04 November 20
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04 November 20
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Reader Supported News
Trump Falsely Says He's Already Won, Announces Intent to Invalidate Millions of Votes
Peter Wade, Rolling Stone
Wade writes: "The president addressed a mostly maskless crowd in the White House early Wednesday morning where he spewed lies and disinformation about the results of the presidential election and announced his intent to invalidate millions of legally-cast votes."
“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop,” the president threatened
Trump falsely claimed that the Democrats and media were conspiring to defraud the American public, saying that initial election results were showing him “winning everything” and then “all of a sudden it was just called off.” That is, of course, not the case. Election results are still coming in and will likely continue to trickle in as the week goes on.
“All of a sudden everything just stopped,” Trump said. “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. So the goal now is to ensure the integrity [of the election] for this nation.”
Because of the pandemic, this election has higher numbers of absentee and mail-in ballots than ever before, and in some key swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, officials were not allowed to count those votes until election day. So for those states, we may not know the final results until later this week. But the president said that counting those legitimate votes amounts to fraud and announced his intent to bring this to the Supreme Court, although he gave no details about how that would happen.
“This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation,” he said. “We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”
The president has been previewing this strategy in recent weeks, claiming ballots counted after election day are somehow illegitimate. Don’t fall for it. He is trying to undermine our democracy. This election is far from over.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden took a much more measured approach in his election night communications compared to the president. “We knew this was going to go long,” he told voters in a speech. “We feel good about where we are. We really do.”
Later, he tweeted, “It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare the winner of this election. It’s the voters’ place.”
Biden’s campaign manager released a statement blasting Trump’s :naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens”:
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A sign directs voters to a polling station on Nov. 8, 2016, in Cave Creek, Arizona. The state is one of several considering new voting laws that could make it more complicated to vote in 2020. (photo: Ralph Freso/Getty Images)
Biden Path to Electoral College Win Widens as Votes Come In
Gregory Korte and Josh Wingrove, Bloomberg
Excerpt: "The presidential battlefield is narrowing to a smaller number of states, with Democratic nominee Joe Biden's chances of an Electoral College victory getting higher as votes come in. Biden now has 238 electoral votes to President Donald Trump's 213."
Biden edged ahead of Trump in Wisconsin, one of the three “Blue Wall” states where voting tallies all moved in his favor as more were counted. His victory in Arizona, a state Trump won in 2016, gives him more breathing room. Even without Pennsylvania, Biden could now reach the necessary 270 electoral votes if he can win Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Nevada, where he was leading by a razor-thin margin early Wednesday.
Those states still have dwindling but significant numbers of votes outstanding from absentee voters and large urban counties that tend to vote Democratic. Election officials said it would be later Wednesday before they could finish counting the Wisconsin and Michigan votes, and Nevada won’t resume counting absentee ballots until Thursday.
The difference-maker for Biden could end up being a single electoral vote from the second congressional district of Nebraska, one of two states that splits its votes. Trump won that district in 2016 but Biden won it Tuesday. Biden was also gaining ground in Georgia as votes from Democratic-heavy urban centers came in.
Trump needs at least four of the following states to pass 270 electoral votes: Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He won them all in 2016. If Biden wins any two of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, he’ll win.
There is a scenario, though it’s now looking less likely, in which the race could come down to a single electoral vote -- or even a tie. Maine also splits its votes by congressional district, and one of its two districts remains up for grabs.
If Trump wins that vote -- and loses Wisconsin and North Carolina -- both Biden and Trump will have 269 electoral votes. In that case, Trump would likely win the tiebreaker vote in the House of Representatives, where each state delegation gets a single vote.
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Voting by mail. (photo: Don Ryan/AP)
Remaining Vote in Pennsylvania Appears to Be Overwhelmingly for Biden
Nate Cohn, The New York Times
Cohn writes: "Joe Biden has won absentee ballots counted in Pennsylvania by an overwhelming margin so far, according to data from the Secretary of State early Wednesday. If he carried the remaining absentee ballots by a similar margin, he would win the state."
