How to Better Tackle Climate Change

Op-ed by John Kerry, former secretary of state and U.S. senator, now distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The Hill, Nov. 19, 2020

None of the toughest challenges that we face will be solved overnight or by government action alone. It is not that simple and, moreover, it is not who we are. The United States is a country that makes the market work and, notably in the case of climate change, we have the opportunity to make the market work in a way that creates record numbers of jobs to build our way back to a strong economy and shared prosperity.

It starts with the urgency of science as we now enter this decisive decade. Look at California today. We can see the haze on the East Coast. Fifteen of the biggest fires in California occurred in the last 18 years. The costs were tremendous with almost two million acres burned and $3 billion spent on the recovery. By 2100, dynamic flooding could affect more than 600,000 people and cause damage to the tune of $150 billion. Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma had cost the United States some $265 billion in property damage. Historic droughts are matched by historic floods.

That is the price from carbon pollution that we all have to pay. The issue is whether we will place a price on carbon pollution so we change behavior and incentivize action on climate change. Today, even as Europe raises its ambition, no country is getting the job done. The top three emitters in the world are China, Europe, and the United States, which contribute 14 times the greenhouse gas emissions of the bottom 100 countries.

A Saudi oil minister once said, “The stone age did not end because we ran out of stones.” The coal age will not end because we ran out of coal. The oil age will not end because we ran out of oil. One of the most significant ways that we can address climate change is through carbon pricing. This marks the clearest signal yet to influence economic behavior.

With carbon pricing, those causing emissions pay for the cost of damage. Without carbon pricing, we all pay the cost. Indeed, carbon pricing allows citizens, innovators, and companies to make independent decisions that drive their emissions reductions. There are 45 national and 25 subnational jurisdictions around the world that are already mandating carbon pricing initiatives, and Europe has been doubling down on its efforts.

The energy market is in the midst of an irreversible transformation. About twice as much was invested last year in renewable capacity all around the world than in fossil fuel generation. That was the third consecutive year in which renewable technology, notably wind and solar, made up more than half of the new capacity added to the grid in the United States.

I have no doubt that we will reach the low carbon economy we need. Paris sent a message to the market that almost 200 countries are each trying to lower their emissions. It is now the biggest market the world has ever seen with five billion users. It will grow to nine billion users in the next 30 years. There are one billion people on this planet without any electricity. It is the greatest manufacturing opportunity that the world has ever known.

The investment community has a role to play. Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the Nature Conservancy have published a major report that includes some critical mechanisms to close the biodiversity financing gap. On Wall Street, more firms are now focused on sustainability, and the first price for a ton of carbon emissions was established by combining the three largest market prices into one. This gives governments, companies, and investors a benchmark to estimate the cost of their carbon footprint and incentivize further reductions in pollution and carbon emissions.

The World Bank tells us that the price of a ton of carbon needs to reach at least $100 over the next decade if the international community is to meet the targets of the Paris climate accord. One way to reach that goal is with a new asset class that can act as a hedge against portfolio vulnerability in the face of climate change. Governments must do much more, but they cannot do it alone. Private sector investment is absolutely essential and within reach to ensure that we address climate change on this timeline.

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/526654-how-to-better-tackle-climate-change?mc_cid=f440321ab7&mc_eid=6f19c47a34

How Biden aims to amp up the government’s fight against climate change

A new administration would enlist departments like Transportation, Agriculture and Treasury to advance its climate goals

By Juliet Eilperin & Annie Linskey

The Washington Post, Nov. 11, 2020

President-elect Joe Biden is poised to embed action on climate change across the breadth of the federal government, from the departments of Agriculture to Treasury to State — expanding it beyond environmental agencies to speed U.S. efforts to mitigate global warming and to acknowledge that the problem touches many aspects of American life.

The far-reaching strategy is aimed at making significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions even without congressional action, by maximizing executive authority.

“From the very beginning of the campaign, when President-elect Biden rolled out his climate plan, he made it clear he sees this as an all-of-government agenda, domestic, economic, foreign policy,” said Stef Feldman, campaign policy director for Biden, a Democrat. “From the very beginning, when he talked about infrastructure, he talked about making sure that it built in climate change, that we are making our communities more resilient to the effects of climate change.”

