With activists’ help, maybe Joe Biden won’t be horrible on climate

Hi,

In the run up to this year’s Iowa caucuses (just 12 weeks ago, I hate myself for looking that up) I wrote a piece explaining why Bernie Sanders was the best US presidential candidate Read my article on Bernie Sanders’s climate plans. among the more than 20 who were still in the running at that point, at least when it comes to climate change.

A lot has changed since then.

We are in the midst of a global pandemic that has upended the world as we know it, and made long-term thinking even more important. Read my essay, ‘We aren’t just stopping coronavirus. We’re building a new world’. Our task of world-building amid the climate emergency has suddenly become even more urgent and enormous. And there is only one US presidential contender remaining to unseat Donald Trump, and that’s Joe Biden.

The choice between these two candidates, on the issue of climate change, couldn’t be clearer.

In my article back in February, I didn’t even bother to give Trump a rating on his climate record. The first step to finding a solution to the problem is admitting the problem exists in the first place, after all, and Trump hasn’t even regularly cleared that low bar. When he does, his "solutions" (like the Trillion Trees initiative Read Vox’s description of how Trump became so interested in tree planting. he signed on to earlier this year) amount to thinly veiled handouts to the very industries that have gotten us into this mess.

Of the major Democratic candidates, I ranked Biden last.

Now that Biden is officially Trump’s chief challenger, he’s come under increased scrutiny for his climate plans. Biden’s advisors on climate change have less-than-stellar records, Read the New Republic’s overview of Biden’s sketchy climate record. and his economic advisor Larry Summers, in particular, has been an outspoken advocate for the fossil fuel industry for a very long time. Read Earther’s description of Larry Summers’s climate record.

Here’s the “good” news on climate this week

Despite being at the back of the pack among his Democratic rivals this year, Biden’s 2020 emission reduction goal (net zero by 2050) is bolder than Sanders’s was in 2016 (80% by 2050). Read an overview of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 climate plan.

In the past few days, Jay Inslee, a single-issue former presidential candidate, has endorsed Biden. Sanders has also endorsed Biden, and is now working with him on a number of major issues, including climate.

It’s unequivocally good news that Biden is listening to Sanders’s folks on how to craft better climate policy. But it’s also not 2016 anymore. Biden will have to do a lot better than his current plan in order to win the support of the broader climate movement.

Biden is still getting pushback from activist groups Read the Verge on Biden’s problems with the climate movement. for his relatively lax climate goals, and that’s a great thing. The Sunrise Movement, in particular, is pushing really hard. Read Vice on the Sunrise Movement’s strategy to improve Biden’s climate plans.

Biden is already bending, just a bit. Read some of the steps Biden is taking to strengthen his climate goals. At a pre-Earth Day fundraiser this month, he debuted a new timeframe of action by 2035, not 2050. The big wild card here, of course, is the pandemic lockdown. Youth climate activism in a world of coronavirus Read a short report from Child Rights International Network on coronavirus and youth climate activism. is going to look a lot different than the school strike movement that peaked last year. But kids these days are brilliant at this stuff, and with the world as we know it at stake, you can bet there will be a resurgence in the youth voice later this year. Read Earther on why climate activists need to keep putting pressure on Biden.

Sanders’s 2020 climate policy is the boldest ever proposed by any presidential candidate in history, informed by the science of this emergency. Climate activists know this, and they know that the US president can be a leader on the most important issue we face as a species like few other people on Earth. It’s encouraging that Biden, for now, seems open to improving his plan.

There’s now no excuse for the Biden campaign not to adopt some of Bernie’s almost universally popular climate policy ideas Check out the polling data for the Green New Deal. that comprised his Green New Deal. And activists will have no restraints to hold him to it.

The next US president will be tasked with winding down the fossil fuel industry, building up support for renewable energy, and championing justice-focused climate reparations in the US and around the world. Given the context, the Green New Deal, or Biden’s flavour of it, is the best chance we have at radical change.

PS: Here’s a joke so funny you wood not believe it: What type of tree fits in your hand? (🍃leave your guesses in the contributions section! 🌳)

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