Bernie Sanders: 'Hillary Clinton Supports Fracking. I Do Not.'
“Hillary Clinton supports fracking. I do not.”
These words appeared in a recent fundraising email from Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, which fiercely attacked fracking and Hillary Clinton’s support from and for the natural gas industry.
In blunt language, Sanders contrasted his call for a national moratorium on fracking against Clinton’s fundraising from natural gas investors:Just days before the Iowa caucus, Hillary Clinton left the campaign trail for a high-dollar fundraiser at a hedge fund. That same hedge fund is a major investor in fracking, an incredibly destructive practice of extracting natural gas by pumping hundreds of secret chemicals into the ground.
Hillary Clinton supports fracking. I do not.
And just as I believe you can’t take on Wall Street while taking their money, I don’t believe you can take on climate change effectively while taking money from those who would profit off the destruction of the planet.
Sanders’ email comes on the heels of the Clinton campaign’s February 12th release of a policy promoting new natural-gas extraction and infrastructure. Clinton’s promotion of “safe and responsible natural gas production” (the phrase “safe and responsible” was used five times) was praised by LiUNA, a trade union that had vigorously supported the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
“Domestically produced natural gas can play an important role in the transition to a clean energy economy,” Clinton’s policy position states, making no mention of the candidate’s February 4th pledge, caught on camera, to ban the extraction of fossil fuels, including natural gas, from public lands.
The conflict between Sanders and Clinton on natural gas is set to become a point of major political contention, as voters go to the polls next month in states overrun by fracking, including Oklahoma and Texas on March 1, Kansas and Nebraska on March 6, and Ohio on March 15. These states are reeling from the boom and bust of the fracking industry, left with earthquakes, degraded water supplies, and thousands of non-union workers exploited and poisoned by the private fracking companies Clinton’s donors have financed. Fights over natural-gas pipelines and facilities have mobilized activists in dozens of other states.
On a national scale, a growing body of scientific evidence is building that the climate benefits of switching from coal to natural gas were a total mirage, with the catastrophic Porter Ranch methane blowout the most visible and extreme example of a nationwide surge in methane leakage as a result of the domestic fracking boom promoted by the Bush and Obama administrations. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide on a twenty-year timespan.
Read Sanders’ full email:
Sisters and Brothers -Just days before the Iowa caucus, Hillary Clinton left the campaign trail for a high-dollar fundraiser at a hedge fund. That same hedge fund is a major investor in fracking, an incredibly destructive practice of extracting natural gas by pumping hundreds of secret chemicals into the ground.
Hillary Clinton supports fracking. I do not.
And just as I believe you can’t take on Wall Street while taking their money, I don’t believe you can take on climate change effectively while taking money from those who would profit off the destruction of the planet.
Please contribute to our campaign right now to help elect a president who isn’t beholden to special interests that profit off of pollution.
Dick Cheney pushed through changes to the Safe Drinking Water Act that legalized fracking, despite the fact that fracking companies keep the chemicals they pump into the ground a secret.
People who live near fracking locations no longer have drinkable water, and in some cases their tap water is actually flammable. Oklahoma has even seen a rash of earthquakes that many believe are a result of fracking.
In short, fracking is a disaster for the planet.
We need a president who is not beholden to special interests and who will do everything in his or her power to fight the effects of climate change. It’s clear that to elect that kind of president, millions of people need to come together and chip in whatever they can.
Make a contribution to our campaign now to send a message that you want to elect a president who will do everything possible to fight climate change.
We can’t afford to let people who would destroy our planet elect our next president.
Thank you for your support.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
In Letter to Shareholders, Warren Buffett Mockingly Compares Global Warming to Y2K
At the upcoming Berkshire Hathaway shareholders' meeting, the Nebraska Peace Foundation and Bold Nebraska are presenting a proposal calling for a report from Berkshire Hathaway's insurance division (which includes Geico) on the risks posed by climate change. The board, following Buffett's wishes, is opposing the proposed report.
Buffett's conglomerate is increasingly invested in the fossil-fuel industry, from his anti-community-solar NV Energy utility in Nevada to his railroad company BNSF, which profits heavily from oil-train and coal-train traffic.
Download the shareholder resolution and Buffett's opposition here.
