The news was first reported by Reuters and confirmed to Grist on Thursday by the State Department. It represents a major shift for the United States, which had previously rejected production limits in favor of an approach focused on boosting the recycling rate and cleaning up plastic litter.

While industry groups condemned the decision as “misguided,” environmental organizations said it could sway momentum in favor of production limits at a consequential point during the negotiations. There is only one meeting left before the treaty is supposed to be finalized in 2025.

“This couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Christina Dixon, ocean campaign leader for the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency. “The U.S. position has been one of the great unknowns and they have the power to be a constructive and collaborative player, so it’s a relief to see them setting out of their stall at this critical moment.”

Negotiations over a treaty have been ongoing since March 2022, when the U.N. reached a landmark agreement to “end plastic pollution.” Over the course of the four negotiating sessions that have occurred since then, however, progress has been slow — in large part due to disagreements over the treaty’s scope.

A so-called “high-ambition” coalition of countries, supported by many scientists and environmental groups, say the treaty must prevent more plastic from being made in the first place. Some 460 million metric tons are manufactured globally each year — mostly out of fossil fuels — and only 9 percent of it is recycled. Because the manufacturing, use, and disposal of plastics contribute to climate change, experts at the nonprofit Pacific Environment have found that the treaty must cut plastic production by 75 percent by 2040 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

The high-ambition coalition also supports specific bans or restrictions on the most problematic types of plastic — typically meaning those that are least likely to be recycled — as well as hazardous chemicals commonly used in plastic products. This coalition includes Canada, Norway, Peru, Rwanda, and the U.K., along with more than 60 other countries.

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Oil-producing states like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China — backed by industry groups — oppose these measures. They want the treaty to leave production untouched and focus on managing plastic waste. The U.S. counted itself among those countries until this week.

Now, in addition to supporting restrictions on plastic production, the U.S. says it will also support creating a list of problematic plastics and hazardous chemicals, according to Reuters.

Because the U.S. carries so much weight in the treaty negotiations — and because North America produces one-fifth of the world’s plastics — Dixon said the White House’s new position could be “a welcome signal to fence-sitting countries,” encouraging them to join the high-ambition coalition.

“I hope it will only further isolate the small group of countries who are unwilling to commit to the necessary binding regulations we need to see on the supply of plastics.”

Industry groups reacted less favorably to the news.

Chris Jahn, president and CEO of American Chemistry Council, a plastics and petrochemical trade group, said in a statement that the U.S. had “cave[d] to the wishes of extreme NGO groups.” He described the White House’s new position as a betrayal of U.S. manufacturers that would slash jobs, harm the environment, and cause the cost of goods to rise globally.

“If the Biden-Harris administration wants to meet its sustainable development and climate goals, the world will need to rely on plastic more, not less,” he said, citing the material’s utility in renewable energy infrastructure, making buildings more energy efficient, and reducing food waste.

Nearly 40 percent of global plastic production goes toward single-use items like packaging and food service products.

Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association, shared similar sentiments to Jahn. In a statement, he said the White House had “turned its back on Americans whose livelihoods depend on our industry.”

He added that the U.S.’s reversal would undermine its influence in the treaty negotiations, “as other countries know this extreme position will not receive support in the U.S. Senate.” The Senate has to approve treaties before the U.S. can ratify them.

Despite the industry’s outrage, polling suggests that ambitious policies to address the plastics crisis are broadly popular among the public. According to one recent poll from the nonprofit National Resources Defense Council, nearly 90 percent of Americans support measures to reduce plastic production. Eighty-three percent specifically support plastic production limits as part of an international treaty, and even greater numbers support treaty provisions to eliminate “unnecessary and avoidable plastic products” and toxic chemicals.

Reducing plastic production is “what the American people want,” Anja Brandon, director of U.S. plastics policy for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, said in a statement. She cited additional polling from her organization showing that 78 percent of Americans think ocean-bound plastic pollution is a “pressing problem.”

Brandon and other environmental advocates now say they’re eager to see how the U.S.’s new position will translate into advocacy during the final round of plastics treaty negotiations, scheduled to begin in late November in Busan, South Korea. They’re calling for the U.S. to sign onto the “Bridge to Busan,” a declaration put forward by a group of countries last April asking negotiators to “commit to achieve sustainable levels of production of primary plastic polymers,” potentially through “production freezes at specified levels, production reductions against agreed baselines, or other agreed constraints.”

