Fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidates and activist groups attacked former Vice President Joe Biden on Friday for being insufficiently devoted to combating climate change after a news report said Biden prefers a “middle ground” policy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has been ranking second behind Biden in early polls, tweeted that “there is no ‘middle ground’ when it comes to climate policy.”
“If we don’t commit to fully transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels, we will doom future generations,” Sanders added. “Fighting climate change must be our priority, whether fossil fuel billionaires like it or not.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, running a single-issue campaign to combat climate change, also piled on Friday.
Inslee credited the “Obama-Biden administration” for making “historic progress on climate change.” But he said in a statement: “The times and science have changed. We cannot simply go back to the past; we need a bold climate plan for our future.”
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The Sunrise Movement, a progressive advocacy group representing young people, referred to Biden’s reported approach as a “death sentence.”
“A ‘middle ground’ policy that’s supportive of more fossil fuel development is a death sentence for our generation and the millions of people on the frontlines of the climate crisis,” said Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement, which has helped influence the Green New Deal.
The criticisms were in response to a report by Reuters earlier Friday that said Biden is planning to introduce a climate change agenda that is more moderate than the progressive Green New Deal.
The report said Biden hopes to attract support from environmentalists and union workers. Biden, in his campaign’s early days, has emphasized winning over blue-collar union workers who defected to President Trump in 2016. Unions have been skeptical of the Green New Deal because it would harm workers by phasing out fossil fuel industries.
Biden, former vice president to Barack Obama, has not commented on the Green New Deal, which most of his competitors have rushed to endorse.
The Reuters report said Biden would seek to re-join the Paris Climate Agreement and keep Obama administration regulations on power plant emissions and vehicle fuel efficiency that Trump has moved to weaken. And it said Biden would support zero-carbon sources of energy that aren’t wind or solar, such as nuclear power, and carbon capture and storage on coal and industrial plants.
Heather Zichal, who Reuters quoted in its story as advising Biden on climate, later denounced the news outlet’s “middle ground” characterization of Biden’s plan.
“I expect as president @JoeBiden would enact a bold policy to tackle climate change in a meaningful and lasting way. Reuters got it wrong,” Zichal said in a Twitter post. “Any suggestion that it wouldn’t is in direct contradiction to his long record of understanding climate change as an existential threat.”
Biden, former colleagues say, has a track record in the Obama administration of enacting policies that have helped reduce emissions and lower the cost of clean energy. Supporters argue that he could build a coalition with disparate groups, including Republicans and unions, to make durable policy, rather than relying on executive actions that could be reversed.
In one of his first tasks, Biden helped implement Obama’s economic stimulus package, known as the Recovery Act of 2009, dedicating $90 billion to clean energy programs. He later helped lead negotiations of the Paris agreement.
He also authored one of the first climate change bills in 1987 that required the government to plan for global warming.
