A report published by the Biden administration on Friday made the case that a failure to adopt clean energy technologies and reduce carbon emissions will contribute to rising economic costs, and warns that the United States has fallen behind in its efforts to develop strategies to combat the effects of climate change.
The report, published by President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, comes as his administration made a promise to cut emissions in half by the end of the decade. It compares the investments the United States made in technological innovations to the amount of money the government spent to send astronauts to the moon in the 1960s — 0.6 percent of gross domestic product was dedicated to research in 2017, compared with 1.9 percent during the buildup to the moon landing in 1964.
“Absent such a strategy, workers could be hit by the dual negative effects of declining jobs in high-carbon industries alongside too few new domestic jobs in the emerging carbon-free industries of the future,” the report said.
The 37-page report also shows that the rate of global carbon emissions is expected to stay roughly the same through the next decade, conflicting with goals Mr. Biden’s administration has made to lower them over the next 10 years and reach a net-zero level by 2050.
The United States, the report said, has also fallen behind its biggest global competitors in efforts to develop technologies that could reduce the effects of climate change. Citing data from Bloomberg, the report lays out a few bleak comparisons: China has dominated market share across clean technology sectors, from battery cell manufacturing to wind turbines. The effect, the report said, could “mean growing dependence upon more intrepid countries.”