President Trump leads by nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania as of 5 a.m. on Wednesday, and Mr. Biden’s chances depend on whether he can win a large percentage of the more than 1.4 million absentee ballots that remain to be counted.
So far, Mr. Biden has won absentee voters in Pennsylvania, 78 percent to 21 percent, according to the Secretary of State’s office. The results comport with the findings of pre-election surveys and an analysis of absentee ballot requests, which all indicated that Mr. Biden held an overwhelming lead among absentee voters.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a campaign rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders at Venice Beach, Calif. (photo: Monica Almeida/Reuters)
AOC and Her Fellow 'Squad' Members All Win Re-Election to Congress
Martin Pengelly and Maanvi Singh, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "All four members of the progressive 'squad' of Democratic congresswomen have handily won re-election."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan will return to their seats in the US Congress. The four women of color, who championed ambitious climate action, healthcare for all Americans and other progressive causes while enduring frequent racism and derision from Donald Trump, will no longer be newcomers to Capitol Hill.
“Our sisterhood is resilient,” Omar tweeted.
“Serving New York-14 and fighting for working-class families in Congress has been the greatest honor, privilege and responsibility of my life,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Thank you to the Bronx and Queens for re-electing me to the House despite the millions spent against us, and trusting me to represent you once more.”
Ocasio-Cortez had been expected to easily win re-election, but like other congressional Democrats was watching hopes that the party would expand their majority wane. After Republicans flipped two House seats in Miami-Dade county – where a majority of the voters are Latino – she lamented that Democrats and Joe Biden had not done more to galvanize Latino voters.
“Tonight’s results … are evolving and ongoing,” the New Yorker wrote, “but I will say we’ve been sounding the alarm about Democratic vulnerabilities with Latinos for a long, long time. There is a strategy and a path, but the necessary effort simply hasn’t been put in.
“We have work to do.”
In a message to supporters, Pressley said: “Together, we have fought for our shared humanity. We have organized. We have mobilized. We have legislated our values. I am so proud to be your congresswoman and your partner in the work. I believe in the power of us. And we’re just getting started.”
Tlaib, who with Omar was one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress two years ago, tweeted congratulations to Pressley.
“The Squad is big,” she said.
Trump has frequently vilified all four congresswomen, and in the lead up to election day lobbed frequent xenophobic attacks at Omar – accusing her at a recent rally of telling “us” – his overwhelmingly white audience – “how to run our country”. Omar came to the US at the age of 12, after fleeing civil war in Somalia. When she was first elected in 2018, she became the first woman of color to represent Minnesota in Congress.
The president has also often singled out Ocasio-Cortez as a radical, socialist voice in the Democratic party. Although her seat in New York’s Bronx and Queens was never competitive, she raised more than $17m for her re-election campaign. Her challenger, Republican John Cummings, raised about $9.5m – and a group called the “Stop AOC Pac” spent more than half a million dollars on ads opposing the congresswoman.
Other progressive representatives who have won re-election include Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin. And the progressives Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri are headed to Congress for the first time, after winning their respective elections.
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Mail-in ballots. (photo: Elaine Thompson/AP)
USPS Disregards Court Order to Conduct Sweeps in 12 Postal Districts After More Than 300,000 Ballots Can't Be Traced
Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "The U.S. Postal Service turned down a federal judge's order late Tuesday afternoon to sweep mail processing facilities serving 15 states, saying instead it would stick to its own inspection schedule. The court order came after the agency disclosed that more than 300,000 ballots nationwide could not be traced."
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the District of Columbia on Tuesday had given the mail agency until 3:30 p.m. to conduct the “all clear” checks to ensure that any found ballots could be delivered before polls closed. His order affected 12 postal districts spanning 15 states.
But in a filing sent to the court just before 5 p.m., Justice Department attorneys representing the Postal Service said the agency would not abide by the order, to better accommodate inspectors’ schedules.
Attorney John Robinson, writing for the Justice Department, noted that the daily review process was already scheduled to occur from 4 to 8 p.m. on election night. “Given the time constraints set by this Court’s order, and the fact that Postal Inspectors operate on a nationwide basis, Defendants were unable to accelerate the daily review process to run from 12:30 pm to 3:00 pm without significantly disrupting preexisting activities on the day of the Election, something which Defendants did not understand the Court to invite or require.”