The vast majority of scientists agree that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases released when humans burn fossil fuels is helping warm Earth. On the campaign trail, Biden proposed the most aggressive plan of any major party nominee to try to slow that warming.

In a sign of how Biden has already elevated the issue, he discussed the topic with every European head of state with whom he spoke on Tuesday, including the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Ireland. Biden has started frequently referring to the climate “crisis,” suggesting a heightened level of urgency.

A team of former Obama administration officials and experts have created a 300-page blueprint laying out a holistic approach to the climate while avoiding some of the pitfalls that hampered President Barack Obama, who shared some of the same goals but was unable to enact all of them. Dubbed the Climate 21 Project, it took a year and a half to develop and was delivered recently to Biden’s transition team. The document outlines how the incoming administration could restructure aspects of the government to move faster on global warming.

It specifies dozens of changes the new administration could take to reduce greenhouse gases, beyond just reversing the slew of Trump administration policies that have boosted oil and gas drilling and relaxed pollution controls. While Republicans are likely to fight many of Biden’s most ambitious renewable energy investments and could challenge new federal rules in court, the report highlights structural shifts that could move the needle on climate.

The recommendations include creating a White House National Climate Council that is “co-equal” to the Domestic Policy Council and National Economic Council; establish a “carbon bank” under the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation that could pay farmers and forest owners to store carbon in their soils and lands; push to electrify cars and trucks through the Transportation Department; and develop a climate policy at the Treasury Department that promotes carbon reductions through tax, budget and regulatory policies.

Tim Profeta, who directs Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and co-chaired the Climate 21 Project, said in an interview that Biden “doesn’t have to wait for congressional action. He can act immediately, across a range of the federal government.”

Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg published an op-ed Wednesday advocating a similar approach, arguing some of the most important steps the new administration could take “have nothing to do with the Environmental Protection Agency” and involve measures like incorporating climate impacts into the Housing and Urban Development’s building standards and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s disclosure requirements. On the same day two left-leaning groups, the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats, called on Biden to create a “White House Office of Climate Mobilization” to coordinate action across the federal government.

In a sign of how government institutions outside the usual environmental agencies are beginning to grapple with climate change, the Federal Reserve’s biannual financial stability report released this week warned, “Climate change adds a layer of economic uncertainty and risk that we have only begun to incorporate into our analysis of financial stability.” Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard, a leading contender for treasury secretary under a Biden administration, welcomed climate’s inclusion in the report, and Fed Board Chair Jerome H. Powell described it last week as a long-term risk. On Tuesday, the Fed requested to join the Network for Greening the Financial System, a global coalition of central banks and bank supervisors working to manage climate risks.

Several former Obama officials noted how the last Democratic administration ended without a complete overhaul of federal policies affecting climate change. Obama made the issue a major focus in his second term, but he did not launch his climate action plan until June 2013, and key departments such as Interior did not finalize their own comprehensive plans before he left office.

Christy Goldfuss, who oversaw many of those efforts as managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and who co-chaired the new report, said Biden is now positioned to institute climate-focused policies across the government since he made it a central issue in his campaign. It will be essential for Biden to quickly fill jobs left vacant under President Trump, rebuild departments and return the leadership of agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management back to D.C., she said.

“This is it. This is the moment for climate action,” said Goldfuss, now senior vice president for energy and environment policy at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. “Climate change impacts every aspect of people’s lives, it impacts every aspect of the economy, and the federal government is connected to every aspect of those as well.”

Changing the way the government buys goods and services could have a ripple effect in the private sector because of the purchasing power of federal agencies, Goldfuss said. Groups like the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups, have championed policies like California’s Buy Clean law, which requires the state to consider the pollution emitted by manufacturers of glass, steel and other materials when making purchasing decisions.

Feldman declined to comment on the group’s recommendations but said that the incoming administration has a clear direction, regardless of how the government is structured. “Actually, the biggest thing that will ensure we will deliver on the climate agenda is President-Elect Biden’s personal commitment to the issue," she said.

