So Yang proposes massive subsidies for two somewhat speculative alternatives to traditional nuclear reactors. But nuclear has major drawbacks, not least of which are that it produces long-lived radioactive waste that has to be safely stored for thousands of years. Unlike solar or wind, it’s low-variability, meaning it could provide ongoing power even when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. It’s less deadly than coal or natural gas, and produces no greenhouse gas emissions. Andrew Yang wants to bet big on nontraditional nuclear powerīy now, most (but not all) environmentalists have accepted that nuclear power, at least in existing plants, has to be part of the solution to climate change. This is a climate plan that has a section on “Moving to Higher Ground,” arguing we have to accept and adapt to climate change’s effect as well as mitigate them - ideas you’re more likely to hear batted around on speculative tech news sites (and maybe prepper sites) than in mainstream political debates. Elizabeth Warren has called for a moratorium on fossil fuel extraction on federally owned lands (though not an end to all existing leases), $1.5 trillion in federal purchases of “US-made low-carbon technology,” $400 billion over a decade in research and development for clean energy, and $100 billion to subsidize other countries’ purchases of our green tech.īut there are also some distinctively Yang-y touches to the plan. The price tag is, if anything, smaller than that of his rivals for the nomination.īernie Sanders has proposed a yet more aggressive timeline of halving emissions by 2030 with his Green New Deal and proposes spending a whopping $16.3 trillion over 15 years. The timeline here is aggressive, which makes sense given recent warnings from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that we are running out of time to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Andrew Yang’s timeline to zeroing out net carbon emissions by 2050. He would end all leases for fossil fuel extraction on federal lands.
He pledges $4.87 trillion in climate-related spending over 20 years, though “climate-related” is a bit of a loose term $400 billion of that total comes in the form of publicly financed campaign donation vouchers that citizens can use to “wash out the influence of lobbyists” for oil, gas, and coal companies, presumably by donating to the campaigns of supporters of aggressive climate action. He would set a carbon tax of $40 per ton, rising gradually to $100 per ton, including a fee on imports from countries without similar carbon taxes. Yang commits to an aggressive timeline for abandoning fossil fuels: a zero-emissions requirement for all new cars by 2030, a 100 percent renewable electric grid by 2035 (it’s not clear if he considers nuclear a “renewable”), net-zero emissions from transportation by 2040, and net-zero emissions overall by 2049 (there could still be some emissions then, but they’d have to be offset by carbon-negative actions). But he has laid out 169 other proposals as well, and this week unveiled a lengthy climate change plan. Yang’s signature 2020 policy is his “Freedom Dividend,” a plan that would give every American adult $1,000 a month, no strings attached. Yang wanted to try it.Most plans to deal with climate change don’t feature the plank “Move our people to higher ground,” but most plans to deal with climate change don’t come from Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur and writer turned dark horse presidential candidate. He’d read Stern’s book, Raising the Floor, which focuses on universal basic income and closes with the idea of someone running for president on the issue. Yang’s path led him in early 2017 to the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, where he sat down to lunch with Andy Stern, the former president of Service Employees International Union.
The idea that a single mother would have to care for an autistic child with no resources was heartbreaking, he says, and helped shape his belief in universal basic income-the core of his platform and the idea that’s helped him gain traction. Until then, Yang had suffered only minor adversity. ”Is it normal for a three-year-old to freak out when the texture of the ground changes?” It was a growing experience for him. “As first-time parents, you don’t know what’s normal versus what’s not normal,” he recalls. In a way, Yang credits the latter experience with fueling his campaign for president. Along the way, Yang married and had two kids, including an autistic son. He was later named one of the Obama White House’s Champions of Change for that work. His vision was to train entrepreneurs and dispatch them around the country to help create job growth. In 2011, Yang founded an organization called Venture for America.
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