Elizabeth Warren Gets a C- For Her Climate Plan

Craig Lassig/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

As long as I’m looking at climate plans, let’s look at a few others. Elizabeth Warren doesn’t really have a climate plan, but she does have three pieces of a climate plan buried in the 34-point “Latest Announcements” section of her website:

  • Invest a total of $2 trillion over the next ten years.
  • Require all public companies to disclose climate-related risks.
  • Direct the Pentagon to achieve net zero carbon emissions for all its non-combat bases and infrastructure by 2030.
  • Create a ten-year, multi-billion dollar R&D program at the Defense Department focused on microgrids and advanced energy storage.
  • Spend $400 billion over ten years on clean energy R&D.
  • Create a $1.5 trillion program to “purchase American-made clean, renewable, and emission-free energy products for federal, state, and local use, and for export.”
  • Designate $100 billion to encourage other countries to purchase and deploy American-made clean energy technology.

This is a hard plan to judge because it’s really only a skeleton. On the downside, nearly all the money goes to subsidies (I assume) for American-made clean energy products. If this were 15 percent of a $10 trillion plan, I might buy it. But three-quarters of a $2 trillion plan? Not so much.

On the bright side, Warren wants to spend $400 billion on R&D. That’s woefully insufficient, but it does represent 20 percent of her entire progam and perhaps demonstrates that she gets the importance of this. Compare this to the Sanders plan for R&D, which allocates more in absolute dollars but represents only 5 percent of his plan—much of it preallocated to specific hobbyhorses.

Finally there’s $100 billion to encourage other countries to use our technology. That’s fine, but the real answer is to fund an R&D program so aggressive that it will produce products other countries want without having to be pushed. They’ll want it solely because it’s cheaper and better than anything they can get elsewhere.

Warren’s plan is too timid by half and it lacks much detail. On the other hand, she allocates 20 percent of her dollars to R&D and doesn’t pretend that she knows in more detail where to direct it. She also wisely avoids gratuitously hitting hot buttons that would feel good but probably reduce support for her plan. Another plus is that her climate change plan is a climate change plan, not a kitchen sink in which to throw every conceivable lefty fetish. Overall I’d give Warren’s plan an Incomplete, but since we’re judging on what’s here right now, I’ll give her a C-.

BY THE WAY: In case you’re wondering, my baseline for seriousness on R&D is about $5 trillion over ten years. This should be the backbone of any climate change plan.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate