Biden on his climate legacy: ‘We did it’

NEW YORK — President Joe Biden offered a forceful defense of his climate and energy legacy Tuesday, sounding a message that has largely vanished from the race for the White House.

Biden, speaking at a climate event hours after addressing the United Nations General Assembly , presented a glowing appraisal of his environmental record to a room full of mostly supportive business leaders, saying he created a “new formula” that strengthens the economy while expanding clean energy.

“Kamala and I have pursued an ambitious climate policy focused on growth,” Biden said to about 200 people at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in the Plaza Hotel. “We were told it couldn’t get done. But we did it.”

Biden’s appearance, on the sidelines of Climate Week, was perhaps his last major opportunity to sum up his ambitious, expansive energy agenda in public before the voters render a verdict on it in November, in essence serving as a swan song on an issue that has shaped his presidency.

He spoke as climate activists rallied on Manhattan streets for bolder action against fossil fuel pollution — and as his potential successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, has largely avoided talking about the administration’s hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy subsidies on the campaign trail.

Instead, Harris’ energy messaging has sought support among independent voters by talking about the United States’ world-leading oil and natural gas production as well as pocketbook issues such as rising insurance costs related to climate change. She has also renounced her 2019 pledge to ban fracking amid attacks by former President Donald Trump.

Trump, meanwhile, pledged Tuesday during a speech in Georgia to move manufacturing to the U.S. from other countries — a promise that Biden is arguably already fulfilling with his mountain of subsidies for clean technologies such as electric cars .

Biden’s legacy is very much on the ballot in the presidential race, even if he’s no longer the one leading the Democratic Party’s charge on the issue.

While Harris is expected to continue Biden’s effort to cut climate pollution by expanding electric vehicles and wind and solar power, Trump disputes the dangers of a warming planet, wants to empower the oil industry and has promised to withdraw the U.S. from global climate efforts.

Biden’s speech Tuesday was punctuated by the kinds of specifics on energy policy that the Harris campaign has largely omitted. He also jabbed Trump, who has called global warming a myth.

“He says he’d repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. He’d let our factories shut down. He’d move the world backwards,” Biden said. “His denial of climate change condemns our future generations to a more dangerous world.”

Then he lowered his voice to a whisper, as if telling the crowd a secret, and said, “By the way, windmills do not cause cancer.”

Biden argued that the benefits of his climate law have reached vast swaths of the American public — regardless of their political affiliation.

“I might point out I was criticized very much for having done more to invest in red states than blue states,” he said. “But I made a commitment when I ran that I would be president for all people, all people, whether they voted for me or not.”

Biden touted his Day 1 move to reenter the Paris climate agreement that Trump had pulled out of — reasserting America’s position as a global leader.

He also ticked off what he said were the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act: 330,000 new jobs, $1 trillion in announced investments in clean energy manufacturing and a quadrupling of U.S. solar panel production.

“This year, we'll add more new electric capacity than we have in two decades” — 96 percent of which will be from clean energy sources, Biden said. “And we’re just getting started.”

Supporters applauded his record.

The impacts of the IRA “are being felt in every corner of our country,” Jason Walsh, executive director of the labor and environmental BlueGreen Alliance, said in a statement. Workers have “a brighter future,” he added.

Earlier in the day, Biden used his last speech as president to the United Nations to call for unity to address climate change and other global challenges, even as crises in places such as Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine continue to mushroom.

“Things can get better,” he said.

Hundreds of events are taking place across New York to mark Climate Week and the U.N. General Assembly.

The annual event has a larger profile this year because of uncertainty around the U.S. election and the timing of global climate talks in Azerbaijan just six days later.

Even as the election looms, many U.S. leaders have emphasized that the transition to clean energy is underway and would be difficult, if not impossible, for Trump to reverse .

John Morton, the former climate counselor for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, said it was appropriate for Biden to take a victory lap.

“But it's also really important for him to remind the global community of the importance of continued U.S. leadership and the fact that we haven't done enough,” Morton said.

Biden sought to do that, too.

The world is positioned to “go big,” he said, pointing to the booming market for clean energy. The Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut last week will give businesses confidence to boost investments, Biden noted.

“I'm doing my part,” he said, calling on corporate executives in the room to invest more capital in renewable energy.

He ended the speech with an appeal to keep the climate fight going after he leaves office in January.

“The rest of the world looks to us. And it’s not about my being president,” Biden said. “If we didn’t lead, who leads? Who fills the vacuum? … It’s who we are, it’s our obligation, and it’s our incredible opportunity.”