Author’s Note: This article was written before the DNC removed elimination of fossil fuel subsidies from its platform. I address that move and its impact on this article here.
This three-article series entitled Upending the Election was originally conceived as one article explaining why Trump v Biden makes no difference to me and why it is in the realm of possibility for the Green Party ticket of Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker to win the popular election, if not the Presidency and Vice Presidency. However, in researching basic facts to ensure the accuracy of my hypothesis, I discovered that the two major party candidates DO differ significantly on what I called in my draft “the most crucial, important, pressing, urgent issue before us". That issue is climate change.
Part II of Upending the Election will detail all of the momentous ways in which Trump vs. Biden does make no difference, and Part III will step through my hypothesis that the Green Party ticket could, in real life, win the popular election. But I cannot in good conscience go forward with the hypothesis that the choice between Trump and Biden makes no meaningful difference, because it does on climate change.
Trump’s position on climate change is simple and easy to explain: climate change is a hoax and he is 100% behind the fossil fuel industries, doing everything he can to smooth the way for those industries to extract as much product as possible, as cheaply as possible and with as little governmental interference as possible; to maintain American dependence on fossil fuels as much as possible and export as much as possible; and to profit off their exploitation of fossil fuels as much as possible.
With Biden, the issue is far more complex. He has a poor record on climate and fossil fuel issues, as did the Obama Administration whose legacy he claims as his own. His climate proposals during the primary campaign were insufficient, earning an “F-” from the Sunrise Movement. He has never come out in support of the Green New Deal. BUT his general election climate plan is far superior to anything he has previously proposed, and is almost the Green New Deal in everything but name. The Biden climate plan is, by any standard, a substantial attack on the problem of climate change and the associated social issues. It is a plan that, if the Administration follows through and applies political muscle to pursue it, would do America’s part in protecting the biosphere for human habitation, while recovering from the Pandemic Depression and transforming the energy economy in socially just ways.
After the nomination was assured, Biden’s team invited Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Sunrise Movement and other progressive climate figures to the table to craft the Biden climate plan. They joined Biden’s existing advisors and Connor Lamb, a Democratic Representative from western Pennsylvania, meaning that the entire Democratic Party/Progressive coalition was represented. The final plan is basically the Green New Deal with a few deletions - some of them important - and perhaps less aggressive - but still aggressive - targets.
Before I lay out the broad strokes of the issue and the plan, I will be up-front: It is a plan that I can get behind, and it gives me one strong reason to consider voting for Biden. That does not mean that I am devoid of doubts about the sincerity of intent to follow the plan or about the people we can expect Biden to bring into his Administration. Is it just a brilliantly-woven cloak to dazzle Progressives into voting for him that he will then donate to the poor as soon as he is elected? Or is he committed to enacting it as President? I did further research for potential answers to those questions. There are some real indications that it is a serious policy proposal that will be prioritized in a Biden Administration, and some troubling signs that the people likely to be in a Biden Administration have no real commitment to the plan and the Administration is not likely to spend enough of its political capital to actually make the plan work. In the end, though, even a relatively pessimistic forecast leaves us with real, substantial differences between a second Trump Administration and a Biden Administration on climate change and environmental issues in general.
Climate Change
If we do not cease burning fossil fuels in ten years irreversible natural processes will lead to severe consequences for the biosphere that will kill or displace millions if not billions of people and completely disrupt our economic system. If we allow our current energy and industrial system to remain in place for 20 or 30 years, we could make the planet uninhabitable for our species.
Let me repeat that:
We could make the planet uninhabitable for our species.
And, look, climate change with all its consequences is just one ecological disaster we are courting with modern industrial Capitalism.
The official consensus among climate scientists is that to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, the rise in climate must be limited to between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees Celsius, and to do its part in accomplishing that, the United States must reach net-zero in carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest. A lot of definitional issues, disagreements, and potential errors are hidden in that statement, but it is a good working description of what a real climate plan must achieve.