The agency disclosed Tuesday morning that 300,523 ballots nationwide had received incoming scans at postal processing plants but not exit scans, leaving voting rights advocates worried that hundreds of thousands of votes could be trapped in the mail system.
Sullivan denied an emergency hearing request from the NAACP, which brought the lawsuit against the Postal Service with a group of voters and other civil rights groups. But he told Justice Department attorneys to be “prepared to discuss the apparent lack of compliance with his order” at a previously scheduled Wednesday conference.
“This is super frustrating,” said Allison Zieve, an attorney representing the NAACP. “If they get all the sweeps done today in time, it doesn’t matter if they flouted the judge’s order. They say here they will get the sweeps done between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., but 8 p.m. is too late, and in some states 5 p.m. is too late.”
The Postal Service began election mail “all clear” sweeps in January, agency spokesman David Partenheimer wrote in an emailed statement, to search for misplaced political mail (such as campaign ads) and election mail (ballots, ballot applications and voter registration information).
Since Thursday, he said, agents from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the agency’s law enforcement arm, conducted daily reviews at 220 ballot processing facilities. Inspectors walk the facility and observe mail conditions and check daily political- and election-mail logs.
In the past 14 months, Partenheimer said, the Postal Service has processed more than 4.5 billion pieces of political and election mail, up 114 percent from the 2016 general-election cycle.
“Ballots will continue to be accepted and processed as they are presented to us and we will deliver them to their intended destination,” Partenheimer said.
Timely ballot processing scores, which indicate the proportion of ballots sorted, postmarked and transported within the agency’s one-to-three-day service window, worsened in the run-up to Election Day, according to data the agency submitted to the court. In 28 states, election officials must receive ballots by the end of Election Day to be counted.
Voting and postal experts say the mail agency should be able to process 97 percent of incoming ballots — or completed ballots sent to election officials. But data shows the Postal Service missed that mark seven out of eight days. And in the past five days, processing scores dropped, from 97.1 percent on Oct. 28 to 89.6 percent on Monday. (The Postal Service did not report Sunday data.)
In 17 postal districts that cover 151 electoral votes, Monday’s on-time processing rate was even lower: 81.1 percent.
Sullivan ordered officials from the Postal Inspection Service, the agency’s law enforcement arm, or the Postal Service Office of Inspector General, its independent watchdog, to inspect all processing facilities in the districts of Central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Metro, Detroit, Colorado/Wyoming, Atlanta, Houston, Alabama, Northern New England (Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine), Greater South Carolina, South Florida, Lakeland (Wisconsin) and Arizona (which includes New Mexico) by 3 p.m.
Lawyers for the Postal Service cautioned that the ballot processing scores might be unreliable. The figures do not include “first mile” and “last mile” mail-handling steps that could add time to deliveries. The Postal Service has also encouraged local post offices to sort ballots themselves and make deliveries to election officials, rather than sending the items to regional processing plants.
More than 65 million Americans have voted using absentee ballots, according to the U.S. Elections Project, and more than 27 million mail ballots remained outstanding. Experts are encouraged by high ballot return rates in swing states that could soften the impact of mail delays. In Michigan, 85.6 percent of absentee ballots have been returned. In Wisconsin, 89.7 percent have been returned, and in Pennsylvania, 80.9 percent.
Even so, the Postal Service continued Tuesday to try to track down the more than 300,000 ballots it said had entered processing plants but could not be traced. The agency cautioned that number was likely high, and that clerks were hand-culling ballots at those facilities to expedite delivery. However, officials said they did not know how widespread that process was, and how many ballots could remain.
In 17 postal districts in swing states that account for 151 electoral votes, more than 81,000 ballots were untraceable. In Los Angeles, 48,120 ballots were missing, the most of any district. San Diego was next, with 42,543 unaccounted for.
“At this point,” said Zieve, “we don’t have any way of knowing if those ballots are of concern or if they aren’t.”
