making sure countries are held accountable in a way that is proportional to their contribution to climate change, meaning that countries should take adequate responsibilities for their actions from both the past and present. You can check out annual CO2 emissions by country in 2019 in the map below by Our World in Data.

5. Climate Change As A Core National Security Priority

Outside of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the Biden administration wants to protect the country from any climate-change-related danger. This includes everything from improving the country’s infrastructure to having the ability to quickly evacuate high-risk areas in the event of natural disasters, all in the name of keeping the country and its people safe. 

Policies

The primary avenue for the Biden administration to achieve their goals for the country and stick to their common themes is through policy. While influencing people and organizations to take action is still possible, it cannot reach the scale necessary to initiate tangible progress as compared to how policies can set standards and force changes to be made. In this section, we’ll go through the policies that stood out to us the most (not necessarily more or less important than others) during President Biden’s campaign and include a bit of analysis as well. 

First, let’s start with general policy. From the start, Joe Biden has made it clear that he wants to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement (which he has already done), which was first signed by President Obama but was then pulled out of by President Trump in 2017, aligning with the theme of global cooperation. The administration mentioned that they want to follow the framework of the Green New Deal, though they don’t want to fully replicate its contents. Instead, they hold the stance that the Green New Deal does a good job at recognizing that climate change is an issue that exacerbates numerous other issues including things like racial wealth disparities to unaffordable healthcare, though they disagree with the scale of the Green New Deal. They hope to invest $1.7 trillion over 10 years into directly combating climate change, a task that will be aided by their plan to reverse President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The Biden campaign also said that they want to end fossil fuel subsidies for a faster transition to clean energy and implement an infrastructure bill to improve resiliency. In addition, they want to ensure safe drinking water for every American and reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall (not just CO₂) as part of their agenda. 

Apart from his general plans, Biden’s policies for combating climate change can be categorized into specific economic sectors. Some of the most prominent sectors that Biden aims to reform include manufacturing, energy, transportation, commercial & residential, and agriculture.   

In terms of manufacturing, the Biden administration focuses a lot on making current processes as greenhouse-gas-emissions-free as possible while also finding ways to forge new paths through sustainable innovation. This is exemplified by their hope to decarbonize industrial heat needed to make steel, concrete, and chemicals and while wanting to develop carbon-neutral construction materials. They have voiced their support for early markets for zero/low carbon industrial goods and also favor the implementation of carbon capture technology, a relatively new market. 

Another big industry mentioned was the energy industry, where Biden not only named ways to introduce more green energy into the country but how we can improve the industry in the future as well. One of the most eye-catching parts of Biden’s plan was his pledge to make the largest-ever investment in clean energy research and innovation. Parts of this investment included $2 billion in clean energy projects and $6.5 billion in lending for clean energy generation, storage, and transmission projects in rural communities. The policy also discussed a 30% increase in energy R&D (Research & Development) spending. Staying on the topic of clean energy, Biden also discussed the future of nuclear energy, hoping that it can play a bigger role in energy production. Part of the plan included a call for the development of advanced nuclear reactors and for more efficient use of the U.S.’ current reactors.

The transportation industry also has a major role in the plan. A big part of this is allowing for a smooth yet immediate switch to zero-emissions vehicles, particularly electric vehicles. They want to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles (and hope to restore an electric vehicle tax credit to incentivize their purchase) while funding charging infrastructure so that more than 500,000 new public charging outlets can be deployed by the end of 2030. President Biden is also committed to preserving and implementing the Clean Air Act so that national pollution, especially from vehicles, is restricted to reasonable limits. On top of this, there is also a major priority on improving the aircraft system by doing everything from incentivizing the creation of new sustainable fuels to altering air traffic management to make flying more efficient. Oh, and by the way, he is hoping to spark a second great rail revolution with high-speed rail serving as a safe, clean, and fast means of transportation for both passengers and freight. 

Then there’s the commercial & residential (a.k.a. buildings) sector, which is also a large source of emissions. The main emphasis here is to make buildings much more efficient to reduce emissions and more resilient to withstand climate change. Biden also wants to make sustainable housing more affordable while constructing buildings that have zero-net-energy at zero-net-cost. 

The last major sector is agriculture whose emissions are the least compared to the other four. Here, President Biden really just wants us to use nature to our advantage to help the environment in general by doing things like establishing programs to enhance reforestation and carbon sinks. He also wants to develop advanced biofuels to be used for other purposes and lead to less emissions as well.

Conclusion

Look, we know this may not have been the most fun or interesting post we’ve had, but it was definitely one of the most important. Important because it’s important to know what the most powerful person on the planet is planning for the country, important to know what changes are going to be made around you, and important to know what role you might play along the journey. 

No matter what you think of President Biden, as long as you understand that climate change is a major issue, you can appreciate that he seems to take this issue seriously. We can scrutinize his words and his policies all we want, but I think we should be grateful (or at least I am) that at least there’s someone who says he cares.