After much huffing and puffing from the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, 2020 front-runner Joe Biden released his climate change plan today. Even though his instincts on the issue are solid, the former vice president finds himself at the crossroads of an “intersectional” movement and the working class that would likely win him the race in a general election against President Trump.
Biden’s plan requires a vast expansion of the regulatory state and $5 trillion in spending. But it at least touches on — just barely — the only two things that matter in the long run: expanding nuclear power and exerting pressure on China and India to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. That Biden had to equivocate around these two issues at all just demonstrates how infuriating the climate change debate has become.
A waning minority of Americans deny climate change’s existence or severity. The main group still in denial are those pie-in-the-sky Democrats who swear, like, the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t do something and then refuse to define that something but just promise all kinds of things they cannot deliver — a federal jobs guarantee, for example, and either the eradication or nationalization of major American industries.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., put the the Green New Deal to bed after a humiliating floor vote, during which not a single one of its co-sponsors was willing to vote for it. For all the focus on the Green New Deal’s promise to abolish air travel and farting cows, its more important shortcomings were its ban on nuclear, its failure to acknowledge that India and China must be the focus of any climate change effort, and its disparagement of such Obama-era ideas such as market-oriented cap-and-trade and carbon tax systems as “corporate schemes that place profits over community burdens and benefits.”
Biden’s plan, specifically regarding nuclear and diplomacy, is far less ridiculous. It expressly promises to increase nuclear research and supports the construction of small modular nuclear reactors. But most impressive is Biden’s promise to play hardball with China:
– Seek a G20 commitment to end all export finance subsidies of high-carbon projects, building on past commitments from the G7 and multilateral export finance institutions to eliminate financing for coal in all but the poorest countries.
– Reform the International Monetary Fund and regional development bank standards on debt repayment priorities for development projects. The U.S. will lead like-minded nations to establish rules that take unsustainable climate and debt costs — such as those imposed by self-interested Chinese projects — into account in prioritizing who gets paid under international debt forbearance. Projects with high carbon impact and high debt costs will go to the end of the line, making them higher risk and more costly.
This is a legitimate, big-boy climate change plan. If nothing were executed into action here except for the international aspect, nuclear research and development, and the infrastructure developments that he details, it would do more to decrease greenhouse gas emissions in real life than any $93 trillion Green New Deal. And given that climate change mitigation is the goal, not fundamental transformation of the American economy, that’s a good thing. It’s also why the socialists will hate it.
