Joe Biden has endorsed the Green New Deal in all but name | Julian Brave NoiseCat

Biden rode a wave of establishment endorsements to the nomination this spring. But it's progressive ideas that might carry him to the presidencyOn Tuesday, former Vice President 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 Biden's "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-Cortez's 2019 Green New Deal resolution, like Medicare for All and a federal job guarantee, Biden's plans broadly align with an approach advocated by the left-wing of the Democratic party. Firstly, like the Green New Deal, Biden's 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 Delano 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. Continue reading...