Former Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a confusing and impractical $2 trillion plan to combat climate change Tuesday that would harm our economy, destroy more jobs than it would create, and offer little if any environmental benefits in a world where China and other nations keep increasing carbon dioxide emissions.
The move by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is an effort to please both environmental extremists and the moderate, swing-state voters he needs to defeat President Trump in the November election.
Biden claims he could eliminate carbon dioxide emissions in America by 2035, put Americans into electric vehicles and zero-emissions mass transit, and rebuild the country’s infrastructure.
The plan is Biden’s watered-down version of the radical Green New Deal. The original Green New Deal was lauded by the far left, but its support within the halls of Congress looked very different. The pie-in-the-sky legislation was never even brought to a vote in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., never signed on to the bill.
When the original Green New Deal was brought to a vote in the Senate, not a single Democratic senator voted in favor of it.
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Still, despite all of this, Biden is trying to appeal to the far-left socialist fringe of the Democratic Party led by Green New Deal author Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., with his new radical energy and environmental proposals.
Biden said he plan would result in “good, union jobs” by creating or improving zero-emissions public transportation. But he failed to acknowledge that his plan would destroy over 1 million jobs and wipe out trillions of dollars in revenue by forcing a complete shift of the energy industry.
Organized labor is a valuable ally for Democrats, and that showed in 2016 when Hillary Clinton said that she was going to “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” This comment was catastrophic for her campaign. Now Biden is proposing a plan that would make that job-destroying comment a reality.
Right now, millions of American families are struggling in the wake of coronavirus pandemic’s economic fallout. Biden’s plan would only add to their misery. Americans need relief, not further unemployment, higher electricity bills and increased taxes. But it’s clear that Biden’s priority is appeasing the radical left — not finding practical solutions to real problems.
Biden’s decision to appoint socialist Ocasio-Cortez as co-chair of his climate advisory panel tells you all you need to know about the extremist environmental and energy views he has embraced to appease the far left.
Subsequently, and not surprisingly, the Democratic National Committee’s Environment and Climate Crisis Council issued a report that called for “legislation permanently banning fracking and enhanced oil recovery and initiate a managed phaseout of existing operations.”
Democrats quickly dismissed that plan, and Biden’s newest proposal does not include an outright ban of fracking – only a ban on oil and gas production on federal lands.
Still, the Biden plan unveiled Tuesday adopts many of the policies that socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ocasio-Cortez and their radical base have long been promoting.
As Biden continues to pander to the far left and demonstrate an ability to be bullied by progressives, it becomes harder and harder for moderate voters to believe that he is actually in control of his policy platform.
Biden also attacked President Trump’s track record during his speech, claiming that Trump has “held back American workers from leading the world on clean energy” and allowed China to “out-compete us.”
These claims are proven false by the results that President Trump has produced during his time in office. In 2018, the oil and natural gas industry’s total revenue rose for the third year in a row to $181 billion. The industry is projected to generate more than 2 million jobs in in the next 15 years.
America achieved energy independence for the first time ever under President Trump, allowing us to strengthen key international relationships and have more agency at the trade table; and America is leading the world in carbon dioxide reductions, with our own emissions reaching the lowest point since 1993.
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Biden’s specific mention of China is also ironic, considering the considerable leverage he would be gifting the Chinese through his plan. China controls the vast majority of the materials needed to build all of the solar panels, electric cars and other green tech involved in Biden’s proposal. America recently experienced the consequences of relying on China during the coronavirus pandemic. We cannot afford to increase that reliance, and would be foolish to do so willingly.
President Trump has encouraged the natural gas and oil industry, achieving never-before-realized goals that have benefited Americans at home and abroad.
Biden’s plan is not designed to produce these results, or even to pass Congress — it is a means of providing him with political cover.
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Biden has been struggling to appease supporters of Sanders and other far-left Democrats who sought the Democratic presidential nomination since the first day of his campaign. The plan he announced Tuesday is just his most recent attempt at showing a desire for “real, radical change.”
But the proposal only confirms what a Biden presidency would mean for Americans: more unemployment, higher energy bills and drastically increased taxes – all in the midst of America’s economic recovery from COVID-19.
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