Almost immediately after releasing a climate plan Tuesday that green groups slammed as woefully inadequate in part due to its embrace of industry-backed proposals such as “carbon capture,” presumptive 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden faced accusations of plagiarizing language from a number of sources, including a coalition consisting of major fossil fuel companies.
Josh Nelson, vice president of the progressive organization CREDO Mobile, was the first to highlight possible instances of plagiarism in Biden’s plan, noting on Twitter that the section “about carbon capture and sequestration includes language that is remarkably similar to items published previously by the Blue Green Alliance and the Carbon Capture Coalition” — two organizations backed by major fossil fuel companies and labor unions.
“Membership of the Carbon Capture Coalition, where some of Biden’s language seems to have originated, includes Shell, Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Cloud Peak Energy,” wrote Nelson, who tweeted side-by-side screenshots of language from the Carbon Capture Coalition and Biden’s plan.
In a paragraph about carbon capture, the former vice president’s plan — which has since been updated with citations — read: “Biden’s goal is to make CCUS a widely available, cost-effective, and rapidly scalable solution to reduce carbon emissions to meet mid-century climate goals.”
The line from Biden’s plan, as Business Insider reported, was “almost identical to the ‘our work’ section of the website for the Carbon Capture Coalition’s Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.”
“Its goal is to make carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS) a widely available, cost-effective, and rapidly scalable solution to reduce carbon emissions to meet mid-century climate goals,” reads the Carbon Capture Coalition’s website.
In response to the plagiarism accusations — which spread rapidly on social media and were picked up by a number of media outlets — Biden’s presidential campaign said “citations were inadvertently left out of the final version of the 22-page document.”
“As soon as we were made aware of it, we updated to include the proper citations,” the campaign said in a statement.
While some observers noted that it is hardly uncommon for presidential candidates to take policy language from advocacy groups and other sources, Nelson told USA Today that parts of Biden’s plan stood out because they “looked like the type of thing the coal industry, trade groups, and coal companies themselves say about carbon capture and sequestration.”
On the left, Joe Biden’s climate plan. Source: https://t.co/WHWvRK784s
On the right, a description of the Carbon Capture Coalition on the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions website. Source: https://t.co/nulmTqXZ1p pic.twitter.com/4f010MqNjY
— Josh Nelson (@josh_nelson) June 4, 2019
Biden, who has a long history of plagiarism scandals, has yet to personally comment on the accusations.
In a Twitter thread on Tuesday, climate researcher and University of California, Santa Barbara professor Leah Stokes said Biden’s proposal to confront the climate crisis — which was released amid growing pressure and criticism from grassroots environmental groups — reads like a “cribbed plan.”
“As a professor, I’ve seen plagiarism before,” Stokes wrote. “It’s like his team copied off of his competitors, using all the same keywords (‘environmental justice,’ ‘Green New Deal’) but with less substance.”
“I have no problem with campaigns borrowing ideas with one another,” Stokes added. “But there needs to be substance and commitment behind those plans. I am wary that we will find empty words with the Biden team.”
https://twitter.com/leahstokes/status/1135990260012240897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1135990260012240897%7Ctwgr%5E393039363b636f6e74726f6c&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2F2019%2F06%2F05%2Faccused-plagiarism-biden-campaign-admits-lifting-carbon-capture-section-climate-plan
Green groups echoed Stokes’ concerns about the substance of Biden’s plan prior to accusations that parts of the proposal were lifted straight from industry-friendly organizations.
In a statement following the release of Biden’s plan on Tuesday, Wenonah Hauter — executive director of Food & Water Action — described the proposal as “a cobbled-together assortment of weak emissions targets and unproven technological schemes that fail to adequately address the depth and urgency of the climate crisis we face.”
“This plan cannot be considered a serious proposal to tackle climate change,” Hauter said. “Biden’s focus on ‘net zero’ emissions, carbon capture programs, and vague pollution pricing schemes all point to one outcome: a society continuing to be dominated by fossil fuels, and a future of irrevocable climate chaos.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.