Biden needs the youth vote — and he can’t get it without real action on climate change
What can Biden do to win back the votes of young Americans worried about global warming?
President Biden knows he's in danger of losing much of the youth vote this year.
One indication is the timing of his decision to pause approval of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, ostensibly so the Department of Energy can review the fuel's climate impacts. He made this decision just before climate activists were to conduct a "large-scale civil disobedience action" to protest the build-out of LNG export facilities. Protestors responded by calling off their sit-in.
The LNG issue is just one of several where young voters feel Biden has not kept his campaign promises about fossil fuels.
The president’s most egregious breech with young people is getting too little attention — he is allowing the Department of Justice to continue its eight-year campaign to block Juliana v. United States, a landmark lawsuit by 21 young Americans who argue federal support for fossil fuels violates their constitutional right to a future free of catastrophic climate change.
The case was scheduled to go to trial three years later. News media called it the "trial of the century." But Justice Department lawyers in the Obama administration blocked it with legal maneuvers, and the department has continued filing motions to keep the case from trial under Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Supported by donations, the youth defeated each attempt to block them. As 2024 began, it appeared they would finally be allowed to present their case in court. But on Jan. 18, the Biden Justice Department filed a new motion to keep the case from going forward while it petitions a higher court to order the lawsuit dismissed. The department complained it has already spent millions of dollars on the case since 2015.
If money were the issue, the department could simply let the case be tried. The impacts of climate change are a much greater drain on taxpayers. The young people's attorneys claim climate disasters have cost Americans "over a trillion dollars" since the Juliana case began.
In addition, the federal government gives oil, gas and coal more than $20 billion annually in tax subsidies. When we count the environmental and social consequences of fossil fuels, the annual cost is nearly $760 billion annually, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Since the young people filed Juliana in 2015, the United States has become the world's largest oil and gas producer and natural gas exporter. Fossil fuels are earning record profits today. Yet it is, by definition, a dead industry walking.
It depends on finite resources. Its business model creates profits by causing irreparable damage to the planet and depriving upcoming generations of a stable future. The industry has received taxpayer subsidies for over a century and spends millions of dollars — nearly $50 million so far in 2024 — to reelect members of Congress who will keep giving it more.
This has not gone unnoticed by the generations that will bear the brunt of the world's inadequate response to global warming. President Biden has done more to support climate action than any of his predecessors, but he also has embraced their "all of the above" energy policy. He deserves credit for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the largest-ever federal investment in renewable energy, but many young Americans are more concerned with the oil and gas provisions within the IRA.
What can Biden do to win back the votes of young Americans worried about global warming?
First, he can direct the Justice Department to let Juliana go to trial.
Second, he can make the end of fossil energy subsidies a much more prominent part of his reelection platform. He can propose that the federal government use the recaptured tax revenues to help fossil-energy workers and communities transition to the clean-energy economy.
Third, he can offer a detailed off-ramp for fossil fuels to exit the U.S. economy. By doing so, he would give investors a clear signal to help them avoid stranded investments in exploration, production and infrastructure. Plus, the United States would become an example to other countries that have resisted setting such a deadline under the Paris climate accord. If the industry plays hardball and refuses to cooperate in building a clean energy economy, he can nationalize it.
Fourth, he can issue an executive order that fulfills another of the Juliana plaintiffs' goals: declaring the atmosphere an asset that government officials are legally bound to protect for current and future generations. The order would invoke the public trust doctrine, the centuries-old principle that the government is the trustee of critical natural resources it must protect for the benefit of all.
Federal law already provides a foundation for such an order. America's most important environmental statute, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA), says the nation's policy is "to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans."
Finally, Biden can call young climate-action leaders to the White House to discuss additional presidential initiatives on climate change, as well as other issues that concern them.
If Biden's choice in this election is between the youth vote and the support of the fossil energy industry, he should keep this fact in mind: nearly 90 percent of the oil and gas industry's campaign contributions in the 2024 cycle have gone so far to Republicans.
William Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations for the White House as well as Congress on climate and energy policies. He is a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy and the author of several books, including the “100-Day Action Plan to Save the Planet,” published by St. Martin’s Griffin. PCAP is not affiliated with the White House.