Sullivan has been more aggressive than judges in Pennsylvania, New York and Washington state to grant increased oversight of the mail. He has ordered the Postal Service to report daily data on ballot performance scores and to provide written explanations each day for underperforming districts.
He has scheduled daily hearings — some of which have included sworn testimony from postal executives — on the agency’s struggles. On Monday, he lamented the nation’s crazy-quilt of mail-in-voting rules, saying the system should be overhauled.
“When I read about the astronaut voting seamlessly from outer space, there must be a better way for Congress to address all these issues,” he said.
Sullivan contrasted the chaotic mishmash of Election Day rules with the relative simplicity of the federal income-tax deadline: “Think about it. Every year everyone knows to file taxes by April 15th. It’s seamless. If you don’t file, there’s penalties. But everyone knows — that’s a given.”
By contrast, state vote-by-mail deadlines present a spaghetti-like tangle for the Postal Service and voters to navigate.
“Postmarks matter, postmarks don’t matter. … Delivery matters, delivery after a date doesn’t matter. Why can’t there be one set of rules?” Sullivan said, concluding, “Someone needs to be tinkering with the system to make sure it works seamlessly and better for the American voters.”
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County employees process mail-in ballots at a Clark County election department facility Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher/AP)
Here's When Each State Starts Tallying Up Mail-In Ballots
Damare Baker and Lillian Bautista, The Hill
Excerpt: "Record numbers of mail-in and absentee ballots cast have many voters wondering how soon their state and others will begin tallying up those votes."
Many states can start processing ballots before Election Day, even if they don’t start counting them until Tuesday. Either way, the results are never released until after polls close in that state.
Below is a list of when each state starts counting up ballots cast before Election Day.
Alabama
Alabama will begin counting mail-in ballots after polls close at 8 p.m. ET.
Alaska
Alaska will start tallying up the ballots after polls close at 12 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
Arizona
Arizona began tallying preelection ballots on Oct. 20.
Arkansas
Absentee votes will start being counted up on Election Day before the polls close at 9 p.m. ET.
California
California will tally mail-in votes after polls close at 11 p.m. ET.
Colorado
Mail-in ballot counting began on Oct. 19 in Colorado.
Connecticut
Connecticut will count absentee ballots on Election Day, with start times varying by locality.
Delaware
Delaware started counting mail-in ballots on Oct. 30.
District of Columbia
Mail-in ballots will be counted when the polls close at 8 p.m. ET.
Florida
The Sunshine State began counting absentee ballots on Oct. 12.
Georgia
Georgia will count absentee ballots after polls open Election Day.
Hawaii
Hawaii began counting mail-in ballots on Oct. 24.
Idaho
Idaho will start counting absentee ballots when the polls close at 10 p.m. ET.
Illinois
Ballot counting will begin no later than 8 p.m. ET, when the polls close.
Indiana
Counties can decide if they want to start counting ballots as early as 6 a.m. ET on Election Day.
Iowa
Absentee ballots will be counted by 11 p.m. ET on Election Day.
Kansas
Advance voting ballots may be counted before Election Day.
Kentucky
Kentucky will begin counting absentee ballots at 8 a.m. ET on Election Day.
Louisiana
Mail-in ballots will be counted when the polls close at 9 p.m. ET, but the start time varies by parish.
Maine
Absentee ballots will be counted when the polls close at 8 p.m. ET.
Maryland
Maryland began counting ballots on Oct. 1.
Massachusetts
Absentee ballots will be counted after the polls close at 8 p.m. ET.
Michigan
Election officials can start counting absentee ballots after the polls open at 7 a.m. ET.
Minnesota
Minnesota will count absentee ballots after the polls close at 9 p.m ET.
Mississippi
Absentee ballots will be counted after the polls close at 8 p.m. ET.
Missouri
Absentee ballots will be counted on Election Day, but start time varies by county.
Montana
Counting of absentee ballots began on Monday.
Nebraska
Nebraska started counting mail-in ballots on Monday.
Nevada
Absentee and vote-by-mail ballots will be counted after polls close at 10 p.m. ET.
New Hampshire
Absentee ballots will be counted after polls close at 7 p.m. ET.