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “I look forward to seeing U.S. delegates fight for these positions at the next plastics treaty negotiations in South Korea.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

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The West Virginia senator (and coal baron) announced Wednesday afternoon that he had agreed to support a bill – called the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 – that will see $369 billion go toward climate solutions, such as subsidies for electric vehicles and tax credits for home energy retrofits. Less than two weeks ago, Manchin had said he wouldn’t support such a bill until he saw July’s inflation numbers, which still haven’t been released. 

“By a wide margin, this legislation will be the greatest pro-climate legislation that has ever been passed by Congress,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement.  

The bill is not as ambitious as President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill, which would have spent around $500 billion on climate action. That legislation did not move forward, as Manchin refused to back it in the evenly divided 50–50 U.S. Senate. But the new bill’s authors say it could put the U.S. “on a path” to cut greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40% by 2030.  

Manchin released a lengthy statement on the bill Wednesday that mainly addressed inflation and national debt, as the legislation will also raise $739 billion in revenue and spend $300 billion on deficit reduction. The 725-page bill will additionally spend $64 billion extending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. 

“[We] must stop pretending that there is only one way to combat global climate change or achieve American energy independence,” Manchin said in his statement. “The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 addresses our nation’s energy and climate crisis by adopting commonsense solutions through strategic and historic investments that allow us to decarbonize while ensuring American energy is affordable, reliable, clean and secure. The need to balance all of these critical energy priorities is no longer open to debate given the energy threats we face.” 

The bill also includes $10 billion for an investment tax credit to build cleantech manufacturing plants that make electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines; $2 billion in grants to retool existing car factories; and $27 billion for a “clean energy technology accelerator.”  

Some climate advocates greeted news of the deal with cautious optimism. Fred Krupp, the president of Environmental Defense Fund, called the bill’s investments “an historic step by Congress to improve people’s lives,” adding that the package of tax credits “would rapidly accelerate our shift toward a modernized economy and make electric vehicles, clean power and clean manufacturing more affordable.” 

Others were worried that it would continue to prop up the fossil fuel industry, pointing to the fact that, as part of the deal, Democratic leadership has agreed to speed up the permit process for pipelines, along with other energy infrastructure, before the end of the fiscal year. “Streamlining permitting for natural gas pipelines and exports is not climate action, it is the opposite. More subsidies for dirty hydrogen, carbon capture, and nuclear energy are not climate action, they are the opposite,” said Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food & Water Watch.  

There may still be some hurdles in the way of the bill becoming law, such as centrist Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, who hasn’t announced whether she’ll support the package yet. But Democrats won’t require the support of any Republicans for the bill, as they’re planning to use the budget reconciliation process, which can pass with 51 votes (including Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote). If Congress does pass the bill, supporters say it will be the single-biggest climate investment in the country’s history.  

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That isn’t to say there wasn’t progress last year. The conference’s British hosts trumpeted COP26 as a “step forward in global efforts to address climate change.” The summit resulted in some significant pledges by governments around deforestation and methane emissions, as well as by leading financial firms vowing to achieve net-zero in their portfolios by 2050. But as climate disasters escalated in 2021, many were left feeling frustrated that more wasn’t achieved through all the summit’s “blah-blah-blah.” 

“There is much that is good, some bad, some lacking and without a doubt lots still to do to build on in a deal which may yet prove to be a turning-point,” said Mark Campanale, executive chair of the London-based think tank Carbon Tracker in a post-summit statement. “That’s especially true if governments can return next year, and the next, with more ambitious emissions targets.”

At the end of the summit, Climate Action Tracker, an independent analysis that measures country emissions, found that even if leaders achieve all their 2030 and long-term targets, the world is still on track for 2.1°C of warming.

Bold climate action is looking uncertain for the world’s second largest climate polluter, as U.S. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill stalled in late 2021. In December, coal-friendly West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin had delivered what appeared to be a death blow to the bill, telling a Fox News host that he would vote “no” on the US$1.75-trillion package. The bill had carved out a whopping $555 billion to combat climate change, including $300 billion in tax incentives and rebates for clean energy, electric vehicles and greener buildings. Even the United Mine Workers of America, which represents West Virginia’s coal miners, called on the senator to reconsider his opposition to the bill.

