The Democratic Party sought to appeal to young left-wing voters without alienating blue-collar energy workers in highlighting Joe Biden’s climate plans during the third night of the national convention.
During a roughly 15-minute segment on climate change, the party presented a fairly upbeat picture focused heavily on Biden’s pledge to create millions of clean energy jobs. Biden’s revamped climate plans, unveiled last month, would eliminate carbon emissions from power plants by 2035 and spend $2 trillion to tackle the issue.
“That’s Joe’s plan: Create millions of new, good-paying jobs, many of them union jobs like mine,” said Rob Bair, an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers wireman from Pennsylvania, a fossil fuel-heavy swing state and Biden’s home state.
Biden plans to “invest in critical infrastructure, upgrade millions of buildings, invest in micromobility and precision agriculture, a clean energy future that achieves net-zero emissions by 2050,” Bair added.
The video montage also spotlighted a young climate activist in Detroit who praised Biden’s focus on addressing the disproportionate effects pollution has on minority and low-income people. And it featured former federal scientists slamming the Trump administration as silencing climate science.
Young climate activists also showed up for Biden, touting him during taped remarks as the best chance to address climate change.
“Joe Biden won’t solve this crisis in four years. No one can, but he will put us back on track so that my generation can have a fighting chance,” said Alexandria Villasenor, a 15-year-old climate activist from New York City. She has protested inaction on climate outside the United Nations building and worked alongside Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
“I’m asking you to join us,” Villasenor added. “Don’t let our futures go up in flames.”
While there were several mentions of “green jobs,” there was no mention of the Green New Deal, the plan authored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that left-wing Democrats have urged Biden to embrace but fossil fuel workers have raised concerns about.
President Trump has frequently tried to tie Biden to that sweeping plan, accusing the former vice president of embracing Green New Deal-like policies by working with Ocasio-Cortez and his former rival, Bernie Sanders.
During the convention, however, Democrats sought to portray Biden simply as a candidate who will address the issue and create jobs in the process and Trump as a president who won’t.
“We know time is running out to save our planet,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in live remarks from a solar farm in her state. “We have the chance this November to end two existential crises: the Trump presidency and the environmental annihilation he represents.”