Several of the experts Biden appointed Tuesday to the teams managing his transition at different agencies and departments — including the Pentagon, Commerce, Justice, Council on Economic Advisers and National Security Agency — have experience with topics including climate risk to environmental justice.

The president-elect’s team plans to move quickly on its climate agenda for several reasons. The federal rulemaking and budgeting process takes time, and the United States needs to show it’s taking action to cut greenhouse gas emissions to persuade other countries to ratchet up their commitments in advance of next year’s U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

Even if Biden carries out a broad suite of policies aimed at curbing America’s carbon footprint, it may fall short of averting dangerous planetary warming. Roughly 10 percent of the globe has already warmed 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), compared with preindustrial levels. Scientists say when the entire planet has passed that threshold of warming by 2 degrees C, Earth will suffer irreversible and severe damage. A recent analysis by the Climate Action Tracker shows that if the president-elect’s plan is fully realized it would shave 0.1 degree C off global temperature rise by 2100.

At the moment, the United States is nowhere near cutting its climate pollution by 2.7 to 3.3 percent a year, which is what the Rhodium Group estimates is required to achieve Biden’s target of net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century. This week the EPA released data showing that greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector declined 8 percent last year, while emissions from oil and gas facilities increased by nearly 7 percent, and emissions from nearly every other industrial sector were flat.

University of Chicago economist Michael Greenstone, who served as chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, said plans like the ones outlined in the new report make sense, but in the end, “the planet only cares about greenhouse gas emissions. So, the acid tests will be whether there are meaningful emissions reductions in the United States, and whether those reductions leverage reductions in other countries.”

Georgia Institute of Technology atmospheric science professor Kim Cobb said that many corporate players, frustrated by the sort of policy whiplash they experienced when Obama was succeeded by Trump, might accept more stringent pollution controls if it means greater business certainty.

Marty Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, said that his group envisions working with the new administration to develop climate policies on matters from infrastructure to permitting.

“It is no surprise that an incoming administration is looking at what kind of leverage they have across the executive branch to advance their policy priorities,” Durbin said. “As they come in, we’d like to be a partner at the table so we can help them identify where there are some meaningful opportunities to make progress on climate. Of course, we’d like to see things that are more market-based than regulatory.”

“We’ve got to have more durable policy, so we don’t have this snap back and forth every time a new administration comes to town,” he added.

Trump’s move to weaken Obama-era tailpipe emissions standards has split the nation’s automakers, for example, because California and more than a dozen other states representing about 40 percent of the U.S. car market prefer the tougher stringent standards. A handful of companies, including Ford Motor and Honda, have sided with California, while General Motors, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler have backed the administration. With a Democrat in charge, automakers might try to strike a compromise so there is consistency across the U.S. market.

Conservatives will do their best to persuade industry to resist such deals. In an interview shortly after the election, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) said he still envisioned a scenario where Trump could get enough electoral college votes to win a second term, though that outcome does not appear mathematically feasible. But Morrisey and other attorneys general had challenged the Obama administration’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, and they are prepared to launch similar lawsuits again.

Morrisey bemoaned the fact that some industries, like the power sector, accepted the idea that they had to curb their carbon emissions even as some of the Obama administration rules were being litigated. He said that if Biden took action he and other attorneys general considered unjustified, “Everyone is going to know at the outset that this is going to be unlawful.”

Former Obama officials are keenly aware of the pitfalls of a go-it-alone approach. Ernest Moniz, Obama’s former energy secretary, said legislation passed with support from both parties tends to be the best way to make durable change — and that it is still worth trying.

“My view of reality is that it’s very, very hard to get major systemic change in this country without some considerable degree of bipartisan support,” Moniz said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/11/11/biden-climate-change/

In first for Fed, U.S. central bank says climate poses stability risks

By Reuters, Nov. 9, 2020

The U.S. Federal Reserve for the first time called out climate change among risks enumerated in its biannual financial stability report, and warned about the potential for abrupt changes in asset values in response to a warming planet.

“Acute hazards, such as storms, floods, or wildfires, may cause investors to update their perceptions of the value of real or financial assets suddenly,” Fed Governor Lael Brainard said in comments attached to the report, released Monday.