There is much that is good, some bad, some lacking and without a doubt lots still to do to build on in a deal which may yet prove to be a turning-point.

-Mark Campanale, executive chair of Carbon Tracker

In his first public comments about the bill in 2022, Manchin said no negotiations were happening at the time. He added, however, that “the climate thing is one that we probably can come to agreement much easier than anything else.” If the bill does survive, its scope likely will be far narrower than what was originally proposed.

There are signs that 2022 may be more constructive, at least in Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued mandate letters to his cabinet ministers in December that signalled an unprecedented government-wide effort to tackle the climate crisis. The letters underscored a more robust climate approach, including a zero-emissions-vehicle mandate, a 100% net-zero electricity grid by 2035 and mandatory climate-related financial disclosures for banks, pension funds and others.

Admittedly, Canada has been notorious for not following through on its carbon-trimming resolutions. But Canadian climate activists are hopeful that the government will be more active on the climate file in 2022, given Steven Guilbeault has been appointed to serve as the country’s new minister of environment and climate change. Guilbeault, who was once a director of Greenpeace Quebec, had a long to-do list in his mandate letter and is expected to unveil a new federal climate plan in March.   

Ten months from now, Egypt will host the 27th UN climate summit. Expect fossil fuels and climate injustice to be in the hot seat. The UN had billed COP26 as humanity’s “last best chance” to tackle the climate crisis. Let’s hope the political actions of 2022 will meet the ambitions of 2021.

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At the same time, inequality makes it harder to fight climate change, partly because it corrodes the social trust we need to work together for the common good. Climate tools like carbon pricing often make it more expensive to heat homes and tank up vehicles, which could be particularly burdensome for poor families.

Canadian carbon pricing is better designed than that. About 70% of families get more back from federal climate rebates than the fuel charges they pay. But we’re still rather stuck. Canada’s climate pollution remains stubbornly high, with the worst reduction record in the G7. And inequality is just as high as it was 50 years ago.

Canadians have not engaged very productively with the debate about whether the climate crisis and inequality are competing causes in a zero-sum game. But our neighbours to the south are showing us that bold public policy can improve them both at the same time.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s Justice40 initiative promises that at least 40% of the benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy will flow to disadvantaged communities. This would be a major shift from past approaches. As the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council notes, front-line communities are routinely left behind in the competition for government funding, because of bias, inertia and a lack of capacity. Even if there is no racial bias, organizations that are well resourced with people, technology, know-how and connections are better able to obtain government funding than those most in need.

In the hope of changing this trend, this summer the White House directed 21 federal government programs to immediately start enhancing benefits for disadvantaged communities. Each agency must define “benefits” and “disadvantaged communities” for its programs, including flood mitigation assistance, lead hazard reduction, and loans and grants to farmers for renewable energy and energy efficiency. Each program is tasked with conducting meaningful community engagement, evaluating the distributional effects of their programs, and deciding how to modify them.

Inequality makes it harder to fight climate change, partly because it corrodes the social trust we need to work together for the common good.

At the same time, five U.S. non-profits got together to help front-line communities apply for the new federal money. In August, their Justice40 Accelerator gave $25,000 plus guidance to each of 52 environmental-justice-focused community organizations, so they’ll have staff, computers and know-how to apply when Justice40 grants are available.

Inequality in Canada is not as extreme as it is in the U.S. Measured by the Gini coefficient, Canadian inequality is roughly the same as it was 50 years ago. Still, many Canadians say they can’t worry about the climate breaking down in 20 years if they can’t make the rent in three weeks, particularly if they don’t see how climate policies will benefit them. A version of Justice40 in Canada could help build public support for climate action and increase our ability to withstand the worst effects of climate breakdown.

The good news is that many climate policies would be of particular benefit to disadvantaged communities. For example, Vancouver is focusing on energy retrofits of low-income and social housing to reduce fossil fuel use, climate pollution and operating costs while creating good green jobs and supporting local businesses. Typically, these buildings are cheaply built and poorly maintained, expensive to heat and uncomfortable to live in. Fixing them would boost the clean economy while giving residents more comfort and dignity.

Low-income residents also live in the dirtiest air and would benefit the most if it were cleaned up. What makes their air so dirty? Fumes from gas- and diesel-powered vehicles, especially older cars and trucks. A generous cash-for-clunkers program can get these vehicles scrapped. A 2009 U.S. program was so popular it ran through its $1 billion of funding in weeks.