The Biden Plan
The climate change plan crafted by Biden’s roundtable and announced on July 14, 2020, is built around four principles: standards, infrastructure, research, and justice. It includes $2 trillion of direct federal government investment over four years. Biden’s previous plan called for $1.7 trillion over ten years. The new plan amounts to a 300% increase in targeted federal spending over the previous plan. By moving all the investment into the first four years, it has much more impact both as an answer to climate change AND as an economic stimulus.
The first part of the plan is standards. The objective is a carbon-free electric power grid by 2035, and net-zero carbon by 2050. These are the broad standards for the overall plan. Areas where specific standards would be set include:
Clean energy requirements for power utilities
Tightening fuel efficiency standards on vehicles to lead to 100% of new vehicle purchases being electric vehicles
Energy efficiency standards on buildings and appliances
promoting transportation alternatives to the automobile and greater density around public transit
Clean energy and energy efficiency requirements for federal government buildings
Banning new fossil fuel extraction on public lands and in the Arctic
Infrastructure investment includes:
Road and bridge improvements to create a more resilient road network
Adding 500,000 electrical vehicle charging stations around the nation
Financial assistance for millions of new solar panels on homes
Creating robust public transit systems for all cities over 100,000 population
A “second rail revolution” that completes high speed rail projects in the Northeast, California, Chicago, and an end-to-end cross-country high speed rail system
A 100% carbon-free electric power grid
Using federal procurement to incentivize the shift to electric vehicles by mandating the federal government purchase electric vehicles for its fleets
An Advanced Research Agency-Climate would be created to work with the recommendations of the Advanced Research Agency-Energy and direct $400 billion of federal research spending over ten years on:
grid-scale storage at one-tenth the cost of lithium-ion batteries;
small modular nuclear reactors at half the construction cost of today’s reactors;
refrigeration and air conditioning using refrigerants with no global warming potential;
zero net energy buildings at zero net cost;
using renewables to produce carbon-free hydrogen at the same cost as that from shale gas;
decarbonizing industrial heat needed to make steel, concrete, and chemicals and reimagining carbon-neutral construction materials;
decarbonizing the food and agriculture sector, and leveraging agriculture to remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it in the ground; and
capturing carbon dioxide from power plant exhausts followed by sequestering it deep underground or using it to make alternative products.
Economic and environmental justice is to be pursued by:
Directing at least 40% of investments to economically disadvantaged areas
Promoting unionization in clean energy industries
Directing clean energy industries to areas with large fossil fuel industry presence to provide replacement jobs for the workers in those industries
Prosecuting polluters
These lists are not all-inclusive, and a lot of details are left out. You can read the actual plan for yourself on Biden’s website. The actual details are buried in mountains of platitudes and Obama Administration self-congratulation, but the structure of the plan can be excavated. I might make a future post extracting the details from the platitude sludge.
One final note about the plan that should not be neglected: it is, like the Green New Deal, as much of a jobs program as it is a climate change program. Sprinkled throughout the document are commitments to creating good jobs by using American manufactured products and using the tools available to the government to promote unionization and wage standards, as well as through heavy investment in infrastructure, and the creation of a “Civilian Climate Corps” borrowed from Jay Inslee’s Climate Conservation Corps and inspired by Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps.
The four main omissions that jump out are:
No ban on fracking (the plan does ban fracking on public lands, which is not insignificant)
No direct call for decreasing limits on or elimination of fossil fuel production (again, it does call for rolling back production on public lands)
Nothing on eliminating American fossil fuels exports
Few details on how to pay for it other than rolling back Trump’s $1.7 trillion tax cut and ending fossil fuel subsidies (see Afternote)
The first two can be argued to be smart politics. Why directly tackle a politically powerful industry if you can achieve the same ends indirectly? And why alienate workers in electoral college swing states that you need to win when the effects of your plan will by market force lead to the end of fracking? Finally, “how will you pay for it?” is a question Progressives do not see as valid when critical needs of the people are at stake. As a society, we can come up with the money.
I can find no good excuse for not vowing to cut fossil fuels exports.
The plan itself has drawn generally positive, even ebullient, reviews from environmental activists, including the Sunrise Movement whose leader helped draft it. Nobody thinks it is perfect, and it will be necessary to follow up this plan with a stage two, but it’s a very good starting point, and a stark difference from the Trump Administration. The plan is, in my opinion, a real reason to vote for the Biden-Harris ticket.
