This is a huge year for elections around the world, but no election is more likely to have an impact on the planet's warming climate than the rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Tonight, the two will take the stage for the first debate, the most important moment of the race so far.
It's unclear whether CNN's hosts will ask the candidates about climate change. However, when Biden and Trump debated in October 2020, Biden promoted a plan to create millions of jobs and improve the environment, while Trump called it a “delusion” and an “economic disaster.”
Americans will hear the two candidates again in a very different world. The climate crisis is now more urgent. The world has sweated through the hottest year on record, millions of people have felt the effects of toxic smoke from record-breaking wildfires in Canada, and the oceans have warmed so much that coral reefs are bleaching at levels scientists have never seen before.
Today I want to explain what each candidate's record tells us about the very different paths American climate policy could take. The stark differences between the candidates have major implications for Earth's climate.
Biden's Record
The Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act; A landmark U.S. climate law set to become law in 2022 would help the U.S. build renewable energy plants, build battery factories, retrofit homes to be more efficient, adopt more environmentally friendly agricultural practices, and more. . The plan's tax credits and other provisions were so popular that the price virtually doubled.
Biden's policy also includes sticks. He said new legislation would include emissions limits that effectively require electric vehicles to account for the majority of new cars sold by 2032, a mandate for coal-fired power plants to eliminate or close about 90% of their emissions by 2039, and requirements to: I set the rules. Oil and gas companies stop methane leaks.
But Biden hasn't done as much as he said he would. A more ambitious version of his climate investment plan failed because it lacked critical support from Senator Joe Manchin. There are also concerns that many of the IRA's policies could slow progress in curbing emissions by excluding the cheapest and most efficient green technologies from China.
Biden also allowed some major oil and gas projects to proceed.That includes permits for the Willow project in Alaska and the Mountain Valley Pipeline, despite his pledge four years ago to “no more drilling.” Combustion of fossil fuels such as oil and gas is the main cause of global warming, and the United States, under Biden's presidency, has become the world's largest oil producer.
Trump's record
During his term, President Trump fulfilled many of his campaign pledges to eliminate regulations enacted to combat global warming, which he defined as impediments to economic growth. He also pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, an international agreement designed to prevent further global warming.
Trump favored fossil fuel development. During his term, he approved the Keystone, a major oil pipeline. He accelerated the Dakota Access pipeline. Signed an executive order to expand offshore drilling.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's sweeping plan for the next Republican president-elect, led in part by former Trump administration officials, calls for increasing fossil fuel production and obliges the federal government to “develop vast reserves of oil, gas and coal.” I declare. Resources on Public Lands”. Trump supported many of the plan's ideas during his campaign this year. He also promised oil company executives that he would overturn regulations affecting them and said they should give him $1 billion to take back the White House. (Senate Democrats are currently investigating the meeting.)
Trump opposed government support for renewable energy. Both Project 2025 and Trump have called for dismantling the energy transition program and rolling back the renewable energy tax credit enacted by the Biden administration, but Trump would need congressional approval to do so. Trump has also repeatedly spread misinformation, claiming wind farms cause cancer, and used violent language, calling electric vehicles an “assassin” of jobs.
Trump rolls back more than 100 environmental regulations During his term as president. Most aimed to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases, including measures to limit pollution from power plants, cars and trucks. Project 2025 calls on Trump to do the same in his second term. He promised to repeal “all” Biden administration regulations aimed at accelerating the transition to renewable energy sources and encouraging electric vehicles.
Trump wanted to plant a trillion trees. Trump has in the past called climate change a hoax but also said he wants to protect the environment. In 2020, Trump signed a plan to plant a trillion trees, and although there has been less focus on it recently, Republicans have continued to support it. Planting trees alone isn't enough to slow warming, and planting the wrong trees can be really bad for the environment.
conclusion
The Biden administration's climate policies are expected to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 2005 levels by 2030, but his policies are falling short of expectations in some areas.
Last March, the news service Carbon Brief estimated that a Trump victory could result in more than 4 billion tons of additional carbon emissions in the U.S. by 2030. That’s how much we’ve saved from deploying wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years.”
Maggie Astor contributed to the report.
A disappearing island that never disappeared
Two plane hops from a handful of landmasses in the Indian Ocean, a bumpy speedboat ride from the nearest continent, and sublime blue waves lapping against bone-white sand are pretty much all that breaks the stillness of a hot, windless afternoon.
The very existence of a lowly tropical island seems impossible and flawed. It is one of the most peripheral environments that humans have ever called home, where land and sea meet almost perfectly, rising like a fantasy above the violent expanse of the ocean.
And indeed, when the world began to pay attention to global warming a few decades ago, these islands formed on coral reef communities called atolls were quickly identified as some of the first places where climate change could cause wholesale devastation. As the ice caps melted and the seas rose higher and higher, these geological and historical events were bound to be modified, and the small islands returned to sea oblivion again, perhaps in this century.
Then, some time ago, researchers began examining aerial photos and discovered something surprising. They first surveyed dozens of islands, then hundreds, and now nearly 1,000. They found that over the past few decades, the edges of the island had been swaying this way and that, eroding here and building there. But on the whole, their area has not decreased. In some cases, the opposite was true. I have grown. As the sea rose, the island expanded accordingly. —Raymond Jong
Learn more Why Scientists Think Some Islands Are Growing.