Democrat Joe Biden has been elected the new President of the United States, what does this mean for mitigating climate change?
Unlike in the UK, where climate change science is accepted across party lines, in the US the Republican party has many Senators and followers who reject it altogether. Donald Trump is one of them. He famously pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Change agreement, which, rather symbolically, came legally into effect the day after the US elections.
Trump spent a good chunk of his time in power rolling back policies brought in by previous President Barack Obama to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as legal limits on emission for industrial activity. He also tried to revive the coal power sector, which is the most polluting of all. He ultimately failed because the market economics don’t support coal power anymore, particularly in developed nations. One of Trump’s most recent acts, the day before the election, if I remember correctly, was to remove protections from Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, which is one of the world’s largest temperate rainforests, to allow logging and development to go ahead.
Many have argued that a Trump presidency would have been bad for the US economy because he would have been back-peddling against the ‘inevitability of science, society, technology, economics and investor pressure.’
A Biden presidency
A Biden presidency promises, thankfully, to be much different. He wasn’t the climate activists’ first choice – that was Bernie Sanders – but he has a strong green agenda backed by a a $2-trillion Clean Energy Plan.
Biden recently tweeted that one of his first acts as US President will be reinstating America to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which is very important to keep momentum behind the global ambition and helping others to do the same. Where America goes others follow.
Wind and solar are the fastest growing jobs markets in the US.
Biden has framed much of his climate change mitigation policy around jobs through a “clean energy revolution” that will put the US on a path to a carbon-free electricity system by 2035 and eventually take it to net zero emissions by 2050.
According to analysts this will require a huge overhaul of infrastructure, a seven-fold expansion of US onshore wind and utility-scale solar generation capacity, coupled with steep growth in offshore wind and battery storage. Basically, it will completely disrupt the entire US electricity system, but it’s a disruption that is already happening in many other developed nations, albeit slowly, and even in the US, despite Trump. Wind and solar are the fastest growing jobs markets in the US.
Biden could also introduce a carbon tax, his website says he ‘wants polluters to pay’, as well as remove Arctic waters for consideration for oil and gas development, which Trump recently green lighted. Through the Arctic Council he could also put pressure on Russia to do the same.
However, he has said he won’t ban fracking, a controversial form of oil and gas extraction that uses lots of water and chemicals, but which has largely delivered the US energy security. But he could limit it in some ways, such as on government land, and is expected to.
However, none of this will be easy to achieve for many reasons, but not least due to the balance of power in the US.
“The US system of checks and balances means that Congress and the courts can make it difficult for presidents to achieve their goals,” says Ed Crooks, vice chair, Americas, at energy analysts, Wood Mackenzie.
His plans could be thwarted by a Senate that is increasingly likely to remain in Republican control.
However, if the Democrats do win a majority, Crooks says Biden could be even more emboldened with his green agenda.
Something to be Positive About
A Biden win is good news for the fight for a stable climate and for America because, as Christiana Figures, orchestrator of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, has said, it brings the US into the 21st Century and headed in the same direction as the rest of the world.
It will be difficult politically, I expect endless political wrangling we don’t have time for, but ultimately Biden is going to be under pressure to deliver for all the young voters that supported him and increasingly he has market economics on his side.
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