After days of uncertainty and delayed counting, Joe Biden was elected the 46th president of the United States on Saturday — a historic vote that will likely have profound effects on federal environment and energy policy, and the country’s response and adaptation to the hazards of climate change.
Attorneys representing President Donald Trump’s campaign have filed multiple lawsuits challenging results, but Biden appears to have enough electoral votes to take the White House in January 2021.
In Colorado, voters broke 52.3 percent for Biden and 42.1 percent for Trump, preliminary data shows.
Throughout the campaign, Biden pledged to restore environmental regulations reversed or weakened during the Trump administration, including the Endangered Species Act and rollbacks of methane and mercury rules. Biden also talked up a more-progressive environmental agenda that would see the U.S. rejoin the Paris climate agreement, ban new oil and gas drilling on public lands and promote renewable energy.
Climate change is an increasingly critical motivating issue for a segment of the Colorado electorate. Recent polling finds that well over half of Coloradans think the U.S. government should do more than its doing now to address it.
Here’s a quick review of some key climate change and environmental outcomes from Colorado’s 2020 election.
John Locher/AP
U.S. Senate
Winner: John Hickenlooper
Background: Colorado’s former two-term Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, defeated Republican incumbent Cory Gardner in the race for the Senate by nearly 10 percentage points. Both candidates touted their environmental records, but only Hickenlooper highlighted climate change as a major platform issue, calling it “the defining challenge of our time.”
In his acceptance speech, Hickenlooper said that, “Regardless of which party ends up controlling the Senate, I want you to know that I will work with anyone and everyone to help Coloradans… to protect our planet, and address the nightmare of these endless wildfires by tackling climate change.”
If Biden wins the presidency, he would need support from both the House and the Senate to pass major pieces of his $2 trillion climate plan. Hickenlooper’s win is a pickup for Democrats, but it’s still unclear which party will gain or keep control of the Senate.
But Hickenlooper’s climate record doesn’t have some convinced that he’ll make the changes they think are needed to address global warming quickly enough. As his eye turned to national politics, Hickenlooper has tried to strike a tone about climate change that is urgent, but not overly prescriptive. He has repeatedly criticized aspects of the Green New Deal as too expensive and ambitious.
During his Senate campaign, incumbent Cory Gardner repeatedly accused Hickenlooper of supporting policies that would eliminate all oil, gas and coal jobs in the state.
Gardner has often refused to acknowledge human-caused climate change, and focused instead on his public lands and conservation record, including the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act. But conservationist saw Gardner’s record as problematic, for things like not stopping the Trump administration from rolling back clean air and water rules
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The Colorado Climate Voter's Guide To The 2020 Election Results - Colorado Public Radio
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