Joe Biden has endorsed the Green New Deal in all
but name
Julian
Brave NoiseCat
Biden rode a wave of establishment endorsements to the
nomination this spring. But it’s progressive ideas that might carry him to the
presidency
Published
onMon 20 Jul 2020 11.07 BST
On Tuesday,
Joe Biden did something unprecedented for a Democratic candidate assured of
nomination: he moved left. In a speech delivered from Wilmington in his home
state of Delaware, Biden unveiled the most ambitious clean energy and
environmental justice plans ever proposed by the nominee of a major American
political party. The plans, which the Biden campaign described to reporters as
“the legislation he goes up to [Capitol Hill] immediately to get done,” outline
$2tn in investments in clean energy, jobs and infrastructure that would be
carried out over the four years of his first term.
Forty
percent of these investments would be directed to communities of color living
on the toxic edge of the fossil fuel economy – communities that have also been
among the most devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. Biden proposes to pair
these investments with new performance standards, most notably a clean
electricity standard that would transition the United States to a carbon
pollution-free power sector by 2035.
Part of
Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, these plans are a Green New Deal in all but
name. If you set aside the most attention-grabbing left-wing programs included
in New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2019 Green New Deal
resolution, like Medicare for All and a federal job guarantee, Biden’s plans
broadly align with an approach advocated by the left-wing of the Democratic
party. Firstly, like the Green New Deal, Biden’s plans reframe climate action
as a jobs, infrastructure and clean energy stimulus.
After three
decades of economic elites failing to pitch a carbon tax as a solution to the
supposed “market failure” of greenhouse gas emissions, Biden has elected to
focus instead on economy-wide performance standards as the cutting edge of decarbonization.
And while earlier generations of Democrats wanted consumers to foot the bill
for that clean energy transition at the gas pump, a position shared by Milton
Friedman, Biden takes Keynes and Franklin Roosevelt as his intellectual and
political forebears. Perhaps most encouragingly, Biden views the workers,
unions and communities of color most impacted by the fossil fuel economy and
the potential shift away from it as deserving special attention. In his view,
climate action cannot be separated from economic, environmental and social
justice.
This is, in
the broadest strokes, the climate policy gospel according to many progressives.
Biden’s plans draw upon the Green New Deal-inflected recommendations issued by
the joint taskforce convened by surrogates of the Biden and Bernie Sanders
campaigns, including Ocasio-Cortez. They also crib heavily from plans devised
by Washington governor Jay Inslee’s climate-focused presidential campaign and
are delightfully similar to policies drafted by Data for Progress, an upstart
leftwing thinktank where I work. (Full disclosure: we provided research and
recommendations to the joint taskforce and campaign.) Now, Biden would be wise
to run on these ideas and staff up his administration to make them happen.
Over recent
months, public opinion research from Data for Progress has shown that climate
change is a uniquely favorable general election issue for Biden and Democrats.
When it comes to climate and clean energy priorities, voters trust the
Democratic party more than the Republican party by an 18% margin. Climate
change is a strong mobilization issue for the young voters Biden has struggled
to attract to his campaign.
In a May
survey, 61% of voters under 45 said they would be more likely to vote for Biden
if he committed to a platform that would move the United States to a 100% clean
energy economy, with just 14% reporting that such a platform would make them
less likely to support the Democratic nominee. A more recent survey fielded in
late June by Climate Power, the Global Strategies Group and Data for Progress
found that bold climate action was also persuasive for middle-of-the-road and
Latino voters. Even after survey respondents were shown strong messaging
attacks from Trump and Republicans claiming that Democrats wanted to pass a
$100tn Green New Deal that would increase taxes – as well as more outlandish
arguments that Democrats were going to take away hamburgers, pickup trucks and
airplanes – voters moved even further in Democrats’ direction. Middle partisans
shifted two percentage points further in favor of Biden, while Latinos leaned a
further four points towards him.
These
findings show that one of Trump and Republicans’ favorite act: that
“Venezuela-style socialists are going to take away the American way of life” –
doesn’t work. In fact, an analysis of the 2019 Cooperative Congressional
Election Study published by Data for Progress found that 2016 Trump voters who
are unsure how they will vote in 2020 are uniquely cross-pressured on climate
issues. They view climate change as being much more important than other 2016
Trump voters and side with Biden and Democrats on key policy issues, like the
Paris Climate Agreement and Clean Power Plan. Crucially, they also tend to be
young, meaning that if Democrats can attract these voters in 2020, they could
grow their base for years to come.
As Biden
prepares for election day in November, he would be wise to run on his Green New
Deal-style climate plan. And if he wins – which polls suggest he will – he’s
going to need to staff up to turn these campaign promises into laws. Here,
activists still have a lot of leverage. The most recent polling from Data for
Progress shows that 44% of voters would be more likely to support a candidate
who doesn’t take money from fossil fuel companies, executives and lobbyists and
that 49% would be opposed to industry representatives receiving appointments to
government agencies and the White House.
These are
strange and scary times. The pandemic has laid bare some of the most
devastating and brutal flaws of our corrupt president and our nakedly
capitalist society. The coronavirus has skewed the electorate in favor of the
Democrats, but the terrifying scale of the three-pronged crisis of pandemic,
unemployment and climate change has tilted the party’s response even further in
favor of its left wing. Biden rode a wave of establishment endorsements to the
nomination this spring. But come fall, it’s progressive ideas that just might
carry him and his party to the presidency.
Julian
Brave NoiseCat is director of Green New Deal Strategy for Data for Progress
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