Biden to challenge Democratic climate hawks with 'meat and potatoes' approach

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Joe Biden might not be known as the most hardcore climate change hawk, but he is the Democrat best suited to build a broad coalition to address the problem, supporters say.

“Biden is going to talk about climate change as a meat-and-potatoes issue,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former climate change adviser in the Clinton administration. “It’s costing us money now, and it could be making us money if we do it right.”

Biden’s blue-collar campaign and background positions him to make the economic case for addressing climate change with unions that are 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.

But he is popular with some of the constituencies the Green New Deal is meant to reach, including African Americans. The Green New Deal resolution authored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., emphasizes protecting poor people and “deindustrialized communities,” who are disproportionately exposed to air pollution.

“He can appeal directly to unions with a robust climate change economic agenda with credibility most of the Democratic candidates can’t,” Bledsoe said. “The unions are a proxy for economic anxiety more broadly in the industrial Midwest. That includes urban communities left behind.”

Biden, however, will have to overcome the doubts of progressive activists, who worry the former vice president’s appeal won’t be convincing.

“I don’t know anyone who’s excited about him,” said R. L. Miller of the voter mobilization group Climate Hawks Vote. “I’m sure he’ll tout a return to Obama’s best work — Paris and the Clean Power Plan — but the science has grown starker and the plans need to be bolder.”

Biden has a track record in the Obama administration of enacting policies that have helped reduce emissions and lower the cost of clean energy, allies say.

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. Energy experts credit that investment with lowering the cost of technologies such as solar, wind, and battery storage, making them competitive with fossil fuels.

“When people look at the cost declines of clean energy technologies, it all starts to go down in 2010,” said Brandon Hurlbut, a former campaign adviser for Obama’s 2008 campaign who was later chief of staff at the Energy Department. “That’s not a coincidence. That was a consequence of the Recovery Act investments. The vice president was a big part of that.”

Later, Biden participated in negotiations with world leaders over the Paris accord, the international agreement to address climate change that the United States led, before President Trump rejected it.

Biden help sell the Obama administration’s strict emissions rules for vehicles, known as CAFE standards, to the auto industry and unions. Trump is in the process of weakening those rules, which the Obama administration considered critical to limiting carbon pollution from transportation, which is the highest emitting sector of the U.S. economy.

Biden previously opposed higher standards as a senator representing Delaware, which had a large union base.

But he had a pro-environmental record in Congress, authoring one of the first climate change bills in 1987 that required the government to plan for global warming. He also hosted hearings as Foreign Relations chairman on the national security risks of climate change and worked with former Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., to pass a bill protecting tropical forests and coral reefs.

“Vice President Biden has a strong environmental record and commitment to addressing climate change, and I expect he will focus on bold solutions that are also pragmatic and can actually result in achieving real and meaningful emissions reductions,” said Jason Bordoff, the director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a former White House energy adviser in the Obama administration.

Bordoff and others say that Biden has the ability to work with disparate groups, including Republicans, to make durable policy, rather than relying on executive actions that could be reversed.

“We need more ambition on climate change, but we also need to build a coalition that can come together to support policy action that includes environmental groups and labor unions, Silicon Valley and dislocated coal workers, Democrats and Republicans,” Bordoff said.

But some former colleagues questioned Biden’s engagement on climate change and downplayed his involvement in the Obama administration’s agenda.

“It’s hard to overstate how much climate policy was President Obama’s personal passion and he carefully built a climate policy management team via aides that reported directly to him,” said a former Obama administration official, who requested anonymity. “As a result, I don’t think Biden had that much of an opportunity for activity in that area.”

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