New Jersey
New Jersey started counting mail-in ballots on Oct. 24.
New Mexico
Absentee and early in-person ballots will be counted after polls close at 9 p.m. ET.
New York
Early ballots will be counted after polls close at 9 p.m. ET.
North Carolina
North Carolina began counting absentee ballots on Oct. 20.
North Dakota
Absentee and vote-by-mail ballots will be counted after polls close on Election Day. Polls may stay open until 10 p.m. ET, depending on locality.
Ohio
Absentee ballots will start being counted when polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET.
Oklahoma
Absentee ballots will be counted on Election Day, but county election boards can begin the process beforehand with approval from the secretary of State Election Board.
Oregon
Oregon started counting ballots on Oct. 27.
Pennsylvania
Early ballots will be counted when the polls close at 8 p.m. ET.
Rhode Island
Mail-in ballots will be counted after the polls close at 8 p.m. ET.
South Carolina
Absentee ballots will begin being counted at 9 a.m. ET on Election Day.
South Dakota
Absentee ballots will be counted after polls close at 8 p.m. ET.
Tennessee
Absentee ballots will be counted after the polls close on Election Day. Poll closing times vary by county.
Texas
Vote-by-mail ballots will begin being counted once polls open on Election Day. In counties consisting of a population with 100,000 or more individuals, ballots can be counted following the end of the in-person early voting period on Oct. 30.
Utah
Utah can start counting mail-in ballots before Election Day.
Vermont
Absentee ballots will be counted on Election Day.
Virginia
Virginia will count absentee ballots after polls close at 7 p.m. ET.
Washington
Absentee ballots will be tallied after polls close at 11 p.m. ET.
West Virginia
Absentee votes will be counted after the polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin will count absentee ballots after polls open at 8 p.m. ET.
Wyoming
Absentee ballots will be counted when the polls open on Election Day.
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The US is set to exit the 2015 Paris climate agreement this week. But it could rejoin depending on the outcome of the presidential election. (photo: Jonathan Raa/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The US Just Left the Paris Climate Agreement
Umair Irfan, Vox
Irfan writes: "The United States left the Paris climate agreement on Wednesday, making the US the only country in the world to back out of the accord."
Why the presidential election matters so much for global action on climate change.
he United States left the Paris climate agreement on Wednesday, making the US the only country in the world to back out of the accord. But the next occupant of the White House will be the far bigger determinant of the future of international action on climate change.
Pulling out of the accord was one of President Donald Trump’s signature campaign promises in 2016. He announced on June 1, 2017, that the US would begin the exit process. But because of the way the agreement works, the US was not able to officially withdraw from the accord until this week, the day after Election Day.
If Trump wins, the US will stay that course and watch the world coordinate action on climate change from the sidelines. The US will not be subject to the terms of the agreement, and it will play no role in shaping it from here on out — where emissions reduction targets should be, what counts as a valid way to reduce emissions, helping lower-income countries adapt to climate change, what environmental rules should govern trade, and so on.
But former Vice President Joe Biden has pledged to rejoin the accord “on day one” if he becomes president.
This potential climate policy whiplash for the US — which helped convene the Paris agreement in the first place, then started backing out, and may now jump back in — means that the US will have to make up for lost time and rebuild trust with other countries. It’s not even the first time the US has pulled a 180-degree turn on a major international climate agreement.
The US, as the wealthiest country in the world and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, has an outsize responsibility in international climate negotiations. Where the US goes, many others follow. Despite the US backing out of the Paris accord, other parts of the world have recently stepped up their ambitions on climate change, from the European Union, the world’s largest economic bloc, to China, currently the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter.
Even with the Covid-19 pandemic, and in some cases because of it, countries like South Korea, France, and Italy are taking more aggressive action to cut greenhouse gases.
However, some of the more ambitious targets under the Paris agreement — like keeping average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — are nearly out of reach unless drastic action from governments and consumers is taken immediately. So despite the waffling from the US, it will still have a place at the table. But there are still some things the US needs to do before it can take a seat.
