House Democrats plan to advance climate change legislation in the next Congress quickly if Joe Biden wins the White House in November.
A Democrat in the White House and perhaps in charge of the Senate will give House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the chance to advance a liberal wish list her rank and file have been drafting for two years.
Legislation to address climate change and to impose green energy initiatives is at the top of that list and will be among the first bills the House votes on in January, the California Democrat said last week.
“Yes, it will be an early part of the agenda,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol.
Pelosi opened her weekly press conference lamenting the worsening fires in Oregon and California and the recent destructive hurricane in Louisiana, which she said was the fifth-strongest to hit the United States.
“I mentioned these in the same context because climate change, the climate crisis, is directly related to both of them,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi was among the first to reject the far-left Green New Deal, a broad plan to upend the economy by quickly ridding the country of fossil fuels, among other drastic measures. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the star of the House freshman Democratic class, introduced the measure in 2019. Still, Pelosi dismissed it immediately, and it has never come up for a House vote.
But Pelosi and Democrats say “the climate crisis” is the cause of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts and must be addressed aggressively through legislation.
When Pelosi took over as speaker in 2019, she immediately formed a Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and put Florida Rep. Kathy Castor in charge.
The panel produced a multipart plan to address climate change that calls for net-zero emissions in the U.S. by 2050 and “net-negative” emissions in the second half of the century. The plan would limit new leasing for fossil fuel extraction on public lands and offshore and support “rapid deployment” of wind and solar energy sources and the construction of new infrastructure “to deliver clean energy to homes.”
The plan puts a focus on “environmental justice communities” that are defined as low-income and minority neighborhoods, and it would “strengthen workers’ rights to organize a union.”
Congressional Democrats have coordinated their climate change agenda with Biden, who was introducing a $2 trillion plan “for a green energy revolution and environmental justice,” which he unveiled in June.
Biden’s plan was written in consultation with climate activists, experts, and union officials, a campaign aide said.
Like the House plan, it calls for net-zero emission by 2050 and massive investments in wind, solar, and other clean energy sources favored by climate activists. The plan would “create millions of good-paying union jobs,” Biden said.
Biden said this summer that he plans to “demand” Congress pass legislation during his first year in office that would establish “an enforcement mechanism” to achieve “milestone targets” addressing climate change by the end of his first term.
Biden said he’ll also call on Congress during his first year in office to pass legislation to make “historic investments” in green energy and incentivize “rapid deployment” of solar and wind power across the U.S. but particularly in places Democrats believe have been most damaged by climate change.
“Climate change is the challenge that’s going to define our American future,” Biden said when he announced his plan. “And if I have the honor of being elected president, we won’t tinker around the edges. We’ll seize this opportunity and meet this moment in history.”
Pelosi would not provide specifics when asked about the legislation she will try to advance in the next Congress that incorporates Castor’s or Biden’s climate plan.
Democrats last year passed legislation that would require the U.S. to remain in the Paris Agreement on climate change, and Pelosi said the bill “is going to be early legislation for us,” adding that the House needed “to do better than that.”
House Democrats also passed an infrastructure measure this summer that would provide wind and solar tax credits and significant investments in electric cars, zero-emissions buses, and electricity grid modernization to support more renewable energy.
Castor’s plan is likely to serve as a blueprint for Pelosi’s 2021 climate change legislation plans.
Pelosi last week called Castor’s plan “the formula we need to go forward.” Still, she also praised Biden’s “Build back better” approach to restarting the economy shut down by the coronavirus by incorporating green energy policies.
“So, it will be a part of it,” Pelosi said, describing the role of climate change legislation in the next Congress. “Whether it’s one bill or permeates a number of bills. But it’s absolutely a priority.”
