Fare Ye Well, Low Carbon Joe – Biden’s Sustainability Legacy Must Live On
“Joe Biden’s legacy as the greatest president for climate and environmental action is etched in stone.”
Ben Jealous, Executive Director, Sierra Club
“President Biden leaves office with the strongest record on climate change of any president in U.S. history,”
Jason Bordoff, Founding Director of Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
From this side of the pond, it has been heartbreaking to watch US President Joe Biden’s slow but inexorable physical and mental decline. I am glad he steeped back from his re-election campaign this weekend (arguably after one pledge to continue too many) rather than letting things get really messy. Better to go out with your head held high.
Biden has been called many things, but arguably his greatest achievement will be the degree to which he took Sustainability seriously. He re-entered the Paris Agreement. His 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (its very title a wonderful piece of Green Jujitsu*) pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into green tech to support the rebound from Covid. Many people talked about the post-pandemic opportunity to rebuild economies in a Sustainable way. Biden did it. And this Spring he drove through a further 60 pieces of green legislation, most notably requiring coal-fired power stations to capture carbon emissions or close.
Of course there is a big orange cloud on the horizon. The post-brush-with-death pledge of unity promised by Donald Trump lasted mere minutes, as he rehashed his “Drill, baby, drill” slogan and threatened to repeal the (non-existent) electric vehicle mandate.
VP Kamala Harris’s green credentials are, if anything, more radical than Biden’s. If she takes over the reins as the Democrat candidate then I wish her all the best, but I worry she doesn’t have the star power to outshine The Donald. Maybe the Dems should be thinking Obama ’24?
* Green Jujitsu: presenting sustainability measures in a way that appeals to the worldview of your audience