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WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., faced with criticism from his Democratic presidential rivals over his commitment to fighting climate change, unveiled Tuesday a plan focused on the recovery of the Obama administration's climate policies – but it included unexpected proposals that would push considerably beyond what the previous White House realized.
Mr Biden, who is one of the most centrist candidates for the Democratic nomination, insisted it is not moderate in environmental protection, even if the progressives were skeptical. Polls show that fighting climate change is a top priority for Democratic voters, and Biden chose the issue for his second policy deployment after an education plan that he published the week before. last.
"On the first day, Biden will sign a series of new decrees of unprecedented scope that will go far beyond the platform of the Obama-Biden administration and put us on the right track," he said. writes his campaign. "It will not only reiterate the US commitment to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change – it will go much further."
Biden's plan calls on the United States to completely eliminate its net emissions of carbon dioxide, a source of global warming, by 2050, the same goal as the one set out in the Green New Deal, the proposal Global Climate Change Forum supported by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez representative from New York.
In comparison, former President Biden, President Barack Obama, has pledged to the world that the United States will reduce its emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels. Here 2025.
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Biden would also call for a $ 1.7 trillion investment over 10 years in green justice and clean energy programs, designed to help minorities and the poor disproportionately affected by pollution, funded by a reduction in tax breaks granted to President Trump by companies.
"This certainly goes further than the Obama administration in terms of aspiration," said Robert N. Stavins, an environmental economist at Harvard.
Mr. Biden's plan is not as ambitious or detailed as some of his more environmentally conscious competitors, but some of his goals are similar. Governor Jay Inslee of Washington, who bases his campaign on the fight against climate change, called on the country to eliminate its net carbon emissions from here 2045.
"This clearly shows that Biden and his people recognize the poll that Democrats in the primary electorate are skewed to the left, and the poll shows that they care about climate change," Stavins said.
Before Biden published his proposal, prominent liberal politicians and activists expressed doubts about his commitment to a bold environmental policy.
Over the weekend, in front of a crowd at the California Democratic Party Convention, Sanders relied on the phrase "no middle ground," to apply it to a series of progressive priorities, remarks that were widely perceived as a reprimand of Mr. Biden.
"We have to say that when the future of the planet is at stake, there is no middle ground," he said.
During the election campaign, Biden pointed out that he was one of the first advocates of the fight against climate change, often referring to work that he has done on this issue since the 1980s, while he was a Delaware senator. He will campaign on Tuesday in New Hampshire and should put forward the proposal on the trail. The last time he was in the state, in mid-May, he advised Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to "consult my file" on the issue.
Under the previous government, Obama was hailed by environmentalists and Republicans for circumventing Congress and using his executive power to implement the first major federal climate change policies, including regulations to reduce pollution. caused by global warming. He was also one of the key facilitators of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, which committed almost all countries to submit emission reduction plans.
Mr. Trump, who campaigned on deregulating the industry and regularly making fun of the well-established science of man-made climate change, decided to return to these environmental rules and withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. Paris.
Biden's plan calls on Congress to impose reductions in fossil fuel pollution, which could dispel criticism of Obama for abusing his authority by adopting an anti-change policy climate change through the regulation of the executive. But it's hard to see how a Congress with at least one Republican-controlled chamber would adopt such a plan when Obama failed to get it passed while both chambers would be controlled by his own party.
Mr Biden's plan contains little information on what such legislation would entail, apart from the fact that it would establish "an enforcement mechanism that includes key objectives by 2025 at the latest".
The plan's most aggressive initiatives call for loosening US trade and foreign policy efforts to force other countries, particularly China, the world's largest carbon dioxide polluter, to reduce their emissions . Combining climate change policy with trade policy, the plan calls for the imposition of "carbon tariffs" on goods imported from highly polluting economies, which would directly affect imports from China.
"We can no longer separate trade policy from our climate goals," wrote the Biden campaign. "Biden will not allow other countries, including China, to play against the system by becoming destination economies for polluters, undermining our climate efforts and harnessing US workers and businesses. "
Although the idea of placing tariffs or quotas on the basis of the level of carbon dioxide pollution associated with specific imported products has been discussed at length in Washington, it has never been adopted, in part by fear of triggering a trade war. But Trump has already begun the process of taxing almost everything China sends to the United States.
The plan calls on the United States to join the Paris climate agreement and to play a leading role by urging members of the pact to regularly strengthen their commitments to reduce pollution caused by global warming. planet, although such a mechanism is already integrated into the original text of the agreement. .
According to the campaign, a Biden administration will convene a global summit of the most polluting economies, and the president will urge these countries to engage in even more ambitious pollution reduction plans.
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