Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden pledged Tuesday to invest $2 trillion into combating climate change during his first term in office.
Mr. Biden said President Trump’s refusal to address the mounting problem and his bungled response to the coronavirus calls for a massive down payment on a pro-environment agenda that will lead to new jobs and fewer carbon emissions.
“There is no more consequential challenge that we must meet in the next decade than the onrushing climate crisis,” Mr. Biden said in Wilmington. “Left unchecked, it is literally an existential threat to our planet and to our very survival.”
Mr. Biden said his plan will strengthen the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges and achieve “net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”
“When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster is ‘hoax,’” the former vice president said. “When I think about climate change, the word I think about is ‘jobs.’”
The proposal is part of Mr. Biden’s economic recovery plan.
It grew out of the recommendations from the Biden-Sanders unity task on climate change co-chaired by former Secretary of State John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
The Biden camp believes that it can make inroads against Mr. Trump by highlighting his failure to deliver on his promise to revamp the nation’s infrastructure
Mr. Biden said his plan would generate well-paying union jobs, improve air quality, and restore the nation’s “crumbling roads and bridges and ports.”
“When Donald Trump thinks about renewable energy, he sees windmills somehow causing cancer,” Mr. Biden said. “When I think about these windmills, I see American manufacturing, Americans workers racing to dominate the market.”
Mr. Biden said Mr. Trump and Republican lawmakers have failed to act.
Mr. Biden said he can pass an infrastructure bill, citing the lead role he played in passing the 2009 stimulus bill that included big investments in infrastructure and clean energy.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who made climate change the centerpiece of his failed 2020 presidential run, applauded Mr. Biden’s approach, saying he “decided to go big.”
“Joe Biden’s modern infrastructure and clean energy plan shows that he’s serious about defeating climate change and has a road map to become the Climate President that America needs,” Mr. Inslee said.
Republicans panned the plan.
House Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana panned the Biden plan, reminding reporters in a conference call how Solyndra, a solar panel maker, defaulted on a $528 million federal loan it had received through the 2009 stimulus package.
“That is Solyndra on steroids,” Mr. Scalise said on a conference call with the Trump campaign. “It’s a track record of failure.”
A spokesman for the Republican National Committee said the proposals show Mr. Biden is “beholden to left-wing ideologues and not to the American people who face the prospect of eliminated jobs and higher taxes under his plan.”
Steve Milloy, former Trump EPA Transition Team member, panned the plan, saying his vow to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants is a “false fantasy” that would “wreck our economy and standard of living.”
“This campaign promise is nothing but a transparent attempt to excite the Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democrat Party about the Biden candidacy,” Mr. Malloy said.
Mr. Biden’s plan calls for a “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035,” retrofitting 4 million buildings in an environmentally friendly way and establishing universal broadband access.
Mr. Biden also borrowed from the plan that Mr. Inslee laid out during his presidential run, calling for the establishment of the Environmental and Climate Justice Division within the U.S. Department of Justice that would be tasked with holding corporate polluters accountable.
