The 2020 election may determine America's future position on climate change (opens in new tab) and environmental issues. Hot topics such as fracking and clean energy have become catastrophically relevant (opens in new tab) this year due to an increase in natural disasters (opens in new tab), including the California wildfire crisis, and sustained global temperature increases. Incumbent President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, as well as their opponents, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris, tend to follow their respective parties' policies when it comes to environmental decision-making The 2020 presidential candidates' positions on climate issues are as follows.

Biden/Harris support the Biden Plan, a version of the Green New Deal, a Democratic-backed initiative formed based on scientific research on climate change. According to Biden's campaign website (opens in new tab), his plan is based on two beliefs: that "the United States urgently needs to embrace greater ambition on a grand scale to address the scope of this challenge" and that "the environment and economy are fully and completely connected." Based on. Biden's "clean energy revolution" proposes $1.7 trillion in federal investment in clean energy over 10 years ("leveraging additional private sector and state and local investment, totaling more than $5 trillion"), which would increase employment in the United States.

The primary goal of his plan is to help the U.S. become the cleanest "energy superpower" in the world by achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. One of the stepping stones to this goal is to invest in clean energy research and innovation, especially to encourage the use of clean energy in communities most affected by climate change. One of his groundbreaking goals is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, a major source of air pollution; according to NPR (opens in new tab), Biden supports electric vehicles and aims to create 1 million new jobs in the auto industry. Biden has also pledged not to accept political contributions from oil, gas, and coal companies.

Trump is working to eliminate regulations on natural gas and has pledged to "support our ethanol industry" (open in new tab).

"Full adoption of E15 would reduce our dependence on foreign oil by up to 250 million additional barrels each year," he told an Iowa crowd in 2019. 'So, simply put, we would have more energy. What's wrong with that?' And that's very good energy."

In June 2017, Trump announced that he had withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement (open in new tab). He said, "No other consideration can take precedence over the well-being of American citizens. The Paris Accord is just the latest example of Washington making agreements against the United States solely for the benefit of other countries, and American workers and taxpayers, whom I love, will have to absorb the costs in the form of lost jobs, lower wages, plant closings, and a significant decline in economic output." He continued: "This includes national contributions and, very importantly, ceasing implementation of the Green Climate Fund, which is causing enormous losses to the United States."

Trump said he made his decision based on jobs lost due to "energy restrictions," especially in the manufacturing, coal mining, and auto industries.

The Biden/Harris pair vowed to bring the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement. Biden plans to build on that by leading an "effort to get all major countries to increase the ambition of their domestic climate change goals." " His proposals for making this change include "making these commitments transparent and enforceable" and "integrating climate change into our foreign policy and national security strategies and our approach to trade."

The Biden administration promises to "stand up" to fossil fuel companies and other polluting corporations that "put profits before people, knowingly harm the environment, pollute the air, land, and water in our communities, and conceal information about potential environmental and health risks." His plan specifically focuses on low-income communities from Flint, Michigan to Harlan, Kentucky, promising access to safe drinking water.

According to an ABC News report (opens in new tab), President Trump in January rescinded a law previously enacted by President Obama to protect water bodies from runoff from industrial facilities and certain agricultural practices; NPR (opens in new tab) notes that the Trump administration has spent $38 billion on "clean water infrastructure." President Trump's website (opens in new tab) also lists plans for his second term that include "working with other countries to clean up the planet's oceans," but does not mention specific initiatives.

Biden seeks to re-establish and further strengthen regulations on drilling proposed by the Obama administration. According to his campaign website, Biden wants "a global moratorium on offshore drilling in the Arctic." Biden also supports only a ban on new oil and gas drilling permits on federal lands, according to ABC News (opens in new tab). The Democratic candidate has repeatedly suggested moving away from fracking as opposed to an outright ban.

In 2018, Trump proposed large-scale oil and gas drilling in continental waters, including in the Arctic, but in early September he partially withdrew the proposal and said he would place a moratorium on oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coasts of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina (open in new tab).

Biden has made it clear that he supports a science-based approach to environmentalism that recognizes the role of climate change in natural disasters such as wildfires, tropical storms, increased rainfall, ocean warming and glacier retreat. He repeatedly references scientific reports and organizations such as the Fourth National Climate Assessment, NASA, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report. Politifact has identified Biden as a "climate change pioneer" (opens in new tab).

The Trump administration has removed references to climate change from the White House website; during a September 2020 visit to northern California, when speaking with state Natural Resources Agency Commissioner Wade Crowfoot, he said, "I don't think the science knows, actually" (open in new tab) The The President continues to suggest that forest improvement (open in new tab) will solve the wildfire problem.