Joe Biden Appears to Plagiarize Climate Plan in Possible Repeat of 1988 Plagiarism Scandal
Tom Pappert
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Former vice president and Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden appears to have plagiarized large portions of his climate change plan, in an incident that provokes memories of previous plagiarism scandal that effectively ended his 1988 presidential campaign.
The Daily Caller found striking similarities between Biden’s climate change plan and those published by various green organizations. The similarities include use of the same exact phrases in at least five instances.
Biden: “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.”
Carbon Capture Coalition: “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.”
Biden: “carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS) is a rapidly growing technology that has the potential to create economic benefits for multiple industries while significantly reducing carbon dioxide emissions.”
Blue Green Alliance 2017 Senate letter: “Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is a rapidly growing technology that has potential to create economic benefits for multiple industries while significantly reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.”
He went on to appear to plagiarize Vox, American Rivers, and Climate.gov.
This would not be the first time Biden raised eyebrows for plagiarism. In his 1988 presidential campaign, when he would have run against President George H.W. Bush had he secured his party’s nomination, Biden famously copied the life story and cadence of a prominent British politician’s television advertisement when delivering his closing remarks at a televised Democratic Party debate.
In 1987, when Biden was only 45, he briefly ran for the Democrat nominee for president, hoping to prevent Republican President Ronald Reagan’s Vice President George H.W. Bush from attaining the office. Unfortunately for Biden, allegations that he plagiarized an advertisement from an unsuccessful British politician, along with evidence that he lied about his college degree, led him to drop out of the primaries.
The New York Times reported at the time that Biden appeared to borrow heavily from the advertisement during a televised debate, changing only the details to suit his life.
Biden first claimed that the statement was original to him, and he came up with the idea while traveling. He changed the story almost instantly, saying he borrowed some of the ideas from a British politician, but that the details reflected his life story.
Advisers to Biden’s campaign would later admit that while the speech referenced having ancestors who were coal miners, Biden had no known relatives who worked in that industry.
The somewhat less partisan media of the 1980s quickly exposed Biden’s plagiarism to the public, largely leading him to call off his fledgling campaign for president.
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