Biden Sets New National Climate Goal, Challenging Trump’s Fossil Fuel Plans

The outgoing administration upped U.S.climate ambitions, setting a new target to slash emissions more than 60% by 2035.

The Biden administration on Thursday announced a new, more ambitious goal for curbing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade in a challenge to President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to maximize fossil fuel use that raises the stakes of the incoming Republican administration’s global negotiations over climate change.

Early in his tenure, President Joe Biden set a national target — known as a nationally determined contribution, or NDC, required of all parties to the international Paris climate agreement — of slashing carbon emissions 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. The new NDC, which will be submitted to the United Nations, ups the U.S. target to 61% to 66% by 2035.

“The Biden-Harris administration may be about to leave office, but we’re confident in America’s ability to rally around this new climate goal,” John Podesta, Biden’s top climate adviser, said during a call with reporters, adding that, though the Trump administration “may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief.”

“That’s not wishful thinking. It’s happened before,” Podesta said, noting that states, local governments and private industry rallied in support of climate action after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate pact during his first term.

Former Trump administration officials who remain in the president-elect’s orbit have suggested he may not only withdraw the U.S. again from the Paris accords, but also the foundational United Nations treaty that undergirds the annual negotiations over emissions. Doing so would effectively void the pledge from the U.S., the world’s largest source of cumulative carbon in the atmosphere, hampering efforts to persuade the poorer countries whose emissions will determine the future to forgo developing fossil fuels.