Joe Biden on climate change

From the candidate’s energy, climate change plans:

There is scientific consensus that our climate is warming and human activity is driving it. Global warming not only has serious consequences for our environment, it poses a serious national security threat. We not only need to act at home to cap greenhouse gas emissions, we also need to work toward a global solution.

Biden would continue to make halting climate change a national priority by:

* Returning to global climate change negotiations. Joe Biden would immediately direct U.S. negotiators to return to global climate change negotiations, to seek binding commitments among all major emitting nations - including emerging nations such as China and India - to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels that prevent catastrophic global warming.

* Capping greenhouse gas emissions. Joe Biden would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 by imposing a cap and trade system.

* Bringing developing economies to the table. Joe Biden would use U.S. leadership to bring big developing countries, like China and India, into a global climate change treaty.

* Protecting vital habitat. Joe Biden would protect rainforests and vital ecosystems that absorb carbon dioxide by exchanging debt-for-nature. Deforestation accounts for as much as 25 percent of manmade greenhouse gas emissions and destroys one of nature’s best carbon sequestration systems. Saving just one acre of forest keeps 400 tons of carbon dioxide out of the air. Joe Biden is the original author of a plan that provides debt relief to developing nations in exchange for protecting tropical rainforests that are critical to regulating the global climate. These Debt-For-Nature swaps have generated over $300 million in conservation funding that goes directly to protecting vulnerable and valuable rainforests.