Biden touts economic impact of green policies in New York

President Biden touted his administration’s record on climate and renewable energy in remarks Tuesday evening at Climate Week in New York.

In his remarks, Biden did not name former President Trump but said that when he entered office, “there was no real plan to do anything” about climate issues ranging from extreme weather and flooding to wildfires. The president touted the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the law he signed in 2022 that marks the largest climate bill in U.S. history.

“We’re making the [electric vehicle] battery components here in America, making sure the supply chain starts in America,” Biden said, and as a result “we’ve quadrupled the development of electric vehicles since we took office, we’re deploying a fleet of clean school buses that don’t pollute the air [and] our postal service is going fully electric.”

Biden presented the administration’s efforts as a driver of economic prosperity as well as reduced emissions, rather than a binary choice between the two. He juxtaposed the administration’s environmental efforts with recent positive economic news such as the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates last week, additionally noting that “clean energy jobs are growing twice as fast as the economy overall.”

Biden also pointed to the administration’s “30 by 30” initiative, which aims to preserve 30 percent of federal lands and waters, as well as its Justice40 initiative, which sets a goal for 40 percent of benefits from certain renewable energy and sustainable housing programs to flow to disadvantaged and frontline communities.

“By the way, windmills do not cause cancer,” the president quipped, in reference to a false claim by Trump.

The remarks, likely to be some of the last major remarks on climate of Biden’s presidency, come as some congressional Republicans have signaled that even in the event of a GOP trifecta next year, they are leery of the impact to the economy if they fully dismantle the IRA.

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