"Climate Mandate": Sunrise and Justice Democrats Call For a Green New Deal Biden Cabinet
The youth-led Sunrise Movement and progressive political group Justice Democrats have teamed up for the Climate Mandate campaign to push President-elect Biden to assemble a progressive governing team. Their message:
“President-elect Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump with the highest youth turnout ever. Now, Joe Biden must assemble a powerful governing team to stop the climate crisis, create millions of good-paying jobs, address systemic racism, and control the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The “Climate Cabinet” should have no ties to fossil fuel companies, or corporate lobbyists; be representative of America; and “fight with the urgency that the climate crisis demands,” the groups say.
In addition, they are calling for the formation of the White House Office of Climate Mobilization to coordinate efforts across agencies.
They offer three recommendations each for many Cabinet-level agencies, with a top pick listed first. The list leans heavily into the progressive caucus of the House of Representatives, not surprisingly previously endorsed for election by the groups. The list does not include some major departments, like Defense and Energy. Some of their recommendations, like Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) for Interior, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for Treasury, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for Labor, are known to be on Biden’s short list of candidates.
People can support the effort by signing a petition for a “fierce and creative governing team” to “build back better from the crises we’re in.”
In an aggressive video promoting the effort, the groups ask of Biden: “Will he be the leader of the American majority, or will he be Mitch McConnell’s vice president?”Their recommended picks:
- Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.)
- Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.)
- Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.)
- Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)
- Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)
- Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
- Sarah Bloom Raskin, former member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and former United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury
- Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor
- Keith Ellison, Minnesota Attorney General
- Larry Krasner, Philadelphia District Attorney
- Dana Nussel, Minnesota Attorney General
- Darrick Hamilton, Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University
- Stephanie Kelton, professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University
- Heidi Shierholz, Senior Economist and Director of Policy, Economic Policy Institute
- National Economic Council* :”A progressive Director of the National Economic Council will have a pivotal role in helping the president build back better, guarantee every American a good job, expand workers rights, and deliver investment equitably to every community. Joseph Stiglitz is a world-renowned economist who has called for a mobilization to confront climate change on par with mobilizing for a third world war.”
- Joseph Stiglitz, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
- Bharat Ramamurti, managing director, Roosevelt Institute
- Manuel Pastor, director, USC Equity Research Institute
- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
- Mary Kay Henry, SEIU President
- Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.)
- Mustafa Santiago Ali, former EPA assistant associate administrator
- Kevin De Léon, former California Senate Senate Leader
- Heather McTeer Toney, Director, Moms Clean Air Force
- Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)
- Jumaane Williams, New York City Public Advocate
- Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.)
- Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.)
- Sara Nelson, President, Association of Flight Attendants
- Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)
- Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine)
- Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio)
- Sen. Cory Bookery (D-N.J.)
- Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)
- Dr. Abdul El Sayed, former candidate for governor of Michigan
- Dr. Donald Berwick, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Sunrise: What Comes Next After Election Day?
Even after every vote has been cast, the fight for the Green New Deal will be far from over.
We know it might take days or even weeks for every ballot to be counted. Trump is already openly refusing to leave office even if he loses. And even if Joe Biden is declared the winner, we need to make it clear from Day 1 that we won’t back down until he makes the Green New Deal the law of the land.
The day after the election, our movement will come together to take stock, regroup and chart our course ahead. Sign up to join our call Wednesday 11/4 from 9-10pm ET / 6-7pm PT.
Biden: Climate Change Is 'The Number One Issue For Me'
Speaking on the Pod Save America show, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden explained that acting on climate change is his top priority and why he doesn’t expect another fossil-fueled electricity plant to be built in the United States.
Biden told hosts Dan Pfeiffer and Jon Lovett, both former Obama White House staff, “It’s the number one issue facing humanity. And it’s the number one issue for me.”
Biden’s campaign is running multiple ads on television and the Internet highlighting the costs of climate pollution to Americans and Donald Trump’s climate denial.
