By Leah C. Stokes
Last year, President Biden and Vice President Harris ran and won on the boldest climate Presidential platform in history: pledging to spend at least $2 trillion on climate investments, target 100% clean electricity by 2035, and to ensure that 40% of the benefits flowed towards disadvantaged communities to advance environmental justice.
The Biden Administration has made it clear that climate change is a top priority, following up with the American Jobs Plan, a proposal to spend between $2-3 trillion on climate action. We now have an opportunity for Congress to put these plans into law. The January elections in Georgia—when two Democrats won seats in the Senate, giving the Democrats an even number of senators with VP Harris a tie-breaker—were a profoundly positive outcome for the climate movement. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has made it clear that climate change is his top priority.
In the coming months, Congress will likely take up the American Jobs Plan, negotiating a major climate bill. The last time they did this was over a decade ago, during the debates over the Waxman-Markey bill in 2009. Although we have lost so much time in the interim, there are still reasons to hope that this new climate bill will be ambitious.
To cut carbon pollution across our economy, we need Congress to target changes in three big sectors: electricity, transportation, and homes. Together, they account for almost 70% of our total emissions, so cleaning them up would go a long way towards stopping the climate crisis.
The power sector is critical to making progress. If we have clean electricity, we can use it to power our cars, homes and even parts of heavy industry. Right now, the US power system is around 40% clean. We need Congress to pass a Clean Electricity Standard that would ensure we double our clean power this decade, hitting 80% by 2030.
We also need long-term extensions of key policies that have driven renewable energy progress today, including the Investment Tax Credit and the Production Tax Credit. Both policies must be included in the final package. Cleaning up the transportation sector is particularly important for California, as it is our largest source of carbon pollution by far, since we have already made good progress on clean power. Policies may include rebates to help everyday Americans buy an electric vehicle, and big investments in charging stations from coast to coast. We should also expect lots of funding to electrify everything from school buses to public transit, and our postal service fleet.
Finally, buildings are a critical area where we must remove fossil fuels. For those living in Santa Barbara, you may have been following efforts to require that new buildings do not install fossil gas. This is a critical local fight, which mirrors changes we need to be making nationally.
Congress has an opportunity to make it more affordable to everyone to remove gas from their homes, through rebates for everything from heat pumps to induction stoves. These changes will not just cut pollution, they will make our homes safer. More and more research is coming out that shows that cooking over a gas stove is very harmful to our health, similar to secondhand smoke in the home.
The American Jobs Plan is the biggest opportunity we have ever had to act on the climate crisis. If you agree, get involved, and plug into Sierra Club efforts to ensure that Americans across the country are reaching out to Congress to let them know that we must pass this law.
Leah C. Stokes is an assistant professor working on climate and energy policy at UC Santa Barbara