Plus, it’s easy now to provide better ways to get around. Halifax is planning electric buses on dedicated lanes to reduce climate, toxic and noise pollution. Low-income and disabled residents are particularly dependent on good transit and benefit the most from not having to own a car. Dedicated transit lanes are the cheapest, fastest way to improve speed, service and reliability. Halifax Transit expects to save $24,000 a year per electric bus on operating costs because they require less maintenance and use no gas. The city also anticipates that its plan will reduce congestion and servicing costs while increasing property tax revenue.

Better transit, in turn, improves the case for eliminating requirements for developers to build parking in their buildings, as Buffalo and Edmonton have done. This makes housing less expensive and facilitates smaller-scale developments in walkable locations. This can also reduce the amount of concrete used in development, as underground parking lots require a lot of the material, which has a heavy carbon footprint.

Then there is urban greening. Low-income communities tend to live in heat islands with few trees. Tree planting helps to improve mental health, sequester carbon, catch rainwater, clean the air and cool the surrounding area. In the U.S., a new tree-planting project aims to help combat climate change, boost well-being and support economically disadvantaged areas. Tazo, a tea company owned by consumer products group Unilever, and the U.S. conservation organization American Forests have partnered to bring “Tree Equity” and urban forestry jobs to low-income areas in five American cities.

These examples show that considering inequality when choosing climate policies can improve environmental justice while protecting the more stable climate upon which all of us depend. Doing both at once may not be easy, but we’ve run out of time to leave either goal behind. Those demanding justice now won’t wait until the climate crisis is solved, and climate action can’t wait because reckless burning of fossil fuels will soon push the goal to limit warming to 1.5°C (i.e. a stable climate) out of reach. Lucky for us – we can do both.

Dianne Saxe is an environmental lawyer, a former environmental commissioner of Ontario, and the deputy leader of the Ontario Green Party.

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Democrat Joe Biden may have ejected Donald Trump from the White House, but Republicans have been emboldened to pass laws aimed at disenfranchising liberal voters in future elections. Echoing Trump’s baseless charges that the election was rigged, lawmakers in Iowa, Georgia, Florida, Texas and seven other GOP-led states pushed through rules that restrict absentee voting, tighten ID requirements and empower partisan state officials to settle disputes. Most of these measures were contrived to inconvenience Black, Brown and young voters, whose support for Biden tipped the scales in November.

Biden criticized the initiatives as “un-American.” But he has little power to stop them without a firm grip on the Senate.

Also in a tight spot are corporate leaders. Once, businesses could support either major party – or both – without drawing fire. But coordinated voter suppression, swiftly following the January 6 Capitol insurrection, tipped the scales. Emotions boiled over in Georgia, the “swing state” that gave the Democrats their slim Senate majority. When the state legislature began considering Bill 202 in March, civil rights groups such as Black Voters Matter and the New Georgia Project urged supporters to contact Georgia corporations to demand they speak out against suppression and cut off support to complicit Republicans.
Some firms’ responses provide a textbook example of how not to act in a crisis.

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines led off by taking credit for helping write the bill. When activists protested, CEO Ed Bastian clarified that the bill wasn’t perfect but did contain some positive measures. Delta employees exploded with rage, and Black leaders called for a Delta boycott. Soon after, Bastian reversed himself: “After having time to now fully understand all that is in the bill … it’s evident that the bill includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives. That is wrong.”

Calling the bill “unacceptable,” Bastian promised Delta would work with politicians across the spectrum to expand voting rights nationwide. (Result: right-wing supporters picked up the call for a Delta boycott.)
Atlanta’s pride, the Coca-Cola Company, traced a similar path. At the height of last year’s George Floyd protests, Coke CEO James Quincey said, “Companies like ours must speak up as allies to the Black Lives Matter movement.” But when called on to oppose Bill 202 in mid-March, Coke stayed bottled up – emerging only to agree with a chamber of commerce memo expressing “concern” over the bill. As protesters called for a boycott, one Black leader told The Guardian, “The hypocrisy is astounding, the silence is deafening.”

