Biden in California

Q: We’ve seen devastating wildfires across California. One big question is whether or not to rebuild. How would you balance that as president. Does the federal government pay to relocate people or —

A: Look, the federal government, we have a $1.7 trillion project. We have to get to net-zero emissions. We have to start immediately in 2020. I mean, for real, if you go back and look, I’m the first guy to introduce climate change as an initiative back in 1987. Politifact says it was a game changer. I’ve been involved in this my whole career.

Secondly, as the guy who ran the Recovery Act, which was over $900 billion, I was directing the investment of billions of dollars driving down the cost of solar, driving down the cost of wind, so it’s now competitive with coal, and we invested billions of dollars, the largest wind farms, the largest solar farms in the country, in the world actually now. And so, there’s a lot we can do.

For example, the first thing you’ve got to do, the first thing I’d do as president, is rejoin an outfit I helped create, and that is the Paris Climate Accord, and bring everyone, everyone into it to the United States, whose members almost 200 nations, and have them up the ante. And, by the way, Mayor Garcetti’s a world leader in this. We’re working with mayors all across the world. He is one of the guys I’d look to to help get that done.