Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren unveil climate plans – By Lisa Kashinsky (Boston Herald) / June 4 2019
Former Vice President Joe Biden — the Democratic presidential front-runner who has taken heat from the more progressive wing of his party for being too “middle ground” on climate change — unveiled a $5 trillion climate policy Tuesday he said would be funded by reversing President Trump’s corporate tax cuts.
Biden’s proposal came as U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren — a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal — announced her plan to pump $2 trillion toward developing and exporting green technology.
The dueling plans — Biden’s announced ahead of campaign stops in New Hampshire Tuesday afternoon — show the former vice president’s team “is recognizing that Warren is picking up in the polls with a lot of voters who are rethinking their support,” of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, and is trying to pull those voters toward Biden instead, said Springfield-based Democratic strategist Tony Cignoli.
Warren is enjoying an upswing in the polls, buoyed by the fact her message — that she’s “got a plan” for everything — seems to be resonating with voters who are cooling on Sanders.
The “duel” between Biden and Warren “begins now because they’re looking at their own polling, they’re looking at what they can project happening, where voters are going and what they’re paying attention to,” Cignoli said. “Biden’s players are smart. They’re seeing the movement — they know there are votes to pick up from Bernie and even the alt-left when it comes to talking environment.”
Biden is calling for a $1.7 trillion federal investment in clean energy over the next decade — which, coupled with private sector, state and local investments, would top $5 trillion. He wants to push the United States to net-zero emissions by 2050 and invest in research and development of zero-carbon technology — which he says will create 10 million new jobs.
“More severe storms and droughts, rising sea levels, warming temperatures, shrinking snow cover and ice sheets — it’s already happening. We must take drastic action now to address the climate disaster facing the nation and our world,” Biden said in a statement. “Science tells us that how we act or fail to act in the next 12 years will determine the very livability of our planet. That’s why I’m calling for a Clean Energy Revolution to confront this crisis and do what America does best – solve big problems with big ideas.”
In an email to supporters, Biden blasted Trump, whom he said “denies the evidence in front of his own eyes,” on climate change, which Biden called reckless and irresponsible.
Biden’s plan echoes the climate policies of the Obama administration and reaches beyond them, a late embrace of the Green New Deal championed by several of his more progressive challengers.
Cignoli said it’s no surprise centrist Biden is leaning left when it comes to climate change.
“It’s a given that this is a key thing that the left, the alt-left and the block of folks who are independent — who can vote in Democratic primaries and caucuses — who are thinking about the environment and even right now in some of those Midwestern and other states hit hard by floods,” Cignoli said.
If he didn’t address climate change, and strongly, many of his nearly two-dozen Democratic opponents would “hit him for being absent on this,” Cignoli said. “His opponents have been beating the drum a bit on this to see what he would do. This was really essential, not just to appease them, but to say, ‘I have plans, too.’ ”
Not to be upstaged, Warren rolled out her Green Manufacturing Plan Tuesday morning, which would invest $2 trillion over the next decade into researching, manufacturing and exporting green technology, as well as creating a National Institute of Clean Energy.
“The climate crisis demands immediate and bold action. Like we have before, we should bank on American ingenuity and American workers to lead the global effort to face down this threat — and create more than a million good jobs here at home,” Warren said in an online post.
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/06/04/joe-biden-elizabeth-warren-unveil-climate-plans/
