Folks wave to presidential candidate Joe Biden's bus because it passes via Latrobe, Pa. Biden obtained solely 35 per cent of the votes in Westmoreland County. (AP Photograph/Andrew Harnik)

The US’ election outcomes have been a nail-biter that many polls didn’t predict. After days of uncertainty, the votes have tipped in favour of Joe Biden, and the U.S. president-elect has since kicked off his transition group to sort out, amongst different issues, local weather change.

Throughout campaigning, Pennsylvania obtained plenty of consideration from each presidential candidates. The state sits atop the Marcellus shale, a serious supply of pure gasoline; it’s the second-largest producer of pure gasoline within the U.S., after Texas. The business employs about 32,000 folks in Pennsylvania, however clear vitality is among the many quickest rising sectors within the state.

Some speculated that Biden’s stance on fossil gas divestment, particularly his feedback through the last presidential debate on shifting away from fossil fuels, may need turned away voters fearful about their job safety in these key states. But, the election outcomes have proven the alternative.

Biden’s local weather platform shouldn’t be radical

In the course of the last presidential debate, Biden argued that he would “transition [away] from the oil business … as a result of it must be changed by renewable vitality over time.” The principal coverage he proposed was to cease federal subsidies to the oil and gasoline business. After the controversy, Biden’s group clarified that his proposal means a gradual phase-out of fossil fuels and he wouldn’t impose bans on the oil and gasoline business.

Briefly, Biden has been strategically ambiguous concerning the timeline of decarbonizing the U.S. economic system. He helps the concept of reaching net-zero emissions within the U.S. by 2050, but severe questions stay whether or not his budget-saving and market-oriented strategy to preventing local weather change would successfully discourage a carbon rebound after the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Donald Trump intensified assaults on Joe Biden over fracking, hoping to drive a wedge between the previous vice-president and the white, working-class voters tied to the state’s booming pure gasoline business.

(AP Photograph/Keith Srakocic)

In June, Fatih Birol, government director of the Worldwide Vitality Company, issued a stern warning that “the world solely has six months to avert local weather disaster” — a post-lockdown rebound in world greenhouse gasoline emissions would considerably derail the worldwide targets set by the Paris local weather settlement signed in 2016. (The U.S. formally left the settlement on Nov. 5, however has Biden promised that it’ll rejoin.) In gentle of such coverage suggestions, Biden’s reliance on market mechanisms to slowly phase-out fossil fuels presents, at greatest, a reasonable strategy to decarbonization.

Biden’s stance on fracking additional reveals his hesitance to take radical measures on the U.S. fossil gas habit. In the course of the last presidential debate, Biden repeatedly emphasised that he didn’t oppose fracking and would like to discover technical options to chop methane emissions from the oil and gasoline business.

There are few available options for lowering the methane air pollution related to the fracking course of. Methane is a potent greenhouse gasoline — 84 occasions extra highly effective than carbon dioxide within the first 20 years after its launch. Averting a looming local weather disaster calls for an instantaneous ban on fracking.

Fossil gas divestment and voter preferences

Biden is on no account an environmental radical, however the GOP’s portrayal of his assist for fossil gas divestment had the potential to wreck his election efficiency in Texas and Pennsylvania.

Earlier analysis has addressed the professionals and cons of fossil gas divestment as a local weather motion tactic, the sturdy assist it receives inside greater schooling and its implications for local weather justice. However there isn’t a in-depth info obtainable on undecided and conservative voters’ perceptions on fossil gas divestment.

Previous to this election, local weather change was a peripheral concern throughout presidential campaigns and debates. Scientific American highlighted that local weather change obtained extra consideration through the first Trump versus Biden debate than in another presidential debate in historical past.

Evaluating this yr’s election outcomes with the ultimate polling common and former election outcomes, two divergent tendencies emerge. In Colorado, which produces probably the most shale oil and gasoline within the U.S., voters stay supportive of Biden. Regardless of being defeated in Texas, the Democratic share of well-liked votes there elevated to 46.four per cent this yr from 43.2 per cent in 2016. The outcomes counsel considered one of two issues: Both Biden’s discuss of fossil gas divestment didn’t considerably change voters’ minds, or it led to bigger voter turnouts of progressive younger voters.

The leads to Ohio and Pennsylvania adopted the identical pattern. Though Biden’s efficiency in each states has been worse than the nationwide polling common numbers, he gained a bigger share of votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016.

In Pennsylvania, Biden has managed to win 49.eight per cent of the votes, which is a strong efficiency contemplating Trump’s sturdy pro-fracking push in Pennsylvania days earlier than the election.

Lively oil and gasoline fracking wells in Pennsylvania.

(Pennsylvania Division of Environmental Safety)

On the county degree, the dynamics turn out to be extra sophisticated. Within the southwest and northeast corners of the state the place fracking actions focus, Trump held a decisive lead. In Bradford County, one of the fracked locations on the planet, Trump obtained over 70 per cent of the votes.

Though election outcomes counsel that fossil gas divestment didn’t negatively impression Biden’s total election efficiency, it stays a pivotal and polarizing subject for a lot of states, and could possibly be a problem for future progressive contenders.

Does such a political dilemma imply little political actions in opposition to the fracking business and its lobbyists within the close to future? We now have to patiently watch for the following administration’s local weather insurance policies.

Sibo Chen receives funding from Ryerson College and the Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council of Canada.