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BIDEN-SANDERS UNITY TASK FORCE RECOMMENDATIONS COMBATING THE CLIMATE CRISIS AND PURSUING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Climate change is a global emergency. We have no time to waste in taking action to protect Americans’ lives and futures. From Houston, Texas, to Paradise, California; from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Davenport, Iowa, the last four years have seen record-breaking storms, devastating wildfires, and historic floods. Urban and rural communities alike have suffered tens of billions of dollars in economic losses. Dams have failed catastrophically in Michigan. Neighborhoods have been all but wiped off the map in Florida. Farmers’ crops have been drowned in their fields across the Midwest. Thousands of Americans have died. And President Trump still callously and willfully denies the science that explains why so many are suffering.

Like so many crises facing the United States, the impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed in our society or our economy. Communities of color, low-income families, and indigenous communities have long suffered disproportionate and cumulative harm from air pollution, water pollution, and toxic sites. Highways have been built to enforce racial segregation in our cities, with federal dollars and federal policy support. Coal companies have been allowed to reduce or ignore their obligations to fund retirees’ promised health care benefits and pensions. From Flint, Michigan, to the Navajo Nation, to Lowndes County, Alabama, millions of Americans have been denied access to clean, safe drinking water and even the most basic wastewater infrastructure. And although the youngest generations of Americans have contributed the least to this calamity, they stand to lose the most as they suffer from the impacts of runaway carbon pollution for decades to come.

Scientists inform us we must achieve net-zero carbon emissions across our economy as quickly as possible in order to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. The United States—and the world—is currently heading well over the remaining carbon budget allowed to achieve that goal.

Democrats believe there is a better way. We can andmust build a thriving, equitable, and globally competitive clean energy economy that puts workers and communities first and leaves no one behind. We will help rebuild our economy from the COVID-19 pandemic and President Trump’s recession by mobilizing historic, transformative public and private investments to launch a clean energy revolution. We will use federal resources and authorities across all agencies to accelerate development of a clean energy economy and deploy proven clean energy solutions; createmillions of family-supporting and union jobs; upgrade and make resilient our energy, water, wastewater, and transportation infrastructure; anddevelop and manufacture next-generation technologies to address the climate crisis right here in the United States. And we will do all this with an eye to equity, access, benefits, and ownership opportunities for frontline communities—because Democrats believe we must embed environmental justice and climate justice at the heart of our policy and governing agenda...

Read the Climate Plan