NEW YORK — President Joe Biden offered a forceful defense of his climate and energy legacy Tuesday, sounding a message that has largely vanished from the race for the White House.
Biden, speaking at a climate event hours after addressing the United Nations General Assembly, presented a glowing appraisal of his environmental record to a room full of mostly supportive business leaders, saying he created a “new formula” that strengthens the economy while expanding clean energy.
“Kamala and I have pursued an ambitious climate policy focused on growth,” Biden said to about 200 people at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in the Plaza Hotel. “We were told it couldn’t get done. But we did it.”
Biden’s appearance, on the sidelines of Climate Week, was perhaps his last major opportunity to sum up his ambitious, expansive energy agenda in public before the voters render a verdict on it in November, in essence serving as a swan song on an issue that has shaped his presidency.
He spoke as climate activists rallied on Manhattan streets for bolder action against fossil fuel pollution — and as his potential successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, has largely avoided talking about the administration’s hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy subsidies on the campaign trail.
Instead, Harris’ energy messaging has sought support among independent voters by talking about the United States’ world-leading oil and natural gas production as well as pocketbook issues such as rising insurance costs related to climate change. She has also renounced her 2019 pledge to ban fracking amid attacks by former President Donald Trump.
Trump, meanwhile, pledged Tuesday during a speech in Georgia to move manufacturing to the U.S. from other countries — a promise that Biden is arguably already fulfilling with his mountain of subsidies for clean technologies such as electric cars.
Biden’s legacy is very much on the ballot in the presidential race, even if he’s no longer the one leading the Democratic Party’s charge on the issue.
While Harris is expected to continue Biden’s effort to cut climate pollution by expanding electric vehicles and wind and solar power, Trump disputes the dangers of a warming planet, wants to empower the oil industry and has promised to withdraw the U.S. from global climate efforts.
Biden’s speech Tuesday was punctuated by the kinds of specifics on energy policy that the Harris campaign has largely omitted. He also jabbed Trump, who has called global warming a myth.
“He says he’d repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. He’d let our factories shut down. He’d move the world backwards,” Biden said. “His denial of climate change condemns our future generations to a more dangerous world.”
Then he lowered his voice to a whisper, as if telling the crowd a secret, and said, “By the way, windmills do not cause cancer.”
Earlier in the day, Biden used his last speech as president to the United Nations to call for unity to address climate change and other global challenges, even as crises in places such as Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine continue to mushroom.
“Things can get better,” he said.
Hundreds of events are taking place across New York to mark Climate Week and the U.N. General Assembly.