The Biden-Harris Ticket and the Politics
How much political capital the Biden Administration will have to spend to pass its climate plan and how much it is willing to spend will go a long way to determining how much of the plan actually happens. It is easy for a campaign to make up a great sounding plan when it knows it needs votes from the under-40 generations and climate change is the top issue for those voters. It is also easy to abandon that plan once the votes are counted if the Administration itself has no strong commitment to the plan.
On the Analysis.News podcast with Paul Jay, David Roberts of Vox made an interesting observation about the political landscape for climate change action: the Democrats have recognized that the Republicans are not going to help at all, that any climate change plan will be passed solely with non-Republican legislators, so no thought of bipartisanship or trying to lure Republicans went into the planning stage of the climate plan. Seeking transformative change without even paeans to bipartisanship is highly irregular in Washington - especially from a politician like Biden who has spent his career sucking up to Republicans and masturbating to the thought of “bipartisanship.”
This means that rather than reaching Right, Biden and his Administration have to reach Left to bring about unity behind the legislation required under the plan, legislation he asserts he will introduce early upon taking office and wants to have passed within the first year. He needs to be concerned with bringing aboard conservative Democrats with constituencies that are dependent on industries that will be losers in an economic transformation, like Rep. Lamb from western Pennsylvania, as well as progressive supporters of the Green New Deal. By having an ambitious plan with aggressive goals and funding with an emphasis on creating jobs in areas with threatened industries, the team crafted a plan designed to make that coalition possible. Not directly coming out and saying we are going to ban fracking or we are going to shut down fossil fuels, the plan helps those conservative Democrats come aboard.
Let’s be clear: If the actual targets of the plan are met - a carbonless power grid by 2035 and dramatic expansion of electric transportation and energy-efficient and solar-powered buildings - that success will necessarily put an end to fracking and cripple if not kill the fossil fuels industry.
If Democrats keep the House and win the Senate, the Biden climate plan would have a real chance to be put into law if that is what Biden truly intends. With this plan and speeches he gave surrounding its release, he clearly is “talking the talk” on climate change, in the words of the Sunrise Movement. After the election, will he “walk the walk?”
In trying to discern whether Biden will in fact “walk the walk” on his climate plan instead of sitting on his ass, I delved into the sources of his funding and the people with whom he has surrounded himself.
Follow the Money
Biden’s campaign organization and PACs working on his behalf have drawn by far the most money from “Ideological/Single Issue” groups and “Finance, Insurance and Real Estate” interests. “Energy and Natural Resources” interests are barely a blip on the bar graph. All data is drawn from OpenSecrets.org. Of the top 20 industries donating to Biden, Oil & Gas does not even appear on the list. “Democratic/Liberal” is #1 with $55M, followed by Securities & Investment at $45M. Old people ($23M), law firms ($17M) and Real Estate ($16.5M) round out the top five. Environmental groups come in at #12 on the list of top industries supporting Biden, having kicked in over $6M.
After supporting Hillary Clinton at about the same level they did Trump in 2016, fossil fuel industry executives are all in on Trump this cycle, donating more than three times as much to Trump as to Biden as of a week after Biden unveiled the plan.
Now, clearly, a lot of fossil fuel cash could be hidden in those other categories - Securities & Investment firms typically invest heavily in fossil fuel companies and most of the largest law firms represent fossil fuel interests - But Biden has been far more heavily invested in by environmental and climate change-conscious groups than by the fossil fuels industries.
Devotion to fossil fuel investments in the Finance sector is showing cracks. In the New Yorker article cited above, Bill McKibben reported:
[B]anks have started announcing major losses in the hydrocarbon sector. Wells Fargo, for instance, said that forty-seven per cent of its nonperforming corporate loans last quarter were in the three per cent of its deal book devoted to oil and gas. News like that dramatically ups the odds that, say, a Federal Reserve under Biden might increase capital requirements for oil loans. Indeed, earlier this week, a consortium of investors with nearly a trillion dollars in assets urged the Fed to “explicitly integrate climate change across your mandates,” in particular, by providing more information about the financial risks that global warming now presents. On Monday, Morgan Stanley announced that it would rate all its investments for their climate impact…
If investors start seeing fossil fuels as a bad investment and zero-carbon industries as good investments (see eg, “What could a Biden presidency mean for climate change investing?”, by Simon Webber, Aug 13, 2020), a Biden Administration would not be crossing its main donors by pushing an aggressive carbon reduction program. This is in stark contrast with health care reform where a single-payer system runs afoul of Biden’s insurance, health care and pharmaceutical financiers.
