Biden’s Climate Promise Isn’t Enough
But there is a plan that addresses the scale of the crisis
A few days ago, President Joe Biden hosted a climate summit with 40 other world leaders for Earth Day. Prominent leaders and business officials capitalized on the opportunity to make themselves look more sustainable, even though they weren’t actually doing anything about the climate crisis.
While most of this summit was filled with vague words and empty promises, Biden did announce a “bold” plan that would make the United States one of the frontrunners in the race for climate action. The White House promised that the country would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, which is less than 9 years from now. This would have a major impact on our transportation, agriculture, and industrial systems.
The thing is, this plan completely ignores the science that has come out in the past few years calling for more immediate action. Yes, a 50% reduction in emissions would be a huge step forward in sustainability compared to what we have done recently. But it’s not enough, because by 2030, we need to have drastically changed our society even more. We need a reduction of 100% of all greenhouse gas emissions, in less than a decade.
The 2030 deadline
According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report released in 2018, our planet is on the cusp of reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius of average global temperature rise. It may not seem like much, but if we surpass this limit, it’s going to have a huge impact on the way we live our lives and the environment around us.
Warming over 1.5 degrees will cause a multitude of negative impacts on both human civilization and natural systems. Increases in both land and ocean temperatures will cause more frequent and more intense heatwaves. These heatwaves will contribute to drought and food shortages in the hardest-hit areas, and as temperatures continue to rise, water and food shortages will impact the majority of communities.
In addition, extreme weather events will occur more frequently. Hurricanes, tropical storms, and more will destroy frontline communities. Flooding will also increase, affecting those who live on the coast, and eventually, even those who live inland as sea levels continue to rise.
These impacts are already being seen in more vulnerable communities, which lack the resources to defend themselves and mitigate climate disasters. However, if warming increases to over 1.5 degrees Celsius, these impacts will start to hit more and more communities, impacting all of us.
Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to avoid these impacts entirely. We are already experiencing the effects of climate change, and we will continue to do so for decades, maybe even centuries to come.
But we may be able to prevent the most harmful impacts of warming. The IPCC report stated that if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100% before the 2030 deadline, we have a much lower risk of being subjected to some of the crises listed above. We still have a chance to mitigate many of these problems.
So how do we do it?
You may be thinking that if Biden’s plan isn’t enough, then how can we do this? Even a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is on a much larger scale than anything this country has attempted before.
The thing is, there are solutions, in the form of a huge climate plan that will create millions of good jobs, protect the basic rights of people, and ensure a livable future for all of us. This plan will fight for climate justice, economic justice, and racial justice while providing a just transition away from fossil fuels.
It’s called the Green New Deal.
You may have heard of it before. It’s been bashed in the media by conservatives saying that it’s “too radical” or “too expensive”. And yes, it’s going to be expensive. Maybe if our government had done this decades ago, instead of taking money from fossil fuel executives and big billionaires. But now we’re almost out of time, and we need to invest all that we have into mitigating this crisis.
Let me remind you that our military budget in 2019 was $730 billion, and a large portion of those funds went towards safeguarding fossil fuel supplies in foreign countries, something we definitely don’t need to be spending our money on.
The Green New Deal is also not “radical”. It’s a necessary plan for our survival, and it’s going to go way beyond what we’ve ever attempted before as a nation- for a good reason.
The plan will transition our economy to 100% clean and renewable energy by 2030 by putting millions of people to work building sustainable infrastructure and transforming our energy system. It’ll involve a large-scale mobilization in every sector of our society. It’s going to take a whole lot of effort. But it will work.
And there’s already been multiple pieces of concrete legislation introduced that would implement portions of the Green New Deal. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey have introduced the Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act, which would create a Civilian Climate Corps and put 1.5 million Americans to work making our communities more sustainable.
Rep. AOC also introduced another bill with Rep. Cori Bush, entitled the Green New Deal for Cities, which would tackle environmental injustice and empower communities to mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis.
And finally, the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, sponsored by Rep. AOC and Rep. Bernie Sanders, was reintroduced. This act would improve existing housing to be more sustainable and affordable, and would also provide funds for the construction of new, green housing.
This legislation is only the beginning, and it will kick off a decade-long mobilization to change our society for the better. Biden’s promise does none of this. He hasn’t even stated how he would reach his goal of a 50% reduction in emissions. We have a plan already.
As one friend once said to me, reducing 50% of emissions would be like “solving 50% of the climate crisis”. We cannot wait any longer to take action on climate, and we cannot waste our time on half-hearted proposals. We need more.