At the end of March, after the bill was signed, Quincey stepped up. He told MSNBC that “this legislation is wrong and needs to be remedied. We will continue to advocate for it both in private and now even more clearly in public.” The Republicans demanded a boycott of Coke products, their call picked up by Trump himself. (A subsequent CNN investigation found Trump’s luxury properties kept right on selling Coke, at $9 a glass.)
Other Georgia companies such as UPS and Home Depot stood up sooner for democracy and anti-racism. But they left out specifics, such as whether they’d continue funding Republican politicians.

The lesson for business: in these divided times, stand up for what’s right. You can’t please everyone, but hedging and vacillating will just piss off everybody.

One positive outcome to this controversy: investment giant BlackRock has just accepted a shareholder proposal that the firm conduct a third-party racial equity audit, to identify its own shortcomings in diversity and inclusion.

CtW Investment Group, one of several activist shareholder groups pushing financial giants to embrace racial equity audits, says Wall Street “has played a critical role in perpetuating unequal wealth distribution to communities of color.” Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are among the big players that turned down such proposals, but BlackRock’s participation is expected to put pressure on other firms to follow suit.

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As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said recently, 2021 will be “a make or break year” to confront the climate emergency. In business and government, he said, “decision-makers must walk the talk.”

“Long-term commitments must be matched by immediate actions to launch the decade of transformation that people and planet so desperately need.”

So far, Earth Day 2021 feels different. The U.S. is back on board and is hosting its own climate summit on April 22. Ahead of the virtual gathering of world leaders, the White House announced that it would be reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by between 50% and 52% by 2030, based on 2005 levels, in line with calls from the UN. Facing pressure to adopt tougher emissions targets, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today announced that Canada would be upping its target to a 40% to 45% reduction in emissions by 2030, from 2005.

Of course, Canada has failed to meet all past climate commitments, and as the New York Times pointed out this week, Canada is “the only G7 nation whose greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the Paris Agreement.” But University of Alberta climate economist, Andrew Leach, said at least this time the federal government’s latest budget should help Canada get “in the ballpark” of its previous 36% target.

The weeks leading up to Earth Day have seen a torrent of actions, ideas and announcements that tell us that Earthlings are getting serious about winning the war on carbon. Last month, U.S. President Joe Biden kicked things off by unveiling a US$2-trillion infrastructure plan infused with green economy boosters. The package includes $174 billion to turbocharge the EV market, $100 billion to modernize the electric grid and $16 billion to help fossil fuel workers transition to new jobs.

Including the U.S. and Canada, more than 100 countries – representing nearly two-thirds of global emissions – are now committed to going net-zero. Another 1,500 corporations have pledged to do the same. In March, the UN announced that 22 European pension funds, foundations and other major investors, totalling US$1.2 trillion in assets, have committed to cutting the carbon emissions of their portfolios to net-zero by 2050 or sooner. That brings the total to 37 investors, managing US$8 trillion, that have signed on to a carbon-fighting investing plan created by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.

“The global investment community has been called on to play its part in the transition to net-zero – and it is answering that call,” said IIGCC CEO Stephanie Pfeifer.

As of March, six of the largest U.S. banks and a handful of Canadian banks have vowed to align their lending portfolios with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Goldman Sachs’s commitment was particularly noteworthy, since the financial giant has been widely criticized for its recent financing of fossil fuel companies. Is Wall Street finally taking climate change seriously? Ensuring those net-zero pledges are met is the critical next step.

Ultimately, it won’t be the banker boomers and Gen-Xers saving the planet.

Youth in Portugal, the U.S., Canada, Australia and beyond are spearheading a host of lawsuits arguing that their governments failed to safeguard their right to a stable climate.

At the global Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) Youth Summit in February, where 2,000 youth from 120 countries gathered virtually, a top UN official urged young people to seek jobs in government to ramp up lagging climate goals. “We can’t keep doing things from outside,” said Damilola Ogunbiyi, co-chair of UN Energy and head of SEforALL.

A coalition of youth-led groups in the U.S. clearly agrees. They have put forward an official proposal to the Biden administration: establish an independent “Office of Young Americans” situated within the executive office of the president.

Said 17-year-old Isabella Fallahi, founder of Polluters Out, a global youth-led coalition targeting the fossil fuel industry, “We need to be given not just the mic but decision-making abilities.”

A version of this article appears in the Spring Issue of Corporate Knights.