Contrary to what I expected before embarking on this research, fossil fuel industries never have been major contributors to Biden’s political career. Going back to 1994, the first election cycle for which OpenSecrets.Org presents data, Biden has never been among the top 20 recipients of Oil & Gas money in the United States Senate. Given the constellation of interests that have supported Biden, he would not be biting off the hand that feeds him by pushing an aggressive anti-carbon agenda. On the contrary, he would jeopardize more of his support by ignoring climate change than by fighting it.
Guilt By Association
The Intercept, which is one of my two favorite news magazine sites along with The American Prospect, wrote in an article examining some of Biden’s “informal advisers” on energy policy: “Vague platitudes in a speech or campaign proposal aren’t the best indicator of a candidate’s direction, nor of what will actually influence a Joe Biden White House. There is a better gauge: personnel.” Looking at the people who have participated in Biden’s climate plan, have advised him on climate and energy issues, and could have access to him in a Biden Administration, it is a mixed bag of Obama Administration veterans who went on to fossil fuel energy industry jobs, Biden advisors from the Obama years who have stayed in the Biden orbit and have at least moderate environmentalist bona fides, and environmental group activists.
In a presidential administration, people with influence on policy can be broken into three main categories: those with official positions in the White House or Executive Branch; outside individuals to whom the President and his top officials turn for advice; and outside individuals who can demand and gain access to the President and his top officials to argue their case. It is only when we see a President-Elect Biden start filling out his Administration, forming a transition team, and planning his “first 100 days” that we can start saying for sure what personnel indicates as to the Administration’s direction on the climate plan.
Perhaps the only area in which the selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate could help expand Biden’s coalition is on climate and environmental issues. Her selection as vice presidential candidate drew genuine praise from a number of environmental group leaders and activists, several of whom took part in crafting the Biden climate plan. Harris’s particular emphasis has been on environmental justice, including legal challenges to fossil fuel industries. Her climate plan as a presidential candidate was solid, and her voting record on environmental issues as a senator drew a 91% rating from the League of Conservation Voters. She recently introduced a “climate equity bill” into the Senate in cooperation with AOC who introduced it into the House.
It’s clear that Harris sees climate change as one of her issues, with a particular focus on environmental justice. It is also clear that were she to become President prematurely, she would not undermine or roll back momentum that may at that time be behind climate action. Her position in the Biden team is a positive indicator.
Biden’s general election campaign climate policy was crafted with the input of two entities: The Climate Engagement Advisory Council “aimed at ‘mobilizing’ voters who prioritize climate change and environmental justice,” and a “task force” of Biden and Bernie Sanders advisors that did the heavy lifting of creating the plan. Few of the members of these bodies are likely to have positions in the Biden Administration, but several of them are noteworthy here:
Lonnie Stephenson, the head of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, was added to the CEAC. Stephenson was opposed to the Green New Deal as a large percentage of his work force works in fossil fuel-driven power plants, but the heavy emphasis on job-creation and job-replacement in the plan has won him, and presumably his union, over. Unions like the IBEW are important to the election, but also crucial to passing and properly implementing any far-reaching climate change plan.
Carol Browner, currently chair of the board of the League of Conservation Voters, involved in other environmental groups, on the boards of agribusiness and energy companies, and a senior counselor for the “business strategy” Albright Stonebridge Group, was EPA Administrator under Bill Clinton from 1993-2001, and was Director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy under Obama until the newly-Republican House of Representatives abolished the position in 2011 partly to get rid of her. When AOC announced the Green New Deal, Browner said in response, “The science is clear: Time is not our friend here. So I have to say I'm as excited about this as I have been about anything in the environmental space in a long time.” Browner would be a candidate for a position in the Biden Administration. Her appointment to an important energy or environmental position would be a moderately positive signal.
