Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumClimate change largely missing from campaign as fires rage
WASHINGTON (AP) Historic fires are raging across the western United States ahead of what scientists say is the typical peak of wildfire season. Hurricane Laura devastated parts of the Gulf Coast last month, while swaths of Iowa are recovering from a derecho that brought hurricane force winds to the Midwest.
The streak of disasters has left millions of Americans reeling. But it's barely had an impact on the campaign for the White House, in part because of the vulnerabilities it highlights for President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.
The president is already facing multiple challenges, including the pandemic, joblessness and social unrest, and can ill afford another one. When he talks about California, where fires have killed at least a dozen people and threatened thousands of homes, it's mostly to blast the state's Democratic leaders.
And for Biden, the spreading fires are a reminder to the party's progressive base that he doesn't embrace some of the most liberal elements of the Green New Deal, the grand plan for tackling climate change.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/climate-change-largely-missing-from-campaign-as-fires-rage/ar-BB18Uzc4?li=BBnb7Kz
Thekaspervote
(32,796 posts)Ive seen several tweets from him about the CA fires and the need to embrace climate change, and comments even before that.
His website has a very progress agenda to address climate change
dhill926
(16,364 posts)Thekaspervote
(32,796 posts)femmedem
(8,208 posts)"On Tuesday, Joe Biden did something unprecedented for a Democratic candidate assured of nomination: he moved left. In a speech delivered from Wilmington in his home state of Delaware, Biden unveiled the most ambitious clean energy and environmental justice plans ever proposed by the nominee of a major American political party. The plans, which the Biden campaign described to reporters as the legislation he goes up to [Capitol Hill] immediately to get done, outline $2tn in investments in clean energy, jobs and infrastructure that would be carried out over the four years of his first term.
Forty percent of these investments would be directed to communities of color living on the toxic edge of the fossil fuel economy communities that have also been among the most devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. Biden proposes to pair these investments with new performance standards, most notably a clean electricity standard that would transition the United States to a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.
Part of Bidens Build Back Better agenda, these plans are a Green New Deal in all but name. If you set aside the most attention-grabbing left-wing programs included in New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs 2019 Green New Deal resolution, like Medicare for All and a federal job guarantee, Bidens plans broadly align with an approach advocated by the left-wing of the Democratic party. Firstly, like the Green New Deal, Bidens plans reframe climate action as a jobs, infrastructure and clean energy stimulus.
After three decades of economic elites failing to pitch a carbon tax as a solution to the supposed market failure of greenhouse gas emissions, Biden has elected to focus instead on economy-wide performance standards as the cutting edge of decarbonization. And while earlier generations of Democrats wanted consumers to foot the bill for that clean energy transition at the gas pump, a position shared by Milton Friedman, Biden takes Keynes and Franklin Roosevelt as his intellectual and political forebears. Perhaps most encouragingly, Biden views the workers, unions and communities of color most impacted by the fossil fuel economy and the potential shift away from it as deserving special attention. In his view, climate action cannot be separated from economic, environmental and social justice."
Considerably more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/20/joe-biden-has-endorsed-the-green-new-deal-in-all-but-name
(This is from July 20, but his plan hasn't changed. I'll agree, though, that neither he nor the press has emphasized this enough since the fires began. In his defense, though, there's only so much he can respond to in any news cycle.)