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After four years of Donald Trump’s coal and fracking cronies, U.S. environmental groups were elated that progressive, professional experts were taking back government.

Sure, there was a jolt of concern in mid-November when Biden appointed Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond as incoming director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, with special responsibility for climate issues and the pandemic. The 12-year congressman earned a reputation as a climate conservative, supporting fossil-fuel exports and offshore drilling while opposing efforts to tighten regulations on fracking and the disposal of toxic coal ash.

But Biden went on to make better choices. In December, he appointed former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy, a key architect of the Paris Agreement, to run a new White House office on climate change. As president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, McCarthy sued the Trump administration more than 100 times over its attempts to ease environmental regulations.

And then there’s Michael Regan, Biden’s popular pick as the new EPA head. Regan began his career as an air-quality specialist with the EPA. He then spent eight years at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy organization best known for championing early bans on whaling, leaded gasoline and hazardous chemicals such as CFCs.

For the past four years, Regan was an activist secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. Inheriting a dispirited department that was defanged by a previous Republican administration (sound familiar?), Regan tightened regulations and signed significant mitigation deals with chemical and energy companies. “Michael Regan will be exactly the kind of administrator that the EPA needs to fix the damage that was done under four years of Trump and tackle the climate and health crisis facing Americans,” said Jeremy Symons, an environmental consultant who worked with Regan at Environmental Defense.

As the first Black person to run the EPA, Regan will also focus on environmental and economic justice. On his appointment he announced, “We will be driven by our convictions that every person in our great country has the right to clean air, clean water and a healthier life, no matter how much money they have in their pockets, the color of their skin or the community that they live in.”

Given the Trump-inspired insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, this message can’t can’t be emphasized enough. A divided America needs healing. A job-creating green revolution will boost the economy, put the U.S. on a more sustainable track and promote social justice.

Canadians accustomed to the Trudeau Liberals’ lukewarm embrace of climate policies have spent four years worrying about America’s rejection of the environmental crisis. Now, armed with a committed cabinet and an unexpected (albeit slim) majority in the Senate, the 78-year-old Biden may soon challenge Canada to keep up.

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Win or lose, Biden’s “Clean Energy Revolution” gave new hope to activists who have seen country after country (including Canada) pass the buck on climate change. At last a major-party candidate was acknowledging the crisis by committing himself to a detailed plan (19 pages long) that addresses not just carbon emissions but a whole ecosystem of related issues, including housing and social justice.

Best of all, Biden positioned his policy not as a gruelling struggle but as a shining opportunity to make the world healthier, fairer and more prosperous. In a phrase familiar to readers of Corporate Knights, he pledged to “Build Back Better.”

Biden’s plan, should he be elected, includes a pledge to sign, on day one, a series of executive orders “with unprecedented reach” to get America on the right track – starting with rejoining the Paris Agreement. As a president’s powers are limited, he also vowed to demand that Congress enact legislation to reach 100% clean electricity by 2035 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In his vision, America could become “the engine of the world’s clean energy economy,” developing cutting-edge technology to sell around the world.

Biden, the most “establishment” of all the candidates for the Democratic nomination, seemed an unlikely climate champion. As a senator, though, he introduced Washington’s first climate change bill back in 1986. (His bill died in the Senate, but a version later resurfaced and was signed into law by Ronald Reagan.) The Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice-president, talked the talk on climate issues but spent its first term addressing the 2008 financial crisis and afterward ran into opposition in Congress. Climate activists still begrudge Obama’s 2015 decision to allow Shell to drill for oil in Arctic waters.

When Biden began campaigning for the Democratic nomination, his proposed climate policies electrified nobody. The youth-oriented Sunrise Movement gave Biden’s plan just 75 points out of a possible 200 – far behind the scores of Bernie Sanders (183) and Elizabeth Warren (175). But after sewing up the nomination, Biden pivoted. He adopted the best ideas of his rivals (particularly those of Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee) and appointed outspoken Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and former secretary of state John Kerry to co-chair his climate task force.

By contrast, Trump’s re-election policies included breathless updates on the pipelines his administration had approved and the environmental and public health regulations he’d rolled back (more than 100 in total). A second term would give Republicans more clout to fight the many appeals of their anti-climate policies by advocacy groups and Democratic governors – and more time to appoint GOP judges to rule on those cases.