Gina McCarthy, EPA Administrator under Obama, served on the climate change policy task force. McCarthy is a former Obama official like Browner whose appointment to a key environmental or energy position in the Biden Administration would be a moderately positive signal. After losing her job as EPA Administrator in January 2017, she went to work at Pegasus Capital and as the head of a new Harvard climate and health science center, until 2020 when she became the head of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Kerry Duggan, appointed to the task force, has deep environmental bona fides and ties to Biden. She was his Deputy Director of Policy when he was Vice President. She has a B.S. in environmental studies University of Vermont and an M.S. in Natural Resource Policy & Behavior from the University of Michigan. She has been active in the Michigan and national League of Conservation Voters, and is a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. Her appointment to an important policy position in the Biden Administration would be a positive signal.
Two activist members of the CEAC, Dr. Cecilia Martinez and Harold Mitchell, Jr., and two activist members of the task force, Varshini Prakash and Catherine Flowers, are the type of strong environmental activists whose continued access to and consultation by Biden would be a strong positive signal. Martinez is co-founder of the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy, and Prakash is co-founder of the Sunrise Movement. Mitchell and Flowers are strong, effective environmental justice activists. It remains to be seen how much access these four would seek or accept, but each is one to watch. Prakash, in particular, is in position to put external pressure on the Biden Administration.
Biden’s Policy Director Stef Feldman has advised Biden on climate issues and could be seen as strong in support of the climate change plan she was a policy advisor when he was Vice President and remained in his orbit as policy director of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware. Feldman almost certainly will have a policy position in the Biden White House.
The personnel in the actual structures providing climate change policy input to the Biden campaign - the CEAC, the task force, his campaign policy staff - are responsible for creating and promoting the plan. If the people highlighted above have prominent positions in his administration, he will be working day-to-day with people who have a vested interest in the plan’s enactment and success. The doubt as to the degree of follow through and political capital investment in the plan creeps in when you examine some of the creeps who have been reported as being “informal advisors and confidantes” to the candidate. If these people show up as Energy Secretary or Interior Secretary or EPA Administrator or some White House policy office, you can count on what actually comes out of the Biden Administration falling far short of the plan.
The Intercept spotlighted four former Obama officials who have gone on to take fossil fuel industry jobs after leaving their government posts and who have been reported to advise Biden:
Heather Zichal, climate czar under Obama, took a position on the board of a natural gas company, was reported by Reuters as advising the Biden team, but the Biden campaign disputed that report and disavowed Zichal.
Ernest Moniz, Obama’s Energy Secretary who helped craft the Paris Agreement, serves on the board of Southern Company, a power utility that generates 77% of its electricity by burning fossil fuels (the industry average is 63%).
Brian Deese, a former senior advisor to Obama on energy and climate is the global head of “sustainable investing” at BlackRock, meaning that his job is to help BlackRock profit no matter what happens with climate change. Not only would Deese advise Biden on how to make sure the finance sector profits off his plan, but Deese is an austerity proponent who would have a poisonous effect on Biden’s domestic policy all around.
Jason Bordoff, White House energy advisor under Obama, advised increasing fossil fuels exports while in office. American exports of fossil fuels, including coal, have mushroomed in the last five years and the United States is now one of the largest exporters of fossil fuels. It is obvious how inconsistent exporting fossil fuels is with combating climate change. It is, in fact, exports that are the reason the US government forecasts fossil fuels production to be the same in 2045 as they are in 2020, despite forecasting fossil fuels making up ever-decreasing portions of US energy consumption. One notes that “fossil fuels exports” is not addressed in the Biden climate plan, which is a major and inexcusable omission.
Another former Obama official not named in the Intercept article who has been linked to the Biden campaign is Amos Hochstein, a State Department official under Obama who “worked with the State Department to ensure American energy companies had access to global oil fields. More recently, he has warned of the need to stabilize oil-dependent nations as the world moves away from petroleum and has stressed the importance of natural gas in buttressing renewable power.” Bloomberg. However, Hochstein has denied that he is advising the campaign.
