2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke released a plan Monday to combat climate change, vowing to mobilize $5 trillion in spending over 10 years to address what he called “the greatest threat we face.”
“We are living in a transformed reality, where our longstanding inaction has not only impacted our climate but led to a growing emergency that has already started to sap our prosperity and public health — worsening inequality and threatening our safety and security,” said O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman.
O’Rourke’s is the most detailed climate change plan released by a packed field of Democratic presidential candidates who are angling to appeal to climate-minded primary voters as the progressive “Green New Deal” has elevated the issue.
His plan calls for $1.5 trillion in “fully paid for” government spending to mobilize a total of $5 trillion in funding over a decade, to be spent on infrastructure, tax incentives, clean energy research and development, housing and transportation grants in low-income communities, and mitigation measures to help communities prepare for extreme weather events.
To help pay for it, O’Rourke says he would raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, while ending “tens of billions” of dollars in tax breaks for fossil fuel companies.
The spending, which O’Rourke calls the “the world’s largest ever climate change investment,” would enable the United States to achieve his goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
O’Rourke wants to get halfway to that net-zero goal by 2030. He said he would work with Congress to enact a “legally enforceable” standard that would mandate reaching the decarbonization goal. O’Rourke also vowed to take a number of executive actions as part of a “day-one agenda.”
That includes reentering the Paris climate change agreement that President Trump has rejected; reducing leaks of methane from oil and gas operations; phasing out hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, refrigerants used in cooling systems that are more potent than carbon and methane; and strengthening fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles.
O’Rourke also joins fellow 2020 candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in promising to ban all new fossil fuels leases on public lands.