“Chronic hazards, such as slow increases in mean temperatures or sea levels, or a gradual change in investor sentiment about those risks, introduce the possibility of abrupt tipping points or significant swings in sentiment,” Brainard said.

Such abrupt price changes from climate-related disasters could also create difficult-to-predict knock-on effects through financial markets, the report said, particularly because not enough is understood, or disclosed, about the true extent of exposures to climate risks.

“Increased transparency through improved measurement and more standardized disclosures will be crucial,” Brainard said. “It is vitally important to move from the recognition that climate change poses significant financial stability risks to the stage where the quantitative implications of those risks are appropriately assessed and addressed.”

Monday’s report comes just days after Joe Biden won the U.S. presidential election against President Donald Trump, who has downplayed the risks of climate change. Biden has promised to put fighting climate change back on the U.S. policy agenda.

Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Alistair Bell

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-stability-climate-idUSKBN27P2T9?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosgenerate&stream=top

Biden’s ‘gaffe’ is the truth: Oil is history

Column by Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post, Oct. 26, 2020

A flub, a gaffe, a red flag for radicalism. At the final presidential debate last week, Democratic nominee Joe Biden stumbled worse than he has in ages — at least according to Republicans.

“I would transition away from the oil industry, yes,” Biden said, after President Trump accused him of wanting to not only dismantle the oil industry but also force the end of fossil fuels more broadly. “The oil industry pollutes, significantly,” Biden added, and “it has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.”

Sure, it was an inelegant (and politically damaging) representation of Biden’s views, as evidenced by cleanup work his campaign needed to do over subsequent days. But Biden’s underlying claim — that fossil fuels will eventually need to be supplanted by renewables — is only radical if you’re still working off of decades-old facts.

Recent, unexpectedly rapid technological improvement in renewables and battery technology has made clear that fossil fuels will eventually get phased out no matter what the government does. The only question is whether political leaders speed this process up or slow it down — and whether they help workers displaced by the inevitable change.

In the years since the GOP developed its talking points about the pain of transitioning from fossil fuels, the energy industry has changed dramatically. While no one was looking, solar, wind and battery technology got a lot cheaper, a lot faster, than almost anyone forecast — partly thanks to Chinese industrial policy — and thus renewable energy sources have grown increasingly competitive with fossil fuels.

In fact, the International Energy Agency’s new World Energy Outlook found that solar photovoltaics are “consistently cheaper than new coal- or gas-fired power plants in most countries, and solar projects now offer some of the lowest cost electricity ever seen.” Because of government subsidies, renewable prices are still lower today than they’d otherwise be — but even so, the main reason prices have fallen so fast is that technology has improved so dang much.

In short, this means that traditional sources of energy are much less economically attractive. In fact, in the United States, it has become cheaper to build and operate an entirely new wind or solar plant than it is to continue operating an existing coal one, according to Gregory Nemet, a University of Wisconsin at Madison professor and author of “How Solar Energy Became Cheap.” Upfront capital-equipment costs have fallen, and once the equipment is installed, wind and sunshine are essentially free; by contrast, coal plants still have to pay for the coal and the people to operate the plants.

Legacy fossil fuels are therefore being phased out on their own, regardless of the regulatory environment.

“The Republicans are intentionally ignoring that fact because they want fossil fuel supporters to think it’s the Democrats that are against them, not just impersonal ‘market forces,’ ” said University of Illinois economist Don Fullerton.

Indeed, despite Trump’s efforts to prop up coal, coal-fired electricity generation has declined faster under this president than it did in the previous four years under supposedly overregulating President Barack Obama.

As much improvement as there’s been in batteries, storage technology still needs further advances before a complete transition to renewables becomes viable. In the meantime, we’re probably stuck with natural gas as a stopgap measure. Natural gas has also become much, much cheaper over the past decade, also thanks to technological change (i.e., fracking). And while natural gas still contributes to climate change, with sufficient oversight, it’s much less polluting than the energy sources it has largely replaced.

Similarly, in the fossil-fuel-intensive transportation sector, there have been massive advances in batteries and electric vehicles. We still have a long way to go before electric cars fully replace gas-powered ones; and that time will probably be prolonged by insufficient battery-charging infrastructure, plus the many years of life left on the gas vehicles Americans already own. But this shift is coming, too.