These five “informal advisors” have been targeted by climate activists who are urging Biden to keep them out of his orbit. Such pressure already contributed to Larry Summers withdrawing from consideration for a government post. If Biden keeps them close, it will absolutely signal that he will not take on the fossil fuels industry and we will see standards weaken as legislation, executive orders, and regulations proceed. If they obtain influential posts within the Administration, that will be a very bad sign. If not, the amount of influence they have as outside advisors will be something to watch.
While The Intercept cast a jaundiced eye on the Biden climate team by focusing on these former Obama officials, “others have seen something different in the variety of people influencing Biden's climate plan: a broad, durable coalition that's balancing traditional powers with the rising influence of Black and grassroots organizers.” Inside Joe Biden’s Network of Climate Advisers. A “broad, durable coalition” will be absolutely necessary to get legislation through Congress, defend the standards and objectives in the regulatory process, and promote the changes in society.
Pressure From the Outside
In the same statement that praised Biden for proposing a climate plan that “talk[s] the talk,” Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash also said, “Now, let’s … mobilize in mass after the election to get Biden to walk the walk.” Prakash is not alone in recognizing that “there really has to be a mass movement. There has to be a people’s movement of a serious scale that hits the streets, because I think without that, the Biden administration caves to the narrow short sightedness of the financial and fossil fuel sector.” Paul Jay
Leftists rightly scoff at the idea of “let’s hold his feet to the fire” and “move Biden left,” but that scoffing can be misplaced and is applied too broadly. Taken at face value, the scorn demeans the idea of mass movements and denies their power, and it is misapplied in this context. One crucial distinction to note is that the mission of the Sunrise Movement and the movement as a whole is not to “move Biden left” on climate as much as it is simply to hold him to his word. He already moved left; the mission of the mass movement is to make sure he does not move back right. We have already seen the power of mass movement in the climate change context - the evidence is in the Biden climate plan.
Without the pressure from pro-decarbonization activism like that of the Sunrise Movement and other groups, the environmental justice activism of people like Harold Mitchell, Jr., Catherine Flowers and many others, and the #NotMeUs movement behind Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, Biden’s climate plan remains the weak sauce it was during the primaries. The contents of Biden’s plan belies the common leftist claim that he cannot be pressured other than by refusing to vote for him. Mass pressure has, with an assist from visibly melting ice sheets and deadly infernos, pushed the national consensus far to the left on climate change - except for the Trumpzi movement and the vested interests threatened by the changes required to fight global warming.
Not only is a Biden Administration directly susceptible to public pressure for a transformation of the economy away from carbon emissions, but it is also susceptible indirectly to public pressure on some of his biggest political donors. Environmental and youth activists have targeted the finance industry, and just as such targeting in the mid-to-late 80s regarding investment in Apartheid South Africa produced results that ultimately contributed to the end of the Apartheid regime, the pressure is working. Remember, the finance industry dwarfs the fossil fuel industries in both present and historical monetary payments to Biden’s political career. Between Finance and Environmental interest groups, we have two of Biden’s biggest financial supports.
Activists are already pressuring Biden to stay away from the fossil fuel-friendly Obama leftovers listed above, “formulating a strategy that could include a letter-writing campaign and petitions, similar to what has been employed to pressure Biden to sever ties with Obama’s one-time National Economic Council Director Larry Summers.” Bloomberg.
“If you want to maximize the effectiveness of a Biden administration on climate you need climate warriors,” said Jeff Hauser, founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, which is assembling critical dossiers on the Biden advisers. “If you are going to take the climate crisis seriously you can’t be seeking a middle-road solution.” Id.
Biden should be getting advice from people who recognize there needs to be an end to fossil fuels instead of embracing “false solutions” that allow the construction of more oil pipelines and gas development for decades to come, said Rees, the Oil Change U.S. official.
“Ten years ago, we were certainly in a different place,” Rees said. “Today, there’s no lack of powerful voices, there’s no lack of people who know their stuff, there’s no excuse for essentially defaulting to energy consultants when you are talking about these kinds of things.” Id.