Biden argued that because of the Recovery Act “which [Obama] gave me the authority to run,” “we were able to invest in bringing down the cost of renewable energy to compete with coal, gas, and oil.” The Recovery Act did play a significant role in spurring renewable energy deployment, including wind manufacturing, although other countries have seen solar power costs decline even more rapidly than the U.S. (The Recovery Act’s energy components were primarily overseen by Joseph Aldy.)
“It’s becoming a fait accompli,” Biden continued, “No one’s going to build another oil or gas-fired electric plant. They’re going to build one that is fired by renewable energy.”
Biden’s prediction runs counter to current industry projections, which bullishly expect continued growth even though Biden is right about the financial advantage of renewable power. If a Biden administration restores sanity to the U.S. power market by eliminating distortionary subsidies for the construction of new natural-gas plants, his expectation may come true.
In the interview, Biden went on to claim that in the 1980s he was “the first person ever to lay out the need to deal with global warming,” and that Politifact said “it was a game changer.” This bit of puffery refers to his successful introduction in 1987 of the Global Climate Protection Act, amending Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.)’s 1978 Global Climate Program Act (15 USC Chapter 56) to explicitly discuss manmade global warming as a U.S. policy priority.
Biden was far from the first in the world (or in the U.S. Congress) to call attention to the greenhouse effect, however. Scientists raised the specter of global warming in congressional testimony in the 1950s and 1960s, and the Clean Air Act of 1970 explicitly mentioned climate pollution. Hearings for Rep. Brown’s legislation began in 1976.
Politifact has confirmed Biden’s considerably less grandiose claim that he was “one of the first guys to introduce a climate change bill,” which is entirely accurate. However, Politifact did not call his bill a “game changer,” a false claim Biden has repeatedly made. Rather, they cited Josh Howe, a professor of history and environmental studies at Reed College, who said it was “important not to overstate the impact of Biden’s bill.”
Consistent with the campaign spots, Biden explained why he believes “we have a moral obligation to everyone” to act on climate change:Look what’s happening right now. You just look around the United States of America. Forests are burning at a rate larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined being lost. People are losing their homes, their lives. In the middle of the country, we’re in a situation where you have 100-year floods occurring every several years wiping out entire, entire counties, and doing great damage.
He argued that the United States makes up “15 [percent] of the problem” and other countries are responsible for the rest. (The United States is actually responsible for about 25 percent of cumulative climate pollution.)
Calling it “bizarre” that everyone doesn’t recognize the economic potential of climate action, Biden noted that “the fastest growing industries are solar and wind.” This remarkable claim is essentially correct: solar panel installers and wind turbine technicians share the top three spots with nurse practitioners as the fastest growing professions in the United States.
Biden noted these jobs are “not paying 15 bucks an hour, they’re paying prevailing wage.” He did overstate the quality of these jobs, saying they pay “45 to 50 bucks an hour, plus benefits,” or a $90,000 annual salary. The actual median wage of solar installers and wind technicians is closer to $50,000, which is still considerably more than a $15-an-hour ($30,000 annual) salary.
The solar industry largely opposes unionization, something Biden has elsewhere pledged to change.
Full Transcript:
LOVETT: Trump seemed to think he had a kind of gotcha moment there at the end when you talked about transitioning away from oil and fossil fuels, even though ending subsidies for those industries is very popular. And he really wishes you’d say you’d ban fracking, even though you haven’t. At the same time, you’ve set these ambitious climate goals as part of your plan. And a lot of polling shows that climate change is the number one issue among young people, particularly among young people deciding whether or not to vote. What is your message to those young people who are passionate about this issue but skeptical that they can count on you, or really any politician, to actually deliver and take this issue with the urgency it demands?BIDEN: It’s the number one issue facing humanity. And it’s the number one issue for me. And all the way back in the 80s—I’m the first person ever, ever to lay out the need for a, to deal with global warming. And back in those—and Politifact said, “Check it out, it was a game changer.” And, but, it’s just the way in which this campaign had been run from the beginning about me in the primaries that it just never got traction.