This is part of the reason even the usually bullish OPEC recently forecast that developed countries have passed “peak oil” — not because a Democrat might win the White House, but because other technologies have become more attractive.

Even so, politicians can make a difference, and they should, particularly faced with the existential crisis of climate change. They can try to accelerate the pace of change, and bring the United States into the clean-energy future faster, including by eliminating fossil-fuel subsidies and taxing carbon (Biden hasn’t endorsed a carbon tax, but economists almost universally do), and helping fossil-fuel-driven communities transition to new industries.

Or, like Trump, they can try to slow down the inevitable.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bidens-views-on-fossil-fuels-are-far-from-radical-despite-what-republicans-say/2020/10/26/ae06b8c8-17bb-11eb-befb-8864259bd2d8_story.html

After Debate, Climate Takes Center Stage

By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times, Oct. 23, 2020

WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden’s pledge Thursday night to “transition away from the oil industry” to address global warming put the topic of climate change on center stage for the final stretch of a campaign year in which the issue has played a larger role than ever.

Mr. Biden’s statement in the closing moments of Thursday’s debate gave President Trump what his campaign saw as an enormous opportunity to blunt his opponent’s appeal to working-class voters. Mr. Biden’s campaign tried to downplay it, saying he was merely stating that he would phase out longstanding tax subsidies for the oil industry.

But transitioning away from fossil fuels is the inevitable end game of Mr. Biden’s promise to end net carbon pollution by 2050. That policy has energized some young voters and helped unite the Democrats’ left and moderate wings, but has always carried risks for Mr. Biden.

“Last night, Joe Biden issued a crystal-clear threat to 19 million Americans with his promise to eliminate the oil industry. No amount of spin or cleanup from Biden or his team can rectify this error,” Steve Guest, a Republican National Committee spokesman, said Friday morning.

In no political year has climate change been as dominant an issue as in 2020.

Both presidential debates delved into the matter in depth for the first time in history. Mr. Biden campaigned hard on promises to reduce planet-warming emissions, proposing a $2 trillion program to promote clean energy, construct 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations and build 1.5 million new energy-efficient homes.

President Trump has worked sporadically to moderate his longtime climate denial by promoting tree-planting as an environmental solution, even as he has maintained his avid support for the coal and oil industries, taken steps to roll back climate regulation implemented by his predecessor and moved to withdraw the United States from the international Paris Agreement on climate change.

But the closing moments of the debate reverted back to an older question: Can the nation transition to clean energy from fossil fuels without enormous economic and political disruption?

“Basically what he is saying is, he is going to destroy the oil industry,” Mr. Trump charged, adding, straight to the camera, “Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma?”

The line was reminiscent of the Republican response in 2016 to Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgment that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” as the nation moves to clean energy. Those comments resonated in coal states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wyoming.

Mr. Biden’s comments may focus attention on a different set of battlegrounds, such as Texas and New Mexico. Representative Xochitl Torres Small, an endangered freshman Democrat in New Mexico, said on Twitter, “We need to work together to promote responsible energy production and stop climate change, not demonize a single industry.”

Representative Kendra Horn of Oklahoma, another freshman Democrat facing a tough re-election bid, declared, “Here’s one of the places Biden and I disagree. We must stand up for our oil and gas industry.”

Though more alluded to than stated outright, transitioning from fossil fuels will be necessary to meet Mr. Biden’s goals of eliminating emissions from the power sector by 2035 and reaching net-zero emissions across the economy by midcentury. That transition, scientists say, is required to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Yet he has walked a fine line throughout the campaign, insisting that natural gas production — and the jobs it creates — will remain a core part of the United States energy composition for several years to come even as he envisions a future powered more by wind, solar and other renewable sources.

Some energy experts said the Trump campaign’s attacks on Mr. Biden may not have the same resonance as those on Mrs. Clinton four years ago, in large part because public understanding of climate change has grown and the major oil companies of the world have, to varying degrees, pledged to reduce their emissions.

