Bloomberg: 'Climate change has the potential to kill everybody,' worse than pandemic 'long-term'

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested Friday that President Joe Biden take action on climate change without waiting for Congress, emphasizing that climate change is "much more serious" long-term than the COVID-19 pandemic because it could "kill everybody."

During the presidential campaign, Biden proposed a $2 trillion climate change plan.

Bloomberg, a former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, was asked if there are policy areas that he thinks Biden should address without congressional approval. He first said there are some executive actions that Biden could implement related to the pandemic and the COVID-19 vaccine but did not provide specifics. He then pivoted to climate change.

"Climate change is much more serious long-term than the virus because the virus doesn't kill everybody but climate change has the potential to kill everybody," Bloomberg said during a discussion at the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting.

Bloomberg said his foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, has been working on getting rid of coal-fired power plants.

"We've closed over 60 percent of all the coal-fired power plants in the country," he said. "We really do have a chance of getting all of them, or virtually all of them closed by 2030 which is only 9 years away and we're doing the same thing in Europe now. Actually, Europe has fewer coal-fired power plants so we're ahead there than we are in America."

Bloomberg said ripping down coal-fired power plants and replacing them with "renewables" is "capitalism at work."