President Joe Biden’s top climate adviser said he understands young activists’ impatience with the slow progress on combating climate change — but warned that the president’s political rivals are preparing a “U-turn agenda” that would reverse all the administration’s progress.
White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi’s comments Wednesday at the POLITICO Energy Summit come as the youth-led environmental group Sunrise Movement signaled it is withholding its endorsement of Biden, who has struggled to draw support from the young voters who were crucial to his election four years ago.
Zaidi said the administration needs to communicate the stakes of the policies. Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, for his part, has blasted the Biden administration’s climate policies as a “scam” and vowed to roll them back..
A reversal of Biden’s policies “actually puts us on a U-turn trajectory. A U-turn to [a] less competitive economy. A U-turn to unsafe communities, a U-turn on jobs,” Zaidi said. “That’s a really big deal. It’s very problematic.”