Look, climate change is the existential threat to humanity. The existential threat to humanity. Unchecked, it is going to actually bake this planet. Not—this is not hyperbole. It’s real. And we have a moral obligation. There’s not many things—Dan and I worked together a long time. You don’t hear me often invoke a moral obligation. We have a moral obligation, not just to young people, we have a moral obligation to everyone.
Look what’s happening right now. You just look around the United States of America. Forests are burning at a rate larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined being lost. People are losing their homes, their lives. In the middle of the country, we’re in a situation where you have 100-year floods occurring every several years wiping out entire, entire counties, and doing great damage.
And by the way, as Dan, you may remember, the first thing that Barack [Obama] and I were told about when we took, when we went over to, were taking to the, over to the Defense Department, they said the greatest threat facing, the greatest security threat America faces is climate change. Because what’s going to happen, you can see massive movements of populations fighting over land. Fighting over the ability to live. And it, it is an existential threat.
And so I just think—but also presents an enormous opportunity. It’s a bizarre. You know, we’re one of the few countries in the world that’s always been able to take things that are serious problems and turn them into opportunities. It’s also the vehicle by which we can not only save the planet, but we can generate such economic growth and lead the world. But we have two problems.
One, we have an internal problem in the United States. What are we going to do? We make up, we make up 15 of the problem but we’re in a position where the rest of the 85 percent of the world’s responsible for the rest. We can go, we can go net neutral in terms of carbon tomorrow, and we’re still going to have our shores flooded. We’re still going to have these terrific hurricanes. The polar caps are going to continue to melt. We’re going to have, we’re going to have hurricanes and storms that will, and they’re going to increase.
And so we have to do two things. We need a president who can lead the world. That’s why I was so deeply involved in setting up the existence of the Paris climate accord. As well as do the things we have to do and can do.
And the last point I’ll make—I’m happy any detail you’d like me to, but the last point I’d make is that, you know the way we have to do this is we—you know we cannot discount the concerns of people what it means to their well-being. And not only in the future. And now but what about how they make a living.
That’s why I’m the first person I’m aware of that went to every major labor union in the country and got them to sign on to my climate change plan, which is extensive.
We’re going to get to zero net emissions for the production of electricity by 2035. And it’s going to create millions of jobs. But we got to let people— we can’t be cavalier about the impact it’s going to have on how we’re going to transition to do all this. But I just think it’s a gigantic opportunity, a gigantic opportunity to create really good jobs.
LOVETT: What do you see as the relationship you’re going to have? So a lot of climate activists— You have said basically, “We have to do everything we can to get Joe Biden in office. It’s an existential threat.” And then their plan is they’re going to put a ton of pressure on you to make sure that you really deliver on solutions around climate change. What do you expect to do?
BIDEN: I’m going to put pressure on them. I’m going to put pressure on them to live up to what their, this cause they talk about. And it starts off with voting. It starts off with volunteering. It starts off with making sure that they’re organizing, and they’re taking care to make sure that people on the, on the, on the fence-line communities get taken care of. Make sure the priorities are set. So we end up in a situation where people who are hurt the most could help the quickest.
You know, it’s—this is, uh you know I, I understand the sense. But the fact is that, look, the first thing we’re gonna do is make sure that we use the ability we have now, and I will as president, to do away with a hundred changes in, in, in executive orders he’s, and he’s put forward to do everything from allow more methane to seep into the, into the atmosphere, allow to pollute rivers, a whole range of things. We can do that very very quickly.
But it’s also going to require us to make sure that we deal with what we have to do now. For example, we should—you know, as you guys know, because you both worked in administrations, that the President of the United States has control over 600 billion dollars in signing federal contracts. Everything from one of the largest auto fleets and trucking fleets in the world to infrastructure.