The text of Buffett's letter is below:
It seems highly likely to me that climate change poses a major problem for the planet. I say "highly likely" rather than "certain" because I have no scientific aptitude and remember well the dire predictions of most "experts" about Y2K. It would be foolish, however, for me or anyone to demand 100% proof of huge forthcoming damage to the world, if that outcome seemed at all possible and if prompt action had even a small chance of thwarting the threat. If there is only a 1% chance the planet is heading toward a truly major disaster and delay means passing a point of no return, inaction now is foolhardy. Call this Noah's Law: If an ark may be essential for survival, begin building it today, no matter how cloudless the skies appear.It's understandable that the sponsor of the proposal believes Berkshire is especially threatened by climate change because we are a huge insurer, covering all sorts of risks. The sponsor may worry that property losses will skyrocket because of weather changes. And such worries might, in fact, be warranted if we wrote ten- or twenty-year policies at fixed prices. But insurance policies are customarily written for one year and repriced annually to reflect changing exposures. Increase possibilities of loss translate promptly into increased premiums.
So far, climate change has not produced more frequent or more costly hurricanes or other weather-related events covered by insurance. As a consequence, U.S. super-cat rates have fallen steadily in recent years which is why we have backed away from that business. If super-cats become costlier and more frequent, the likely - though far from certain - effect on Bershire's insurance business would be to make it larger and more profitable.
As a citizen, you may understandably find climate change keeping you up at nights. As a homeowner in a low-lying area, you may wish to consider moving. But when you are thinking only as a shareholder of a major insurer, climate change should not be on your list of worries.
Bernie's Army: 2016's Class of Progressive Candidates
The presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is is calling for a “political revolution” to take control of our political system from moneyed interests. His campaign has been criticized repeatedly for offering an ambitious democratic-socialist agenda that would be blocked by a Republican-dominated Congress. Clinton’s less ambitious but still liberal plans will similarly face a stone wall of GOP opposition. As they might say, “Oh yeah? You and what army?”
Thus, the policy success of the Democratic candidates relies in large part on whether they are buoyed by wins down the ticket. The Clinton campaign and its supporters argue such down-ballot successes are a political impossibility.
However, as David Dayen noted in a recent article in The New Republic, a wave of progressive candidates – which he dubbed “Bernie’s Army” – is running for Congress. Below is a list of candidates who may deserve that label – candidates endorsed for progressive platforms, who have endorsed the Sanders presidential campaign.
- The New Republic: Bernie’s Army is Running for Congress (TNR)
- Endorsers of Bernie Sanders for President (EBS)
- Democracy for America (DFA)
- Climate Hawks Vote (CHV)
- Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC)
- BlueAmerica (BA)
| Candidate | Race | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Kim Foxx | IL-Cook County State’s Atty | DFA |
| Jennifer Boysko | VA-HD-86 | DFA |
| Candidate | Race | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Alan Grayson | FL-SEN | BA |
| Rob Hogg | IA-SEN | CHV |
| Tom Fiegen | IA-SEN | EBS |
| Donna Edwards | MD-SEN | BA |
| PG Sittenfield | OH-SEN | BA |
| John Fetterman | PA-SEN | TNR EBS |
| Russ Feingold | WI-SEN | BA |
| Candidate | Race | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Raul Grijalva* | AZ-03 | EBS |
| Wendy Reed | CA-23 | EBS |
| Lou Vince | CA-25 | BA |
| Nanette Barragan | CA-44 | CHV BA |
| Bao Nguyen | CA-46 | EBS BA |
| Susannah Randolph | FL-09 | DFA |
| Tim Canova | FL-23 | EBS TNR running against DWS |
| Joseline Peña-Melnyk | MD-04 | DFA BA |
| Jamie Raskin | MD-08 | DFA CHV BA running against Chris Matthews’ wife |
| Paul Clements | MI-06 | BA |
| Pat Murphy | IA-01 | BA |
| Mike Noland | IL-08 | BA |
| Keith Ellison* | MN-05 | EBS |
| Carol Shea-Porter* | NH-01 | BA |
| Alex Law | NJ-01 | BA EBS |
| Peter Jacob | NJ-07 | EBS |
| Lucy Flores | NV-04 | EBS DFA TNR |
| Ruben Kihuen | NV-04 | BA |
| DuWayne Gregory | NY-02 | BA |
| Bill Perkins | NY-13 | EBS |
| Diana Hird | NY-18 | EBS |
| Eric Kingson | NY-24 | EBS BA |
| Zephyr Teachout | NY-19 | EBS DFA |
| Tom Guild | OK-05 | EBS |
| Shaughnessy Naughton | PA-08 | CHV |
| Angela Marx | WA-03 | EBS |
| Parmila Jayapal | WA-07 | EBS |
| Mike Manypenny | WV-01 | EBS |
Incumbents are marked with an asterisk.