Joe Biden — a climate saviour?
By Charlotte Campbell
After nail-biting days of vote counting, Joe Biden was finally confirmed as President-Elect on November 7 — and Mother Nature breathed a sigh of relief.
America has prevented four more years of — in Biden’s own words — a ‘climate arsonist’ in the White House, potentially putting the US back on the path of climate progress.
During his four years of presidency, Trump has scrapped Obama’s Clean Power Plan, withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and continuously undermined climate science.
Climate change is a Chinese “hoax” in Trump’s eyes, his default response is “I don’t think science knows”, and he recently declared that “it will start getting cooler” at a briefing on California wildfires.
Many believe that any administration, in comparison to this, would be better for the planet.
With this in mind, Biden almost seems a miracle and his climate policies an environmentalist’s dream. Investing $2 trillion in renewables and green infrastructure, and “immediately” re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement are just some of his pledges outlined on the dedicated ‘Climate Plan’ section of his website.
On top of this, he aims for the United States to be a “100% clean-energy economy with net-zero emissions” by 2050.
Biden has coined his plan a ‘Clean Energy Revolution’, one which will focus not just on the climate but on creating jobs and achieving environmental justice for communities of colour. The video on his website — with him talking calmly to the camera, concern lining his face as he discusses his grandchildren’s future — gives you the impression that America could not be in safer hands.
Indeed, if Biden fulfils his promises it will have a phenomenal impact on tackling the climate crisis: Climate Action Tracker predicts it could reduce global heating by 0.1C and reduce CO2 emissions by 75 gigatonnes in the next 30 years.
However, this success doesn’t factor in the considerable opposition Biden is likely to face in response to his challenge of the status quo, business-as-usual attitude.
Because of the checks and balances that make up the American political system, the party in control of either chamber of Congress has a significant influence on the president’s legislative agenda. It is still not clear which party will have a majority in the Senate — with this to be decided by the Senate race runoffs in January — but if the Republicans win, Biden would be unable to pass a lot of his climate legislation.
It is also worth considering that if Biden faced legal challenges to any of his proposals, these would be decided by a Supreme Court with majority conservative judges.
Not to mention that Trump still has over 70 million supporters across the States, who will likely be unhappy with individual changes, such as cutting down on meat and flying, that need to be made on top of government legislation.
At the same time, though, this election saw a record-high youth turnout and it is these young people who will hold Biden to his climate mandate. The Sunrise Movement, a youth climate organisation in America, highlighted in a recent tweet “how quickly young people [will] turn back into his harshest critics” if he doesn’t keep his promises.
As the Guardian newspaper noted, Biden has already outdone Trump by “simply […] telling the truth”. But all the newly-elected president has given us so far is his word — and with the opposition he will likely face, it is crucial that we put pressure on Biden to fulfil his climate pledges.