When as, as—Daniel remember when the president asked me to handle, make sure we got the Recovery Act and 800 billion dollars was going to be distributed to keep us from going into a depression, he gave me the authority to run that from beginning to end. And what we did was we were able to invest in bringing down the cost of renewable energy to compete with coal, gas, and oil.
And so now you see what’s happening. It’s becoming a fait accompli. No one’s going to build another oil or gas-fired electric plant. They’re going to build one that is fired by renewable energy.
We have to invest billions of dollars in making sure that we’re able to transmit over our lines. You may remember, Dan, when we sat in that of those office buildings in the between, the interregnum period there, and we thought we could just make sure we could transfer this through, this renewable energy across the country at all? Remember we had that big map up, and we showed all the, all the high tension wires were going to go? Well—
PFEIFFER: Smart grid.
BIDEN: That’s right. Exactly right. But what happened? What happened was Not-In-My-Neighborhood people didn’t want to have high-tension wires in their neighborhood. So what we’re going to do, and what’s happening now—and working on this for three years you have a lot of folks in Silicon Valley and other places doing research on battery technology. So now we’re going to be able to store—for example, they can have a battery about as wide as my, the, the width of my arms and about this thick—that if you have solar power in your home, you—and the sun doesn’t shine for a week, that battery will store it. You’re going to be able to have all the energy you need in the meantime.
We’re going to provide 550,000 charging stations—for real!—on the new infrastructure, green infrastructure we’re going to be building. We’re going to own the electric automobile market. We’re going to create a million jobs in doing that.
These aren’t—this is not hyperbole—these are things that have been run through by economists and Wall Street and, and also by people who are in, in, in, in the thought community, the people who are running these major institutions.
And so there’s so much we can do. And we can create a clean environment. We can also grow the economy and get people good wages. The fastest growing industries are solar and wind. Solar and wind. And they’re not paying 15 bucks an hour, they’re paying prevailing wage. Every single contract the president gave me the authority to let when we were running the Recovery Act, every single one, paid prevailing wage. That’s 45 to 50 bucks an hour, plus benefits. And so that’s how we’re going to grow this economy.
Report: Big Law Overwhelmingly Supports Big Carbon
The 2020 Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard is the first to detail the scale of top law firms’ role in the climate crisis. Using the best data available, the Law Students for Climate Accountability assessed litigation, transactional, and lobbying work conducted by the 2020 Vault Law 100 law firms—the 100 most prestigious law firms in the United States—from 2015 to 2019.
Their findings:
- Vault 100 firms worked on ten times as many cases exacerbating climate change as cases addressing climate change: 286 cases compared to 27 cases.
- Vault 100 firms were the legal advisors on five times more transactional work for the fossil fuel industry than the renewable energy industry: $1.3 trillion of transactions compared to $271 billion of transactions.
- Vault 100 firms lobbied five times more for fossil fuel companies than renewable energy companies: for $36.5 million in compensation compared to $6.8 million in compensation.
- Cozen O’Connor
- Schulte Roth & Zabel
- Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton
- Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
- Paul, Weiss worked on as many cases exacerbating climate change as 62 other Vault 100 firms combined.
- Allen & Overy was the legal advisor on more transactional work for the fossil fuel industry than 78 other Vault 100 firms combined.
- Hogan Lovells lobbied more for fossil fuel companies than 92 other Vault 100 firms combined.
- Latham & Watkins is the only firm to be in the Top 5 Worst Firms for both transactions and litigation exacerbating climate change
The report also details the work that Latham & Watkins, Norton Rose Fulbright, Vinson & Elkins, Gibson Dunn, Baker Botts, and Greenberg Traurig did on behalf of the Dakota Access Pipeline project, including numerous efforts to crack down on the water defenders.
