Democratic candidates are competing to announce climate plans to stave off global warming, combining dire warnings with optimism that government mandates and punishments can succeed where technology alone has so far failed — to force the U.S. from a fossil-fuel economy to a clean-energy world.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris weighed in with her plan Wednesday, ahead of a CNN forum on climate, vowing to make polluters pay with a new pollution fee — part of a $10 trillion plan to get the U.S. to a “clean” economy by 2045.

Where Ms. Harris used sticks, Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, offered a plan laden with carrots, including a $200 billion fund for workers displaced in the transition to cleaner energy, a tax rebate to partially offset the cost of changes to homes and apartments, and World War II-style “climate action bonds” to help fund clean-energy projects.

“For too long Washington has chosen denial and obstruction as we’re faced with the imminent catastrophic effects of climate change,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “My plan ensures that no community is left behind as we meet the challenge of our time with the urgency and unity it demands.”

Climate activists are embracing the far-reaching approaches.

“We have seen, I think, an arms race now in a good way of candidates competing to have the most effective plans, and I think that’s a good thing,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who emphasized climate change in his since-ended presidential run, said on CNN on Wednesday. “I think we’re now in a place that is really healthy, where the Democratic Party is, I believe, going to produce a candidate to really make climate change a focus.”

Mr. Inslee was one of a still-crowded field of Democratic candidates until dropping out several weeks ago. He had offered a campaign built chiefly around raising the profile of climate change, but that position lost some potency as the field as a whole steadily moved toward support for drastic action.

Former Housing Secretary Julian Castro said he will empower the EPA to aggressively pursue “environmental justice” against corporate polluters, make it easier for affected people to sue, and require state governments that receive EPA assistance to meet certain federally-mandated civil rights standards, according to the $10 trillion proposal he laid out this week.

Sen. Bernard Sanders, meanwhile, has advocated his “Green New Deal” to combat climate change that includes plans to “massively” increase taxes, increase penalties on fossil fuel-related pollution, and require “fossil fuel infrastructure owners” to buy federal bonds that would finance cleanup associated with spills and accidents.

Mr. Sanders’ campaign said that unlike other candidates’ plans, the Vermont senator’s $16 trillion vision doesn’t rely on the public-private partnerships others are floating to spur investment in cleaner technology and other priorities.

“When it comes to banning fracking, achieving 100% renewable energy or taking Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry to task for their roles in creating this crisis — there is no middle ground,” said Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir.

That last line is a nod to a news story from earlier this year that said former Vice President Joseph R. Biden was weighing a “middle ground” approach on climate change.

But Mr. Biden later embraced the tenets of the Green New Deal and rejected “half measures” on the issue when he released his own proposal in June to move toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a $3 trillion proposal this week that pulls from Mr. Inslee’s plans and aims to move toward zero carbon pollution for new commercial and residential buildings by 2028, zero-emissions for new light-duty passenger vehicles by 2030, and zero-emission energy in electricity generation by 2035.

“We need to meet the urgency of the moment,” Ms. Warren said.

Ms. Warren’s plan calls for $1 trillion over 10 years to help subsidize the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. She also wants to provide job training and benefits for displaced workers in industries like coal.

“The tenets of just transition say that we’re going to protect your salary, we’re going to protect your pensions, we’re going to protect your health care, and we’re going to get you trained into the renewable energy economy,” said Anthony Rogers-Wright with the Climate Justice Alliance. “Quite frankly, I would say go a step further and say we’re going to retrain you in whatever it is that you want to do.”

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, meanwhile, has said the country has already missed the proper window for meaningful action and recently rolled out a $4.9 trillion climate plan that would, among other things, help people relocate their homes or literally move to higher ground, echoing a line from the last presidential debate.

While people like Mr. Inslee are embracing the debate, analysts have warned of unintended consequences of the costly proposals — particularly the plans that rely heavily on federal regulations to get there.

Completely eliminating coal from the U.S. energy picture would eradicate a substantial portion of America’s electricity resources, said Nick Loris, an economist at the Heritage Foundation.

“If it’s forced and happens as a result of market forces that’s fine, but if it’s arbitrarily and artificially forced out of the market as a result of excessive regulations that are devoid of any meaningful environmental benefit, that’s problematic for the market and for consumers [in] the overall economy,” Mr. Loris said.

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