Trump & Biden on the environment: Comparing the candidates' agendas
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00:00 for Tuesday will give pollsters and party members on both sides an idea of the big issues motivating
00:06 voters and for some, particularly young voters, the climate crisis is one of those top issues.
00:14 So what do we know about Trump's policies and Biden's policies towards the environment? Our
00:20 Antonia Kerrigan from our climate desk is with me, she's been looking into this for us and Antonia,
00:26 is it fair to say that when it comes to the climate, Trump and Biden are really rather far apart?
00:30 Absolutely. The most strident example to illustrate this contrast is the Paris Agreement.
00:36 Of course, as early as he legally could, Donald Trump withdrew the US from that all important
00:43 climate agreement that was a global commitment to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above industrial
00:48 levels. First thing Biden did on one of his very first day in office was to rejoin that agreement
00:53 by executive order. Now, that's the strongest example. However, you can see that there is some
01:01 evolution over the years in Donald Trump's climate rhetoric. We remember from his early campaigns,
01:06 overt climate denialism. And now it's more of a economic argument, you might say more populist
01:12 idea that climate action is anti-American, anti-consumer choice and pushes up the cost
01:16 of living. The reason for that could be shifting sands in the sort of Americans outlook. Recent
01:23 polling showed in December showed that 63% of Americans worried about the dangers of climate
01:29 change, including half of Republicans. So that does matter for Donald Trump. And 42% of Americans
01:35 have seen extreme weather events in the last year. So that suggests that Americans may likely now be
01:42 more sceptical than they once were of climate scepticism. That said, recent Gallup polls put
01:49 only 2% of Americans classing the environment or the climate as their number one issue.
01:55 So that's why the policies we're seeing and the arguments we're seeing are really framed from an
01:59 economic point of view. For Trump, fossil fuels are cheap and abundant. And climate action again,
02:04 pushes up the cost of living. Whereas for Biden, climate action is an opportunity to stimulate
02:08 industry, create jobs and upgrade the economy into something more future focused.
02:13 Indeed, and Biden has called himself in the past, hasn't he? America's climate president. But
02:19 how would you describe his climate legacy, if at all? And how future proof do you think those
02:26 policies will be if he doesn't win in November? Well, that's the real question. So in keeping
02:33 with his economic case for climate action, Joe Biden did introduce the biggest piece of climate
02:39 legislation ever in the United States. That's the Inflation Reduction Act, which involved a goal of
02:46 reducing emissions by 40% by 2030. That's obviously significant. But the way to get there is what's
02:52 more important. That was $380 billion in loans, grants, tax incentives, towards developing clean
02:58 energy, clean industry, and electric vehicles, as well as other measures to de-incentivise polluting.
03:05 Now subsidies and tax incentives, and these kind of industry focused policies, quite hard to unpick,
03:14 especially because a lot of that money is going to states where Donald Trump is ahead in the polls,
03:18 you know, $48 billion has gone into Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Michigan combined on EV and
03:25 battery investment. And those are states that Trump would like to win in, and they're industrial
03:30 states, the kind of states that he would like to target. So that part of Biden's climate action
03:35 may be relatively future proof. However, on fossil fuels, Joe Biden's record is a little bit more
03:42 dappled at the time coming out of COP28, when we're really supposed to be focusing on moving
03:46 away from fossil fuels. He did in his first week in office, axed the Keystone XL $8 billion oil
03:53 pipeline project from the US to Canada, that was significant. He has recently placed a freeze on
03:58 new LNG export terminals to reduce the export of LNG to, for instance, Europe, pending an
04:05 environmental review of the consequences of that kind of activity, and also introduced a methane
04:12 fee, that's a $900 charge per CO2 equivalent tonne per year of methane emissions, that's targeting
04:20 big oil and gas producers who pollute just by extracting these things. However, in 2023,
04:29 the US produced more oil than any country ever in history. That's not what Joe Biden was aiming for,
04:37 but he moved to rein in the price at the pump just before midterms, and in doing so boosted
04:42 domestic production. So it's, as we say, a mixed bag in terms of his legacy. In contrast, though,
04:49 let's have a listen to what Donald Trump says about fossil fuel extraction.
04:53 We're going to drill baby drill right away.
04:58 Drill baby drill. It's not his own coinage, it's not Donald Trump's own coinage, but it's one he's
05:09 absolutely adopted with gusto and he frequently repeats. And what it suggests is that if Trump
05:14 is elected, the floodgate that Joe Biden tried to squeeze shut in terms of fossil fuel extraction
05:19 and production will gush open. All right, really important aspect of Super Tuesday. Thank you very
05:25 much indeed, Antonio Kerrigan, for us there from our climate desk.