Of the many ways in which the 2020 presidential election might reshape American society, its impact on climate policy may well be the most significant. The Biden administration’s ability to move forward with its agenda, however, is greatly constrained by the carbon-climate cleavage that increasingly shapes American legislative politics and electoral competition. The administration has met this challenge with a three-prong strategy intended to bridge this cleavage.

The differences between the Trump and the Biden administrations’ approach to climate change could not be starker. The Trump administration often characterized climate change as a hoax, withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, and rolled back many policies that sought to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In contrast, President Biden asserts that we “confront a profound climate crisis” and has vowed to place climate change at the center of his administration.

The first 100 days of Biden’s term were indeed chock full of major climate initiatives. In November, Biden appointed former Secretary of State John Kerry the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. On the afternoon of the inauguration, the new President signed an Executive Order that made the United States a party to the Paris Agreement again. At the end of January, Biden issued an Executive Order that placed climate change at the center of foreign policy, national security policy, and most domestic policies. At the end of March, the administration submitted to Congress a $2 trillion American Jobs Plan designed to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and convened a virtual international Climate Summit intended to signal America’s return as a constructive participant in global climate change policy process. In late April, the United States updated its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)—required under the Paris Agreement—to a target of cutting GHG emissions by 50-52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. As a group, these initiatives constitute an essential first step toward an effective policy response to the climate crisis.

The principal obstacle to the success of the administration’s climate policies arises from the carbon-climate cleavage that now sits at the center of American politics. The carbon-climate cleavage has emerged from the intersection of economic change and political geography. Economic change over the last forty years divided America into two very different economies. One is the carbon economy that drove postwar growth. As Mark Blyth and I wrote in a recent Foreign Policy article, “It is only a slight exaggeration to suggest that the…postwar economy was a massive machine that transformed oil, coal, and natural gas into income and food” by manufacturing steel, cars, jets, plastics, and petrochemicals. And though the carbon economy is in decline, its industries remain the largest employers and tax payers in many communities. The second is the expanding knowledge economy. Though the industries that constitute the knowledge economy are diverse, they share one overarching commonality: None require fossil fuels. Productivity comes from improvements in our ability to manipulate, analyze, and monetize information.

People who live and work in the carbon and knowledge economies hold very different views about the relative importance of climate change and decarbonization. Generally speaking, people that live in carbon economy communities view decarbonization as an immediate threat to their livelihoods and are less concerned about what they may perceive to be the future impact of climate change. These voters support candidates who are skeptical about the need for radical climate change policies. In contrast, people who reside in communities that host the knowledge economy are more concerned about the impact of climate change and are insulated from direct economic consequences of decarbonization. These voters typically support candidates who place climate change among the most important issues we face. In practice, voters in carbon economy communities support Republicans by a large majority, while knowledge economy voters support Democrats.

Electoral institutions then transport this carbon-climate cleavage to the center of the American political system. They do so because the two economies exist largely in non-overlapping regions of the country. Knowledge economy communities are clustered along the coasts, while carbon-intensive industries are most heavily concentrated in the interior. Elections thus routinely produce gridlock as representatives from each economy capture Congress and the White House by the slimmest and most insecure majorities. The highly polarized environment then greatly limits the administration’s ability to enact its climate policy. The fact that the fate of the Biden administration’s climate legislation rests on the vote of Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia who holds rather inscrutable views on clean energy, is fully indicative.

The American Jobs Plan constitutes the administration’s first attempt to bridge this carbon-climate cleavage. It relies on three strategies to do so. The first is classic pork barrel politics: create a large number of projects distributed across as many congressional districts as possible to attract congressional support from representatives of carbon-economy districts. Nothing illustrates this strategy more clearly than the decision to place transportation infrastructure at the center of the program. The strategy’s second prong rebrands climate policy. The American Jobs Plan is not a modified version of the Green New Deal, but instead is “an investment in America that will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country’s infrastructure, and position the United States to out-compete China.” The third prong is a direct appeal to voters and communities across the nation with the “Getting America Back on Track” tour that began with a Biden visit to Atlanta the day after his speech to the joint session of Congress.

This is a smart strategy, one that offers the best chance to build the domestic coalition needed to address climate crisis given the current realities of the carbon-climate cleavage. Moreover, the administration’s full-spectrum approach to the crisis provides the solid foundation the United States needs to re-emerge as a leading force in global climate change cooperation.