“This is a playbook that they keep coming back to, and it’s less and less effective. The economy is moving on and the public is moving on,” said Joshua Freed, who leads the climate and energy program at Third Way, a center-left think tank.

Mr. Freed called the level of attention climate change received at the two presidential debates and throughout the campaign “overdue” and said he believes the United States has turned a corner on its acceptance of the need to reduce greenhouse gases. “When you have the worst wildfires in history on the West Coast, when you have flood after flood after record-breaking storm and hurricane across the rest of the country, you have people saying, ‘This is a big problem and we want to see it addressed,’” he said.

During the 12 minutes that NBC devoted to climate change on Thursday, the moderator, NBC’s Kristen Welker, framed human-caused global warming as a fact. She asked candidates for their solutions rather than whether they “believe” the science.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump engaged in a sustained debate about the economic effects of both addressing and failing to address the problem. And for what many analysts said was the first time ever, the candidates were asked to talk about the consequences of pollution on communities of color who disproportionately live near industrial sites.

“Its presence in both debates underscores the difference and the magnitude in which this issue is thought of as a voting issue and not just a niche issue in a party primary,” said Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary under President Barack Obama.

“What it means is that climate change and climate-change solutions have jumped a number of other really important issues into the forefront of not only what’s being discussed in the waning days of the election, but likely at the top of the agenda in the beginning of the next Congress. That’s fundamentally different,” Mr. Gibbs said.

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, credited the shift to a surge in public awareness and engagement around climate change over the past five years. Mr. Obama made climate change a centerpiece of his second term. The science around the dangerous consequences of climate has gotten stronger. And increasingly Americans are faced with the reality of record-setting weather extremes along with floods, hurricanes and wildfires.

“Americans have a different consciousness about climate change than they did 12 years ago,” he said.

And for the first time, climate change polled as a top issue for Democrats during the primaries, which Mr. Leiserowitz called “hugely consequential.”

He also said Mr. Trump’s outspoken denial of climate science has helped bring attention to the issue. “Having a climate denier in chief who is out there saying it’s a Chinese hoax, all of that helps sharpen the distinction between the positions of the two parties,” Mr. Leiserowitz said.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was an economic policy adviser to Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign against Mr. Obama, said areas of agreement make poor rallying points. That year, both candidates not only believed that climate change was real and serious but had similar proposals to address it.

“I thought this would be a moment when the nation learned a lot about greenhouse gas emissions,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin said. But other than a handful of news articles, it was largely ignored.

“Issues become important when they’re a point of differentiation among the candidates,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin said. “What I finally realized in retrospect was, there was no point in talking about it because it doesn’t help you pick.”

In the 2020 election, the difference between the candidates could not be more stark.

Mr. Trump has disparaged climate science and installed climate change deniers in prominent positions at both the White House and environmental agencies. He has sought to roll back every federal regulation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, moved to make it easier for aging coal plants to keep operating and promoted greater oil and gas production.

During Thursday’s debate, Mr. Trump claimed he has “so many different programs” to address climate change but offered no solutions beyond an executive order he signed to support a World Economic Forum tree-planting initiative. He attacked renewable energy and said, falsely, that retrofitting buildings to make them energy efficient would shrink windows to tiny portals.

Mr. Biden called climate change an “existential threat to humanity.”

Back in 2012, recalled Lanhee Chen, policy director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign against Mr. Obama, “there really wasn’t any pressure of any kind in the political marketplace to have, for example, your climate change plan.” In that race, both candidates also accepted the reality of climate change and the need to address it, albeit to different degrees.

But, he said, even the Obama campaign did not raise the issue to force a public debate. “Politicians and campaigns are very good reflections of where the public is at. Campaigns don’t tend to spend time on issues that people don’t care about,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/climate/biden-debate-oil.html?searchResultPosition=1

How America wins from a pro-climate trade policy

Op-ed by Curt Morgan and Greg Bertelsen

The Hill, Oct. 1, 2020

Whoever wins the White House in November will be confronted by a rapidly shifting world economic order and international demands to meaningfully address climate change. The future of trade negotiations, global competition and diplomacy will increasingly be influenced by climate — both its impacts and how countries choose to address it.  