The Paris climate agreement has been struggling
It took the world decades of stops and false starts to come up with the Paris climate agreement, and it remains the most potent international framework to get countries to reduce their contributions to global warming. However, it has critical weaknesses that have threatened to collapse it completely.
In 2015, just about every country in the world convened in Paris and agreed to a few simple but hard-fought principles: The climate is changing due to human activity, the world should aim to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius this century compared to preindustrial levels, every country has an obligation to act, but every country gets to set their own goals.
The terms of the climate agreement are voluntary and don’t carry the force of law (hence “Paris agreement” or “Paris accord,” and not “Paris treaty,” which would be legally binding). But the terms are structured in a way that creates a lot of incentives to encourage countries to do more to limit their emissions of heat-trapping gases, and it contains some prods for countries that are slower to act.
It was clear from the outset that what countries initially planned to do to cut greenhouse gases wouldn’t be enough to stay below 2°C, let alone hit an even more aggressive target under the agreement of limiting warming to less than 1.5°C. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the world would have to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half from current levels by 2030, reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and then start pulling carbon dioxide back out of the air thereafter in order to meet the 1.5°C benchmark.
But the idea of the Paris agreement was to get everyone to agree to a common set of goals and strengthen their commitments over time, with periodic international meetings to see where everyone stands and to hammer out the tedious rules of how to gauge progress. So far, this hasn’t been enough to keep the world on track to meet the goals of the accord.
And the subsequent meetings of the parties to the Paris agreement over the past few years have proven to be disappointments anyway, with few countries willing to step up their targets and ongoing disputes about critical details of the accord. This year’s meeting, which was scheduled to be held in Glasgow in the United Kingdom, has been postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic.
Since the exit process takes years, the US under President Trump has been sending delegations to these meetings, as the US remains a party to the agreement. But other negotiating teams have accused the US of making it harder to resolve thorny issues like how countries afflicted by the consequences of climate change should be compensated, although the US was aiming to exit the Paris accord altogether. Members of the US delegation have even used the meetings to promote the use of coal.
The Trump administration has argued that the terms of the Paris agreement demanded too much of the US and too little of countries like China that have set anemic goals, even though the agreement allows countries to set their own targets.
“Over the last 15 years, U.S. emissions have decreased while China’s have continued to increase,” said a State Department spokesperson in an email. “China claims status as a ‘developing country’ to avoid shouldering its fair share of responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions—even though its per capita CO2 emissions have reached the level of many high-income countries.”
All the while, the planet has continued to heat up. Though global greenhouse gas emissions were down slightly this year due to the pandemic, the overall trend is still upward and doesn’t show any signs of reversing. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have continued to set new records every year.
The US can get back into the Paris agreement pretty easily, but domestic politics will still be a big hurdle
Getting back into the Paris accord, on paper, would pretty simple for Biden if he wins the election. According to Andrew Light, a former senior climate advisor at the State Department under President Obama, all Biden would have to do is send a notice to the United Nations as soon as he gets into office stating that the United States intends to get back in the agreement. Then 30 days later, the US is back in.
“The more difficult part is that every party to the Paris agreement has to have a commitment that’s in good standing,” Light said. The initial commitment the US made in 2015, known as its nationally determined contribution, aimed to get the US to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions between 26 and 28 percent below its emissions in 2005 by the year 2025.
But by 2020, countries are expected to come up with targets aimed at 2030, and the US is behind on putting its goals together. “By Inauguration Day, the US is sort of technically overdue on this,” Light said.
The US will likely have to meet some of its previous commitments, too. In 2014, the US pledged to contribute $3 billion to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund, a program that helps developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. But under Trump, the US declined to fulfill its remaining $2 billion contribution.
While other parties to the Paris agreement will likely cut the US some slack, it does mean the US needs to come up with a more ambitious goal than what it has already and start laying out the details for how it will get there.
Trump has no plan to deal with climate change, but Biden has put forth an ambitious set of proposals to get the United States to a 100 percent clean energy economy by 2050. Some of these plans can be enacted from the White House, but the more aggressive tactics, like $1.7 trillion in federal investment to drive action on climate change, would require Congress’s approval.