Worse, it would encourage other countries to ignore emission regulations, further eroding the world’s chances of limiting global warming to the Paris Agreement targets. “If Donald Trump is reelected,” wrote David Roberts at Vox.com, “the likely result will be irreversible changes to the climate that will degrade the quality of life of every subsequent generation of human beings.”

Either way, America seems likely to become a nation of informed, determined and increasingly motivated climate activists.

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The European Union is well out in front on this issue, recently unveiling a €1 trillion ($1.57 trillion Canadian) plan to reach carbon neutrality, create more sustainable and resilient communities and create a “circular economy” with less waste of both resources and energy. Half of this spending is expected to come directly from the EU budget; the the rest will come from member state contributions, financing from the European Investment Bank and investments by the private sector. EU President Ursula von der Leyen has described the plan to slash carbon emissions by more than 50% by 2030 and to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 as Europe’s “man on the moon moment.” Except that instead of a quest for geopolitical bragging rights, this moonshot is about planetary survival right here at home.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden also seems to have grasped both the need and the opportunity around bold climate action, significantly upping his game with a US$2 trillion ($2.6 trillion Canadian) four-year plan that includes achieving a zero-emissions power sector by 2035.

So where’s Canada? Still talking the good talk, with the Liberal government promising a binding carbon-neutral national mandate for 2050, but still not walking the walk. In its 2019 budget, the federal government committed less than $64 billion to all infrastructure development over the next four years. The government also earmarked $435 million to help Canadians switch to electric vehicles and invited the auto industry to “access” its $800 million Strategic Innovation Fund. Then there is $1 billion dedicated to helping municipalities and the institutional sector improve energy efficiency and $35 million for a Just Transition Fund for workers in coal mining communities. So Canada has, at best, just cracked the $1.5 billion mark, while its peers are planning to spend trillions.

Sure Canada is a smaller country with a population roughly 10% that of the U.S. and about 8% of the EU’s. But to match the level of ambition in the EU and Biden plans, we should be spending in the hundreds of billions, not just billions in the single digits. We are currently off by orders of magnitude when it comes to what it will take to both rebound our economy and address the climate crisis. Even if we just compare the EU’s direct budget spending plan – roughly $617 billion directly from EU and member budgets – Canada is still lagging significantly.

This matters not just because we desperately need to get our climate house in order, but also because weak ambition could be very costly. The EU has made it clear that it plans to tax goods entering its massive market from climate laggards and has additionally hinted at restrictions on agricultural products that are not sustainably produced. Of course, what is also at stake is leadership in new services and industries, whether it is innovative “bundled project” financing for building retrofits, artificial intelligence for buildings and transport, or the manufacturing of electric cars.

Canada recently joined the “3% Club,” a group of countries, companies and institutions committed to achieving 3% annual increases in energy efficiency. That would be a big step up for a country that has been averaging an unimpressive 1% annual improvement in energy efficiency over the past 15 years. Even more importantly, the commitment came with no specific mechanisms or budget attached, including no commitment to the sort of national building retrofit program that is central to both the Biden and EU plans.

And while Canada’s commitment to help workers affected by its coal phase-out plan is laudable, it is again almost laughably small compared to EU and Biden commitments. The EU, for example, is earmarking €100 billion to a Just Transition Fund for vulnerable sectors, while the Biden plan commits 40% of its infrastructure and energy spending to disadvantaged communities.

In this regard, the Biden plan is simply recognizing the stark realities revealed by the COVID crisis and the linkages between poor air quality and other pollution, poverty and poor health outcomes. Climate change, of course, is only going to exacerbate the impact on vulnerable communities, with hotter weather promising to stir up an even thicker stew of pollutants.

And that’s the real message behind the EU and Biden plans: these initiatives do not represent some sort of wild spending spree – they are exactly what is needed if we want to see our economies grow rather than shrink. The EU plan, for example, reflects projections that warming of more than 3 degrees Celsius could trigger GDP losses of 2 to 8%, with southern countries hit the hardest by flooding, droughts and heat-related mortality. On the other hand, the EU estimates that carbon neutrality will boost GDP by 2% and create millions of jobs. There is an important lesson in this for Canada, where warming is happening at twice the global average rate.

This is a case where modest Canadian incrementalism simply isn’t going to cut it. We need to be bold. And green.

Rick Smith is the executive director of the Broadbent Institute.

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