Beto O’Rourke is the latest Democrat to make climate change central to his campaign
Beto O’Rourke on Monday pledged to spend trillions to combat the climate crisis in the first major policy proposal of his presidential campaign, making him the latest Democrat in the 2020 race to embrace climate change as a top issue.
“The greatest threat we face — which will test our country, our democracy, every single one of us — is climate change,” O’Rourke told supporters in a campaign email.
His plan, starting day one in the White House, would include spending a record $5 trillion on climate action over ten years and mandating the US reduce its emissions to net zero by 2050. (This means the nation, by mid-century, would no longer be emitting more climate pollution into the atmosphere than it was pulling out of it through trees and other ways.)
“This is one more demonstration that if you want to be a serious candidate, having a real plan to tackle climate change is essential,” Derek Walker, vice president for US climate at the Environmental Defense Fund, told BuzzFeed News. [Continue reading…]