Former New York City mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg revealed he intends to make all new cars electric by 2035 as part of a sweeping climate change plan to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030.
Bloomberg’s transportation program, which was unveiled Friday, calls for reinstating gas mileage standards for car and trucks, establishing a “national zero-emissions vehicle standard,” and a “Clean Cars for All” program to help lower-income families transition old vehicles to electric ones, or “vouchers” for other forms of transit.
The plan also calls for investment in public transit and high-speed rail systems, to coincide with a larger goal to “quadruple clean energy R&D to $250 billion over 10 years.”
“We’re looking to turn over the polluting stock faster,” a campaign source told Reuters ahead of the plan’s unveiling. The aide added that Bloomberg wants to help taxi and ride-share programs to electrify their fleets before 2035.
Unlike some of his Democratic competitors, Bloomberg’s overarching climate plan does not have a price tag.
Though he’s long been an advocate of renewable energy, Bloomberg made headlines last year for stating that progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal “stands no chance” of passing the Senate. While the scope of the Green New DEal was overly embitious in Bloomberg’s estimation, his own plan includes many of the same provisions.
“Mother Nature does not wait on our political calendar, and neither can we,” he said in March, adding that it’s “not a pipe dream” to retire all remaining U.S. coal plants in the coming years.
Representatives of America’s largest organized-labor group slammed the Green New Deal resolution when it was introduced as a plan that would cause “immediate harm to millions of our members and their families.”