Joe Biden Announces Plan For Net Zero Emissions By 2050

Official portrait of United States Vice President Joe Biden in his West Wing Office at the White House.

Former vice president Joe Biden has unveiled another major policy plan in the form of a climate action package that aims for net zero emissions by 2050. This is the second significant plan that Biden has released recently, following the education reform bill that he presented to the world last Tuesday.

The climate plan is an attempt to combat the environmental degradation caused by President Donald Trump’s spate of regulation rollbacks. Biden’s new course of action is similar to the one espoused by President Barack Obama while Biden was his vice president but with an additional $5 trillion of funding. His plan is a combination of regulation and multilateral agreements, positioning the United States as a global environmental leader that can use its muscle to force other countries to act in a more environmentally-conscious manner.

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The proposal calls for both an increase in clean energy, as well as a decrease in environmental pollution. In order to achieve this goal, Biden is aiming for an additionally 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations to be built around the country in order to service cars such as the Tesla. Additionally, $400 billion will be dedicated to increasing research on clean energy. Furthermore, this plan requires all new buildings to cut emissions by 50% by 2035 in order to reduce carbon dioxide pollution.

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While Biden’s plan is impressive, it pales in comparison to those of his 2020 competitors. One complaint that many have with the former vice president’s policy is that it doesn’t aim to eradicate fossil fuels. The blueprint instead calls for the current energy industry to be tweaked, rather than completely overhauled. Groups such as Greenpeace say that this is not enough. and that Biden’s plan is too slow to truly prevent the type of massive climate change that is expected by 2050.

Other candidates have been calling for much more thorough transformations of the fossil fuel industry. Many presidential hopefuls have either thrown their support behind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-New York) Green New Deal, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) or espoused similar anti-fossil fuel ideas, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).