Biden should put climate change front and center in State of the Union

President Biden’s State of the Union address next week will surely focus heavily on Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. Much of this likely will involve immediate responses to the current crisis. The president also, however, has the opportunity to address the long-term problem of aggressive dictatorships propped up by oil revenues despite otherwise moribund economies. As long as they remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels, western democracies will keep dutifully funding the war machines of Russia and its ilk.

Biden has the opportunity to chart a bold future for the country, simultaneously unleashing the innovation to revitalize our economy, seizing the world lead in a crucial area of technology, defunding petroleum-fueled despots, and demonstrating an idealism that can win admiration around the globe.

He can achieve all of this by declaring that this country will be the world’s leader in combatting climate change. 

A determined focus on combatting climate change can transform and re-energize our economy. On the one hand, slowing climate change could head off some of the worst damage that would otherwise impoverish us. The projected one-foot rise in sea level by mid-century would destroy property of enormous value and require expensive reclamation projects to prevent even more losses. The drought in the western U.S. is the worst in over a millennium and only getting worse. It and resulting wildfires, too, are destroying more valuable infrastructure and reducing crop yields. Averting these losses would make us a much richer country.

And on the other hand, developing and implementing the technologies required to slow climate change would produce millions of jobs. Policymakers can cut interest rates and taxes to their hearts’ content, but if business cannot identify productive investments, little will happen. The boom of the 1990s occurred because business had a clear purpose: realizing the new potential of the internet. Although innovation continues in the information economy, the most obvious opportunities have already been exploited. This is why persistently low interest rates and even the massive business tax cuts enacted in 2017 failed to spur significant new investment.

Transforming the ways in which we obtain and use energy will open far greater business opportunities even than the dawning of the Information Age. Installing and maintaining solar panels, windfarms, and the like necessarily must be done in individual communities, ensuring that the jobs created will be broadly shared and cannot be sent overseas. Overall, if we start now we can add an estimated $855 billion per year to the economy by 2070 — more than the combined revenues of Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft. Even in the first five years, the investments pending in the Senate would create an estimated 2.3 million jobs.

President Kennedy committed us to the Moon landing because the Soviets had seized a strong early lead in the space race. In much the same way, we have allowed China to take a dominant initial position on responding to climate change. As with the space race, if we bring our ingenuity fully to bear, we can certainly catch up and then exceed the technological achievements of our competitors. That can only happen, however, if we make this a national priority. Business will naturally increase investments in climate-related fields, but that alone will not allow us to ramp up fast enough to retake the global lead. Well-designed government interventions, such as the proposed Build Back Better legislation, would dramatically accelerate our progress in these areas. If we fail to seize the lead, China, India, and Europe will fill the void. This will allow them to claim many of the best jobs in designing and building innovative solutions for themselves to dominate the global market.

Our failure to diversify our energy sources is a national security threat. As long as we and our allies are hooked on oil, we will have difficulty organizing lasting opposition to the naked aggression of Putin, the cold-blooded murder of journalists and political opponents, and the arrests and torture of human rights advocates.

Finally, dedicating our country — now — to becoming world leader in combatting climate change could reawaken idealism and national pride at a time when both are sorely needed. With polls indicating growing pessimism about whether future generations will enjoy the same opportunities that we did, an earnest, focused effort to slow climate change is something concrete we can do for our children and grandchildren. By moving aggressively now, we can avert some of the worst harms that otherwise would occur. 

Starting now also will allow our children and grandchildren to avoid some of the most painful trade-offs between mitigating harm and preserving their standard of living. We still have time to head off the worst effects while moving at a pace that stimulates economic growth rather than stifling it. This is truly the kind of decision — very much like banishing the Nazis in World War II — that will inspire praise and admiration for generations to come.

Any good State of the Union address identifies work already underway that the president sees as the foundation for the new initiative. Accordingly, President Biden can point to his executive order requiring the federal government to lead by example in making its own operations more sustainable. Various federal agencies have been taking other positive steps, but none of this is any substitute for the kind of focused national commitment that only congressional action can provide.

Any president would jump at the opportunity to trigger a modern-day gold rush, to restore this country’s global leadership in a vital area of technology, to stanch a glaring weakness in our national security, and to rekindle our idealism to pass a priceless gift to future generations. By making climate change the focus of his State of the Union address, President Biden can do all four.

David A. Super is a professor of law at Georgetown Law. He also served for several years as the general counsel for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Follow him on Twitter @DavidASuper1