According to Democratic Party presidential nominee Joseph Biden’s carbon plan, “he will demand that Congress enacts legislation in the first year of his presidency that: 1) establishes an enforcement mechanism that includes milestone targets no later than the end of his first term in 2025, 2) makes a historic investment in clean energy and climate research and innovation, 3) incentivizes the rapid deployment of clean energy innovations across the economy, especially in communities most impacted by climate change.”
The mechanism Biden refers to would most likely be a carbon tax, which Biden has said he would support, or a cap and trade program, which is implicitly a carbon tax. The latter was previously known as the “cap and tax” program when it was dismissed by Congress during the Obama Administration. In either case, a Biden tax on greenhouse gas emissions would significantly increase household costs such as cooling and heating, transportation, and even groceries as the United States gets 80 percent of its energy from fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas. It would also raise the cost of manufacturing in the United States.