Other activists like the Sunrise Movement are focused on mobilizing people in the streets immediately after the election to push Biden to “build on these commitments [in his plan] and make these actions an immediate and urgent priority on day 1.” This kind of general pressure is important and effective, but the movement also needs to be conscious of generating pressure behind specific demands. You schedule public action ahead of important committee hearings and both committee and floor votes. You generate public comment and petition drives for specific regulatory actions. You target specific legislators at strategic times to influence their votes. This kind of outside pressure works - not necessarily immediately or from just one or two actions, but over time and with sustained action. See “A Harvard study identified the precise reason protests are an effective way to cause political change”, Quartz. For a draft of the study cited in the above article, click here to download.
It is arguable that movement pressure on the finance industry has had more impact than pressure on the government and politicians. The actions by some major financial institutions discussed above, as well as other changes in the finance industry regarding climate change, are the result of movement pressure:
[T]he climate movement, I think, decided a couple of years ago to really focus on the financial sector, to go after the financial sector, because, and I’ve discussed this with a few activist leaders precisely because they thought there’s more possibility of movement there than there is in federal politics. So you can actually get to these people, you can get the big businesses, you can get to the big financial houses. And so it has been years of sort of incremental, they getting pushed and pushed and pushed. But you’re starting to see, now even among the heads of of national banks, big people in finance are recognizing that the facts of the matter are that like giant investments in fossil fuel infrastructure and carbon intensive projects are probably bad investments, never mind your morals, never mind the ethics or any of the rest of it. The world is visibly turning against these investments. It’s clear there’s going to be push for de-carbonization that’s not going to go away. And it’s clear that if we don’t de-carbonize, we’re going to be in a horrible situation of having to insure increasingly uninsurable assets. It’s going to cost them up the wazoo if climate change is unrestrained. So I think just on a purely sort of real-politic, clear eyed view, the finance world is coming around to the need to de-carbonize. “Is Biden’s Climate Plan a Step Forward? – David Roberts”
The decarbonization movement is so widespread in Gen Z that even a corporate magazine like Teen Vogue is pressuring the finance industry. The surprisingly radical magazine “published an op-ed encouraging young people to not open accounts with banks that are reckless with the planet. (The authors’ ‘Not My Dirty Money’ pledge can be found here.)” The New Yorker. Seriously, follow Teen Vogue’s twitter to see how progressive the magazine’s editorial slant is.
Continued pressure on the finance industry promises to widen these cracks in the financing of fossil fuel ventures and promote a sea change in the industry toward affirmatively supporting the shift to investment in non-carbon industries. As the industry shifts its policies and its money, that changes the incentives of a Biden Administration that is going to be very cozy with the industry.
Like most leftists I “do not have faith that without a movement, there’s going to be real change”, but unlike many, I do have faith that with a movement there can be real change, even with a Biden Administration, on climate change. As will be seen in Part II, that faith does not extend to other critical issues such as health care, foreign policy, state surveillance, racial justice, and just about every other issue involving the distribution of power and wealth in the United States and the global order.
Conclusion
It has become impossible for me to continue asserting that there are no meaningful differences between Trump and Biden after researching Biden’s climate plan and climate policy team. While I have doubts regarding the level of commitment to the more aggressive and progressive parts of the plan, I do expect real action on the core of the plan. Enough? Probably not - but still in stark contrast with what we can expect from the Trump Administration. Real, meaningful, substantial difference exists between Trump and Biden on climate.
If you are a single issue voter and climate is your issue, then you have strong motivation to vote for Biden. If climate is your number one issue among several that are important to you, you have at least one reason to vote for Biden. If climate is not an important issue to you, then you either expect to die in a few years and don’t care about what happens after you are dead, or you are practically Trumpian on climate change or have strong vested interests in the status quo. Of all the political issues in this campaign, no other issue even approaches climate change as a truly existential issue. The existence of the species is literally threatened by climate change. Within a hundred years, homo sapiens sapiens could be headed to extinction in a climate that is too warm to be habitable if the policies of the Trumpzi faction remain in place.
Food for thought.