The president in 2021 will have a simple choice: Sit idle while other nations — such as China — impose their policies on the world, or lead and establish a new global order on climate and trade.  

In the absence of a national climate strategy, U.S. businesses, which broadly produce goods with fewer emissions than their foreign competitors, are operating at a disadvantage. Many of their overseas competitors are flooding the American market with goods manufactured with fewer pollution controls and more carbon emissions, undermining both American workers and climate progress.

A well-designed climate policy can address this unfairness, help return important supply chains back to the U.S. and create more American jobs for the future. It can also serve to check China’s growing economic power and call out its practice of claiming climate progress while promoting carbon-intensive industrialization in emerging economies. 

A nationwide carbon fee paired with a border carbon adjustment would deliver these benefits. Such a policy would apply a fee on the carbon content of imported goods and extend the reach of carbon pricing beyond America’s shores. This approach would instantly enhance the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers, positioning them to grow and create jobs.  

A new, first-of-its-kind study by the MacronDyn Group and commissioned by our group, the Climate Leadership Council, reveals that the U.S. economy is three times more carbon efficient than that of China and nearly four times that of India. It also compares favorably to the economies of Canada, Mexico, Korea and Japan. Of the world’s major economies, only those of the European Union are as efficient. Yet U.S. manufacturers are currently failing to reap the full benefit of their cleaner operations. With such a large "carbon advantage,” these businesses would only gain from a policy that makes less efficient foreign competition play on a level field.  

Major U.S. businesses have joined leading environmentalists in support of this solution, known as “carbon dividends.” Promoted by the Climate Leadership Council, this policy also aligns closely with the principles recently endorsed by the Business Roundtable, representing the CEOs of 200 of America’s largest employers.  

The embrace of carbon pricing by America’s business leaders demonstrates that companies want to hasten the transition to clean energy. But they need regulatory predictability and market certainty in order to innovate and make clean energy investments with confidence.

The current jumble of ever-shifting carbon regulations at all levels of government fuels uncertainty, slows investment decisions and ties businesses’ hands. This approach, which is also marred by the impermanence of federal climate rules and a sluggish rulemaking process, is no match for the scale and speed of the climate challenge.  

By contrast, a simple and transparent nationwide price on carbon would — from day one — accelerate a future of net zero emissions. Carbon pricing provides more certainty and works much faster than either a regulatory or subsidy approach. And since it frees all carbon-saving technologies to compete toward the same goal, a carbon price ferrets out only the most economic solutions. This is key, as keeping energy affordable is necessary for maintaining broad public support for the energy transition.   

Amid a pandemic downturn, the carbon dividends solution also offers striking benefits for American workers and the economy. If a gradually rising and economy-wide carbon fee starting at $43 per ton of carbon emissions were enacted next year, as the carbon dividends plan calls for, $1.4 trillion in new capital investment would be unlocked by 2035, a recent study by the research firm Thunder Said Energy found. This investment surge would drive the creation of 1.6 million new jobs while slashing U.S. emissions by more than half over that same period. 

Rising carbon prices would also help America seize back control of its manufacturing and energy supply chains by prompting production based overseas to return to the U.S., closer to the products’ point of use, according to the study. And with more efficient technologies on hand, domestic manufacturers would double their efficiency gains, making them even more competitive in global markets.    

Finally, a carbon fee and border carbon adjustment could be done unilaterally, without drawn-out international negotiations. Faced with this system, other countries would have little choice but to follow suit or lose a share of the U.S. market. And as more countries follow America’s lead, even rival economies, like China, would come under pressure to adjust their policies. In short, it would be an effective counter to China’s strategy of dominating world manufacturing while remaining the world’s biggest polluter. 

With this approach, America can achieve in one sweep what decades of climate talks have never accomplished. On the other hand, if America fails to act, it must consider the real risk that other major economies will move first to leverage rules to their advantage.   

Whether the next president is motivated by domestic economic progress or global climate action, they would do well to recognize that America already has a carbon advantage that can be leveraged to achieve both.   

Curt Morgan is the president and CEO of Vistra Corp., the largest competitive power generator in the U.S. and a founding member of the Climate Leadership Council. Greg Bertelsen is CEO of the Climate Leadership Council. 

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