When it comes to climate change, Joe Biden has done what Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did not — and now, what Donald Trump vows to destroy.
President Biden has executed a deft policy strategy that joins job creation, economic growth and global competitiveness with emissions reductions, using powerful clean energy tax incentives for consumers and businesses as the driver.
In just 18 months since securing congressional approval of this approach, Biden’s plan has unleashed $370 billion in new private clean energy investments, and created over 210,000 new clean energy jobs and almost 50,000 manufacturing jobs. U.S. companies are bringing dozens of major clean technologies to consumers while challenging China for global leadership in clean energy, the most important economic sector internationally over next two decades, worth $100 trillion or more.
Biden has also pursued uniquely ambitious regulatory, security and diplomatic policies, reestablishing American global climate leadership. He has correctly characterized climate change as an existential crisis, crucial to America’s long-term domestic safety and global security, bringing climate policy to key levels of government, including emergency response like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Security Council. He has rallied U.S. allies around the world, while both challenging and engaging with China, forcing Beijing to announce new pledges.
In short, Biden is not just the most successful president on climate, he is the most important climate policymaker in world history.
So what, you might ask, has been the reaction of far-left climate crusaders to such profound successes? To attack Biden.
Never mind that such attacks risk tipping a razor-thin election to former President Donald Trump, whose warped agenda includes dismantling every climate protection and economic benefit that Biden has so painstakingly created.
How bad would climate policy be if Trump were reelected? It would be disastrous for U.S. public safety, economic growth and national security.
From 2017 to 2021, Trump undermined every single climate protection he could, gutting regulations on power plant pollution that would have led to large increases in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions had Biden not been elected to reverse them. Trump undermined U.S. climate leadership by withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, alienating our key allies while encouraging climate scofflaws like Vladimir Putin.
But that’s nothing compared to what he says he will do if he gets back in the White House.
Donald Trump has made clear that he will try to repeal Biden’s new clean energy incentives “on day one,” undermining not just emissions reductions but the source of hundreds of billions of dollars of new annual investment and hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The Republican frontrunner says he plans to “maximize fossil fuel production,” opening many new areas to oil drilling. Trump has bragged that he would gut essentially all climate regulations Biden has put in place, including preventing better fuel economy for American cars and trucks, allowing more pollution from U.S. powerplants, and overturning rules to reduce methane emissions.
Trump’s allies like the Heritage Foundation are developing plans for killing off many “Energy Department agencies central to Biden’s climate agenda, including the Loan Programs Office, which is disbursing $400 billion to help industries decarbonize, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and the Clean Energy Corps,” as reported by The Financial Times. This is hugely dangerous because most of the Department of Energy’s clean energy funding has not yet been injected into the economy.
While clean energy investments are being made in every state — and studies show red states have benefited most — many swing states are also seeing large private-sector clean energy investments in the last year, with North Carolina at about $11.2 billion, Georgia at $6.9 billion, Michigan at $5.7 billion and Nevada at $5.5 billion.
You would think those on the far left of climate policy would get this. But for them it seems it’s never enough; they attack even their best allies, like Biden, in the hopes of generating controversy, media attention and, most of all, the funding that goes with it. And although the “far left versus Biden” storyline may be catnip for some click-chasing publications, it is utterly unrepresentative of the real stakes ahead. In fact, it turns reality on its head by ignoring key issues.
For example, some climate activists have falsely suggested that natural gas is worse than coal in terms of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. Starting with this deliberately mistaken premise, which misuses massively out of date data, they then claim that U.S. exports of natural gas are our biggest climate problem.
In fact, U.S. gas exports have been the key to limiting Europe’s morbid reliance Russia’s natural gas, with cleaner U.S. gas displacing Russian gas, which has far higher fugitive emissions of methane. U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) also cuts European Union (EU) coal use, which has higher CO2 emissions. And, of course, U.S. gas has helped the EU to stop filling Vladimir Putin’s coffers and limited funding of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine.
In truth, the Biden administration has led efforts to reduce methane emissions from gas, with the president personally traveling to COP 27 in Egypt to emphasize the critical importance of cutting methane emissions to limit near-term temperatures. Last year, Biden promulgated new regulations to reduce methane emissions from U.S. oil and gas by nearly 80 percent, and in the administration’s landmark climate legislation also adopted measures that tax methane emissions from gas and oil above regulated levels. These actions, and new EU rules regulating methane from gas imports, also helped compel new pledges at COP 28 by 50 international oil and gas companies to cut methane leaks to near-zero by 2030, creating momentum for a global methane agreement.
Many voters might not realize this when they see propaganda from both the far left and far right attacking Biden. And the lessons of recent presidential elections are startling. Al Gore lost to George Bush in 2000 because some voters supported far-left Ralph Nader in Florida, which Gore lost by a mere 537 votes. Then, in 2016, Jill Stein of the Green Party helped get Trump elected by drawing votes away from Hillary Clinton in key states. Now new fringe candidates who run on the far left may tempt some voters with false characterizations of Biden and climate. Self-described climate crusaders are playing with fire by attacking such a climate stalwart as Biden, whether or not he delays LNG permits.
Make no mistake — climate is on the ballot. Joe Biden is the only one who has, and who will, protect it.
Paul Bledsoe is professorial lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy in Washington. He served as a staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, Interior Department and the White House Climate Change Task Force under former President Bill Clinton.