Maybe Not Enough Considering The Stacked Deck We Confront, But Guardian Gives Biden Plan Good Marks
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The Biden plan raises the idea of a “voluntary” carbon market. That’s all he can do going into an election. Taxing energy brought out the yellow jackets in France. Taxing carbon emissions cannot be avoided following the election – volunteers will not create the necessary scale. But there are experiments underway with private-sector carbon trading schemes that are interesting pilots. While carrots are always better than sticks, at some point the US has to lead the world by taxing carbon emissions. We don’t have much time.
Otherwise, Biden’s $2tn energy plan is comprehensive, bold and optimistic. It promises to revive struggling auto towns in the midwest by building a new fleet of electric vehicles (a road the industry is already on). Since most renewable energy projects require land, rural areas are positioned to win with a wave of investment in wind and solar that brings hi-tech jobs to little towns along country blacktop roads. I know, because I live four miles away from the largest wind complex in North America, in Storm Lake, Iowa. We could reap even more benefits if we could clear transmission and grid bottlenecks to get clean, low-cost windpower from north-west Iowa to Chicago. Biden addresses it with a smart-grid plan backed up by massive battery banks.
Already, Iowa produces about half its power from wind. Even Texas loves wind energy. This is something around which conservatives and liberals can come together.
Other important solutions are at hand – planting cover crops for fall and winter to hold soil, suck up nitrogen and sequester carbon; planting grass along rivers to prevent pollution; new feedstocks such as sweet sorghum or hemp for carbon-neutral biofuels production: and on and on. The Farm Bureau on the right and the National Farmers Union on the left agree. We can reduce pollution of the Gulf of Mexico, and offset much of our carbon footprint, by planting a third more grass and a third less corn. By enforcing anti-trust laws already on the books, huge food conglomerates that are burning down the Amazon rainforest can be brought to heel.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/16/joe-biden-green-plan-democrats-climate-crisis
