How the Green New Deal Informed the Joe Biden Climate Plan

For those of us in the environmental space, January 20th marked a long-awaited shift away from denial and obstruction to renewed hope and leadership on climate change. At around 12:00 PM EST, Joseph R. Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States and immediately signed 17 executive orders, most notably to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, halt drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, terminate permits for the Keystone XL pipeline, and restore protections for national monuments. He also told federal agencies to begin reviewing and reinstating over 125 environmental regulations that were rolled back by the previous administration — and we're here for it!

These swift, decisive orders mark long-awaited victory for environmental activists and signal nothing less than a sea change in American leadership on the environment. But while Wednesday gave us much reason to celebrate, there’s a long and challenging road ahead. Analysts warn that President Biden’s actions must be followed up by a slew of powerful domestic climate policies that drastically lower our emissions — particularly from automobiles, heavy industry, power plants, and oil and gas wells.

The Joe Biden climate plan, crafted by the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force (a committee that included climate and environmental justice activists who helped to design the Green New Deal), is an aggressive plan that aims to, among many other things, “combat climate change in a way we have not before.” But how does it measure up to the extremely ambitious Green New Deal— which was inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and seeks to fight the climate crisis and tackle inequality at the same time? 

The Joe Biden Climate Change Plan + the Green New Deal: Here’s How They Compare

To begin, it’s not entirely accurate to judge the two as equals; one (the Green New Deal), is a broad and non-binding resolution that would likely cost $10 trillion+ dollars over 10 years, while the other (the Biden climate plan), is a narrowly-focused series of actions that will cost around $2 trillion dollars over a 4-year presidential term.

$2 trillion still sounds like a lot, but to put that into context, the United States has spent $2.2 trillion on coronavirus stimulus measures already. Further, the Biden climate plan will be paid for by reversing the previous administration's hefty corporate tax cuts, reducing incentives for tax evasion, ending fossil fuel subsidies, + closing loopholes in our tax code that benefit only the wealthiest Americans.

Despite its lower cost and narrower focus, the Biden plan acknowledges that the Green New Deal provides a crucial framework for dealing with climate change and encapsulates two core truths: to meet this challenge requires action on an epic scale + our environment and economy are inextricably intertwined. As such, many — although not all — of the tenets set by the Green New Deal will be addressed within the Joe Biden Climate Plan.

Despite their differences, both plans are, at their core, about jobs and the environment and aim to balance aggressive climate change mitigation with related issues like environmental justice, sustainable housing, providing a “just transition” for affected workers, and undertaking major infrastructure improvements, like high speed rail (not a surprise when you consider Biden’s decades-long patronage of the Amtrak train line from Wilmington, DE to Washington, DC!)