Green New Deal divides 2020 Democrats. Here’s how they’d take on climate change, wildfire

California has seen devastating wildfires in the last few years, prompting many voters to place a greater priority on the environment.

With the state’s March 3, 2020 primary approaching and ballots already being mailed out, Democratic candidates will have to offer their solutions to win over voters.

Here’s how the top candidates on the Democratic ballot would try to improve the environment and tackle climate change, sorted in order of their recent national polling averages and performance in early-voting states:

Bernie Sanders

Sanders supports the Green New Deal and wants to work with Congress to pass the sweeping environmental legislation. It would phase the country off fossil fuels by calling for 100 percent sustainable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030 and a fully decarbonized economy by 2050.

As president, Sanders would halt license renewals for nuclear power plants and prevent new ones from being built. He also wants to ban fracking and stop importing and exporting of natural gas, coal and oil.

His campaign estimates his plan to tackle climate change would cost $16.3 trillion over 15 years and create 20 million new jobs.

Joe Biden

Unlike some of the other candidates, Biden does not support a national law banning fracking. He does, however, want to halt oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

Under his plan, the federal government would spend $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years to address the threat of climate change. He’d undo provisions in the tax cuts Trump signed into law in 2017 to help pay for it.

Biden would work with Congress to create an enforceable goal to wean the country off of non-renewable energy sources and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. He is open to making nuclear energy a part of his solution, though he wants to assemble more research about cost, safety and waste disposal.

Elizabeth Warren

Warren also supports the Green New Deal, though her environmental plan would cost far less than Sanders. Her campaign projects it would cost $3 trillion over 10 years. Like Sanders, she also supports a ban on fracking.

Her plan calls for $1 trillion to help achieve “100 percent clean energy” by eliminating emissions from cars, buildings and power plans, which would be paid for by reversing tax cuts for wealthy individuals Trump approved in 2017.

California is home to dozens of Superfund sites, or places the Environmental Protection Agency has deemed hazardous. She’d work with Congress to reinstate and then triple a tax on companies that produce chemicals often responsible for the pollution at these sites.

Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg wants to get the country to net-zero emissions by 2050, which is a later timetable than some of his more liberal Democratic opponents are calling for.

His plan would cost between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion and leaves room for the continued use of nuclear energy. Buttigieg notes he wants to implement a “bold and achievable Green New Deal” that is more realistic than the proposals from Warren and Sanders.

He’d work to double clean electricity generated in the United States by 2025. Ten years later, he would have 100 percent of electricity in the U.S. generated without the production of carbon emissions.

Michael Bloomberg

Bloomberg wants to get the country to full decarbonization by 2050 and cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 relative to 2005 levels. By 2030, he’d also replace all coal plants with clean energy.

Additionally, Bloomberg would halt fossil fuel leases on federal lands. He’s concerned about the impact wildfires have had in recent years in California.

As president, he would create a so-called “Wildfire Corps,” whereby the government trains, hires and equips a skilled work force “to lead efforts towards fire resilience.” The partnership between federal, state and tribal governments would prioritize rural and forest communities.

Amy Klobuchar

Klobuchar considers the Green New Deal “aspirational,” but is a cosponsor of the bill. As president, she’d set a goal for the country to go carbon neutral by 2050. She also wants to spend $1 trillion on an energy infrastructure package, which she’d work with Congress to pay for through a price on carbon pollution.

Her infrastructure plan would offer homeowners a grant or tax credit to retrofit their houses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Tom Steyer

Steyer argues he is the only Democratic candidate to explicitly list climate change as his No. 1 priority. If elected, he wants ease the country off fossil fuels and work to achieve 100 percent clean electricity by 2040. He’d require all new power plants to be carbon neutral by 2030.

While he supports a ban on fracking, he insists there needs to be a transition. Under his plan, no new fracking or fossil fuel development would be allowed to take place on public lands.

He wants Congress to approve the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps to help implement local projects and plans to tackle climate change and approve a $2 trillion plan to improve the nation’s aging infrastructure.

This story was originally published February 19, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Green New Deal divides 2020 Democrats. Here’s how they’d take on climate change, wildfire."