That means those in control of the House and Senate will determine just how much Biden can enact his agenda domestically, which in turn will constrain what he can bring to the table internationally.
For Biden, it may be a familiar situation. The economic turmoil he would inherit in January 2021 would likely echo what he saw in January 2009 as vice president, with an ongoing recession and huge job losses. The Covid-19 pandemic has similarly triggered an economic slowdown and a massive surge in unemployment, so there may be appetite for a stimulus package with a focus on climate change in the new Congress.
What’s different this time around is that there is a much stronger grassroots activist movement for action on climate change than there was in 2009. There’s also a coalition of city, state, and business leaders in the US who have remained committed to limiting climate change under the Trump administration despite the impending US exit from the Paris agreement.
“The thing that Biden has that really is his ace on this is the fact that non-federal actors in the US have just been going all out since Trump announced the US is pulling out of Paris,” Light said. “That will be a much more secure foundation, and a well-coordinated foundation, for Biden to work with, way more than Obama had in 2009.”
The rest of the world is moving ahead on climate change, with or without the US
While the US has wavered in its commitment to fighting climate change, other countries have been charging ahead. So if the US were to rejoin the Paris climate agreement under Biden, it would enter an escalating race between the biggest economies on earth.
“The scene is not the same as when the US withdrew three years ago,” said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the Paris agreement. “The US coming back, or not, to the global landscape of climate action will find a different distribution of relations.”
For one thing, the technologies needed to shift to clean energy have made huge strides. Renewable energy is now the largest source of new power generation in the US, and in many markets, it’s competitive with — if not cheaper than — fossil fuels. Similar patterns have been repeating across the world. Meanwhile, major oil companies have been struggling with flat demand and limited new investments. In the US, numerous coal companies have declared bankruptcy and more than 100 gigawatts of coal generation capacity have been slated to shutter in the past decade, despite Trump’s efforts to prop up the industry.
In the international arena, it’s true that some countries have been able to obscure their own tepid climate change plans in the shadow of the pending withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement. Countries like Brazil, Australia, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia have put forward weak commitments and have continued pushing the development and export of fossil fuels.
On the other hand, other nations have decided that fighting climate change will be a key part of their economic strategy in the decades to come.
In September, China made a surprise announcement at the United Nations General Assembly that it’s striving to be carbon-neutral by 2060. While China hasn’t laid out exactly how it plans to meet its goal, researchers have begun chalking out a road map to get China to its targets.
The European Union, meanwhile, has adopted a program called the European Green Deal, which aims to make its 28 member countries carbon-neutral by 2050. Its core elements, such as ensuring a just economic transition for workers in industries likely to be left behind in the shift to clean energy, are actually modeled on the Green New Deal proposal in the US. Crucially, Europe’s program calls for a border adjustment carbon tax that could go into effect as soon as 2021. For countries that aren’t doing enough to fight climate change, their goods could face additional tariffs in the EU.
If the United States decided to stay out of the Paris agreement and not step up its commitments, the EU’s new policies could take a big bite out of the US’s roughly $320 billion worth of exports to the bloc.
The EU, China, Japan, and South Korea are also working on their own trade agreements with climate change as a key element.
That means the US stands to be sidelined in a new bloc of international trade if Trump wins reelection. “The stakes are just enormous for what America loses,” Light said.
On the other hand, if Biden wins and rejoins the accord, companies and countries will see that as a cue to pursue more aggressive action on climate change. That will help ensure that US goods can still be sold in other countries that are pursuing tougher targets on climate change.
“In the case of a Biden win, the prospect of a rapid transition to a net-zero economy will be more real to investors, markets, and businesses in the US, as well as outside, because many global companies are US-based,” Tubiana said. “There will be an acceleration of that momentum.”
Still, meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement remains a tall order. It’s one thing to set a goalpost 30 years from today and another to actually start putting plans into action now. Every country will still have to wrestle with its own domestic political problems, and other major countries like India, the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, will have to be cajoled into setting more aggressive limits on carbon dioxide. But with the US back on board, the world has a better shot at keeping climate change in check.
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