With hurricanes, wildfires, melting glaciers, Earth reminds voters what's at stake in 2020
A cruel chorus of fire, water and ice reminded voters last week of the planetary stakes in November's presidential election: Mega-blazes incinerated towns and tinder-dry forests of the West, burning an area the size of New Jersey and polluting skies to the Atlantic and beyond. Hurricane Sally's catastrophic flooding of Gulf Coast states was yet another example of storms made dangerously wetter and slower by global warming. Massive Antarctic glaciers are breaking free as temperatures rise, threatening over time to raise sea levels 10 feet.
A feverish planet Earth is telling voters it will not be ignored. And Donald Trump and Joe Biden are offering starkly different choices for dealing with the reality that greenhouse gases, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil, are raising global temperatures and creating a climate crisis.
The president lives in the land of denialism, a sentiment on full display during last week's visit to California, where he smirked at evidence that drought and rising temperatures driven by climate change have desiccated forests, rendering them prime fuel for massive fires.
It'll start getting cooler. You just watch," Trump said, without elaboration, before dismissing what experts say. "I don't think science knows, actually."
Science does know
Actually, the science does know. Measurable rates of heat-trapping carbon dioxide are at levels the world hasn't seen in 800,000 years, and global temperatures have risen significantly since the dawn of the industrial age.
Trump's policy is to pretend this isn't happening. Even worse, the president has ceded ground in the fight against climate change by moving to pull America out of the Paris climate accord, stocking government agencies with climate change skeptics and engaging in wholesale dismantling of environmental regulations. His administration has rolled back no fewer than 100 rules aimed at curtailing the gush of greenhouse gases into skies, water and land.
If these changes remain in effect, the United States will add an additional 1.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through 2035.
Not the Green New Deal
Biden offers stark contrast. While his plan isn't quite the Green New Deal proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic progressives in Congress, it borrows many of the same concepts, mixes in practical considerations such as continued reliance on nuclear energy, and wraps it all in a commitment to generate millions of jobs.
In his first four years, Biden would propose spending $2 trillion on green energy technology, infrastructure improvements, wind turbines and millions of new solar panels. The goal is to reach 100% carbon-free power generation by 2035, addressing a source for roughly a third of the nation's energy-related emissions. The next objective would be net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for the entire country by 2050.
Some of this necessary technology — such as grid-scale battery storage, hydrogen fuel and industrial-size carbon-capture operations — doesn't even exist yet, or not at scale. But Biden would use federal investments and tax incentives to boost research into these areas with an eye toward achieving global dominance in green technology, and guide other nations to cheaply reduce carbon emissions.
It's an ambitious plan with details that remain murky, including the financing and how Biden would specifically pressure other countries to clean up their economies — notably China, which produces 30% of the world's carbon pollution — beyond relying on his foreign policy experience and recommitting to the Paris climate accord. The United States generates 15% of global emissions.
His plan also remains opaque about embracing a crucial, market-based solution — a refundable national carbon tax. And, if elected, he'd have to deal with congressional headwinds unless Democrats retained the House and captured the Senate.
But if wildfires, floods and melting glaciers carry any message, it's that time is running out in the battle against climate change. Biden would do something about it. Trump is making things worse.
This is the first in a series of editorials about major issues in the 2020 presidential election.
USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Earth, climate change on 2020 election ballot with Trump and Biden
