Beto O’Rourke proposes $5 trillion climate change plan

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke on Monday revealed a $5 trillion plan to address climate change that would be funded largely by changes to the tax code.

The former U.S. Congressman from Texas is pitching a 10-year plan that seeks to spur investment in clean technology and energy efficiency, achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and shore up communities vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

“The greatest threat we face — which will test our country, our democracy, every single one of us — is climate change,” O’Rourke said in a statement on Monday. “We have one last chance to unleash the ingenuity and political will of hundreds of millions of Americans to meet this moment before it’s too late.”

O’Rourke is the latest Democrat to introduce an overarching framework for combating climate change. The world’s top climate scientists say the nations of the world must take “unprecedented” and immediate action to prevent catastrophic impacts from global warming in the coming years.

Parts of O’Rourke’s proposal dovetail with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, but O’Rourke’s proposal is fundamentally different because it seeks to leverage an initial government investment in order to spark private spending. Under Ocasio-Cortez’s plan, the U.S. government would entirely fund a radical transformation of the nation’s energy, transportation and building sectors over the course of a decade.

O’Rourke says the first bill he would send to Congress as president would include a $1.5 trillion investment in infrastructure, innovation and communities. The bill would make structural changes to the tax code that “ensure corporations and the wealthiest among us pay their fair share” and end billions of dollars in tax breaks to fossil fuel companies.

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