Joe Biden’s Climate Plan: AOC’s ‘Green New Deal’ Plus 5 Years

Former Vice President Joe Biden will introduce a plan Tuesday to tackle climate change that borrows the central element of the Green New Deal of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — and simply adds an extra five years to achieve it.

Ocasio-Cortez drew ridicule last year when she proposed moving the entire U.S. economy to 100% renewable energy sources — primarily solar and wind — by 2030. Biden’s policy does the same, but proposes a deadline of 2035 instead.

Currently, the most ambitious “green” energy plan on record in the U.S. is California’s law aiming at 100% renewable energy by 2045 — ten years later than Biden is proposing. Critics note that California has no idea how to reach its goal.

Moving to 100% renewable energy would mean putting the fossil fuel industry out of business — oil, natural gas, and coal.

Ocasio-Cortez also left hydroelectric power out of her plan, and said nothing about nuclear energy, which the led opposes but which provides the only practical alternative to fossil fuels as an energy source that is almost totally carbon-free.

Notably, Ocasio-Cortez chairs Biden’s climate change policy committee on the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee offered a similar plan when he ran for president, calling for requiring 100% carbon-neutral power by 2030, putting America on a path to having all clean, renewable and zero-emission energy in electricity generation by 2035. Observers noted that experts were “skeptical about the political plausibility of its execution.”

At the second Democratic debate in 2019, Biden committed to ending coal, fracking, and the use of fossil fuels. He has since backed away from his pledge on fracking, mindful of the importance of fracking to the economy in Pennsylvania — a state Democrats hope to win back from President Donald Trump.

In 2008, Biden promised voters that he and then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) were committed to the future of “clean coal” — unlike Republican rival Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.