Everything you need to know about Michael Bloomberg’s ‘Beyond Carbon’ initiative
Dropping out of the 2020 presidential campaign early, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced his investment in a new initiative called ‘Beyond Carbon.’
On Tuesday, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Bloomberg News that he will not run in the 2020 presidential campaign, acknowledging that with the already crowded Democratic primary field, his moderate position will most likely be overshadowed. Especially with former Vice President Joe Biden also considering to join the field, his advisers considered his path toward the presidency somewhat unlikely.
Although he will not be running, he still intends to financially support the democratic opposition to President Trump. In an interview with the LA Times, Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg’s longtime political advisor said, “You should expect to hear a lot more from Mike Bloomberg. Some people don’t run, and you don’t hear from them again. I think the reverse is true here.”
“I believe I would defeat Donald Trump in a general election,” Bloomberg wrote. “But I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field.”
Instead, Bloomberg has decided to devote his personal massive fortune — estimated at more than $50 billion—and time towards the climate change crisis and gun control advocacy. In the announcement, he wrote, “With a leader in the White House who refuses to bring the parties together, it will be nearly impossible for Congress to address the major challenges we face, including climate change, gun violence, the opioid crisis, failing public schools, and college affordability.”
Previously, Bloomberg has explicitly accused President Trump of being a “climate denier” after his sudden decision to withdraw from the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement. Rather than running for office, he wrote, “I’ve come to realize that I’m less interested in talking than doing. And I have concluded that, for now, the best way for me to help our country is by rolling up my sleeves and continuing to get work done.”
As the former Mayor of New York, Bloomberg has already made an impact on the environmental community. In 2013, Bloomberg convinced 10 major companies in New York, including Google and JetBlue, and various other organization to cut their emissions by 30 percent. Furthermore, in 2018, António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, appointed Bloomberg as the UN’s Special Envoy for Climate Action, which specializes in communicating with cities on environmental measures.
He states that Bloomberg Philanthropies will create a new initiative called ‘Beyond Carbon,’ which relates to his previous support for the Sierra Club’s ‘Beyond Coal’ campaign. Previously, Bloomberg committed more than $100 million dollars to Beyond Coal’s mission to shut down coal-fueled power plants and replace them with clean energy plants. Bloomberg has explicitly noted the detrimental effects not of coal power plants not only on the environment but also on the health of nearby communities and coal workers.
The project has so far been successful, “retiring” more than half of their targeting coal-burning power plants. However, Bloomberg makes an even more ambitious plan and wrote, “I will expand my support for the Beyond Coal campaign so that we can retire every single coal-fired power plant over the next 11 years. That’s not a pipe dream. We can do it.”
‘Beyond Carbon,’ which he claims is “a grassroots effort to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy,” is essentially the next step in his plan towards a cleaner America. The specifics of the project have yet to be revealed, but his announcement shapes Bloomberg to become a leader in the environmental community.
Bloomberg isn’t quite done with politics either.
Also, according to the LA Times, “Bloomberg has drafted, with former Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, a preliminary policy proposal for what he considers a more achievable climate change plan than the Green New Deal, the proposal promoted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), which he believes cannot pass Congress.” His support for the Green New Deal has been rather hesitant as he believes its likelihood of being passed in the current Congress is extremely unlikely.
“At the heart of Beyond Carbon is the conviction that, as the science has made clear, every year matters. The idea of a Green New Deal — first suggested by the columnist Tom Friedman more than a decade ago — stands no chance of passage in the Senate over the next two years. But Mother Nature does not wait on our political calendar, and neither can we,” he wrote.
Bloomberg also considers gun control a critical national issue and plans to allocate funds and resources towards Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group, which focuses on requiring universal background checks for firearms purchases.
