Biden’s 40 years of experience reaching across the Senate aisle may help him to craft a stable climate plan, though not the one that progressives hoped for.
By Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News
Many environmentalists hoped that Joe Biden would become the FDR of climate change.
But if, as seems likely, Biden emerges as the winner of a deeply divisive presidential election, in which the Republican Party retains control of the Senate, it is more likely he will need the skills of an LBJ. And climate policy, in a Biden era, could end up looking more like President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s hard-fought civil rights legislation than President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s sweeping New Deal, say veterans of Washington’s energy policy battles.
When Biden campaigned on a $2 trillion climate plan, the most ambitious ever proposed by a major party candidate, the Democrats were aiming to pick up the three Senate seats they needed for a majority that would support Biden’s plan. And although that is still a distant possibility, the results from Tuesday’s election so far show Republicans have held onto contested seats in Maine, Montana, Iowa and South Carolina, and remain ahead in Alaska and North Carolina.
Try our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics, FREE for a full month!
Our stories. Your inbox. Every weekend.I agree to InsideClimate News’ Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Now the Democrats’ best chance to gain full control of Congress is to win both of the two Senate runoff races set for January in Georgia, a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1997. If Republicans maintain Senate control, any Biden climate legislation would have to get past Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a skilled legislative blockader and a longtime Kentucky ally of the coal industry.
But industry and environmental advocates alike say that Biden, who spent more than 40 years in the Senate, is uniquely suited to the challenge of dealing with McConnell—and with former colleagues of both parties. They are anticipating that Biden will be able to do more in the face of a hostile Congress than did President Barack Obama, who relied on a series of executive actions on climate that President Donald Trump has spent the past four years overturning.
