When Joe Biden became the fifth youngest US Senator in 1972, climate change was a cause for concern. But in those days, the worries of many centred on whether the world was about to enter a new Ice Age.
As he now prepares for the White House as the oldest president in US history, a lot has changed. Now of course the concern is focused on global warming.
Reflecting this shift, the former vice-president has made tackling climate change one of the top priorities for his new administration.
This has consequences for the UK-US relationship. The UK’s importance to the US as a diplomatic ally is widely seen to be diminished in the wake of Brexit. Throughout much of the post-war period, Britain has acted as a bridge between the US and the rest of Europe, a role that leaving the EU inevitably undermines.
Add to that the perception among top Democrats that Johnson is a Donald Trump fellow traveller and it is easy to see that the UK prime minister has got a lot to do in order to earn brownie points in the Biden White House.
The UK will remain an important partner for the US on security and intelligence matters. However, in one other key area for Biden, the UK will have clout: its role as host of next year’s UN COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow.
This will give the UK government a pivotal role in an area where Biden will be under pressure to deliver, particularly from the younger and green-minded voters without whom he would not have defeated Donald Trump.
Tom Tugendhat, chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee, told the Energy and Climate Information Unit’s pre-US election seminar that he expects the government to use the COP as way of getting a hearing in the new White House that will be “otherwise very difficult.”
A successful COP26 will matter to Biden, whose ability to get things done will be limited if the Republicans maintain their hold on the US Senate after January’s run-off elections to determine the southern state of Georgia’s two upper house representatives.
However, the US president can do some things without getting the Senate’s say so. These include re-entering the UN Paris agreement, which his predecessor took the US out of through an executive order of the presidency. Biden has said he will do this as soon as he is inaugurated on 20 January next year.
A successful COP will help Biden get around the Senate’s obstruction of any Green New Deal legislation he tries to implement, by providing the private sector with a strong signal that decarbonisation is his administration’s policy direction of travel.
This matters for the UK.
The precise timing of the UK government’s next steps on energy and climate change policy are unclear. Boris Johnson was expected to issue a landmark speech, outlining his ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution. However, this may now be pushed back to next week.
The outlines remain clear. Beside Johnson’s party conference pledge to boost the rollout of offshore wind power to 40GW by 2030, the ten point plan is expected to back hydrogen, carbon, capture and storage (CCS) and a bringing forward of the ban on sales of petrol and diesel vehicles.
Delivering an ambitious clean energy package assumes an even greater importance now, given that the UK will be under pressure to lead by example when it holds the COP next year.
Not so long ago, Johnson famously dismissed wind power. Now, the future of the UK’s prized special relationship with the USA could depend on it.