The group is calling on law students and firms to take the Law Firm Climate Responsibility Pledge to stop taking on new fossil fuel industry work, continue to take on renewable energy industry work and litigation to fight climate change, and to completely phase out fossil fuel work by 2025.
Top 5 Worst Firms for Litigation- Paul Weiss: 21 cases (7x the average)
- Gibson Dunn: 18 cases
- Sidley Austin: 16 cases
- Latham & Watkins: 13 cases
- Tie: Baker & Hostetler / Baker Botts / Munger, Tolles: 10 cases
- Allen & Overy: $153,365,000,000 (15x the average)
- Vinson & Elkins: $108,217,000,000
- Latham & Watkins: $94,815,000,000
- Clifford Chance: $83,708,000,000
- Milbank: $59,180,000,000
- Hogan Lovells: $7,085,000 (24x the average)
- Akin Gump: $6,820,000
- Squire Patton Boggs: $4,755,000
- McGuire Woods: $2,320,000
- Steptoe & Johnson: $1,920,000
Download the full report.
The Biden-Trump Climate Debate, Transcribed With An Attempt At Accurately Portraying Trump's Interruptions And Identifying His Falsehoods
As far as the fires are concerned, you need forest management in addition to everything else. The forest floors are loaded up with trees, dead trees that are years old, and they're like tinder and leaves and everything else. You drop a cigarette in there, the whole forest burns down. You've gotta have forest management, you've gotta have cuts ...
Number one, number two, we're going to make sure that we are able to take the federal fleet and turn it into a fleet that's run on their electric vehicles. Making sure that we can do that, we're going to put 500,000 charging stations in all of the highways that we're going to be building in the future.
We're going to build a economy that in fact is going to provide for the ability of us to take 4 million buildings and make sure that they in fact are weatherized in a way that in fact will, they'll emit significantly less gas and oil because the heat will not be going out.
There's so many things that we can do now to create thousands and thousands of jobs. We can get to net zero, in terms of energy production [sic], by 2035. Not only not costing people jobs, creating jobs, creating millions of good-paying jobs. Not 15 bucks an hour, but prevailing wage, by having a new infrastructure that in fact, is green.
And the first thing I will do, I will rejoin the Paris accord. I will join the Paris accord because with us out of it, look what's happening. It's all falling apart. And talk about someone who has no, no relationship with foreign policy. Brazil - the rainforests of Brazil are being torn down, are being ripped down. More, more carbon is absorbed in that rainforest than every bit of carbon that's emitted in the United States. Instead of doing something about that, I would be gathering up and making sure we had the countries of the world coming up with $20 billion, and say, 'Here's $20 billion. Stop, stop tearing down the forest. And If you don't, then you're going to have significant economic consequences.'
where two car systems are out,
where they want to take out the cows too.
No.
That is not...
That is not...
That is simply not the case.
Mister, please, sir.
Stop.
He said it on tape. He said stupid bastards. He said it.
I would never say that.
You're on tape . . [Snopes: Mostly false.]
I did not say that . . .
Play it. Play it-
Environmental Justice Now Tour: Historically Black Colleges and Universities
- Dr. Beverly Wright, Executive Director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice
- Dr. Robert D. Bullard, Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University
- Dr. N’Taki Osborne Jelks Assistant professor in environmental and health sciences at Spelman College in Atlanta.
- Joy Semien, graduate of Dillard University (B.S.), Texas Southern University (M.A.)
Full Transcript: Joe Biden Remarks On Climate Change And Wildfires
This afternoon, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden made an extended speech in Delaware about global warming and climate disasters, outlining his vision for “net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.” This speech was reminiscent of then-candidate Barack Obama’s climate speech of 2007.
Good afternoon.As a nation, we face one of the most difficult moments in our history. Four historic crises. All at the same time.
The worst pandemic in over 100 years, that’s killed nearly 200,000 Americans and counting.
The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, that’s cost tens of millions of American jobs and counting.
Emboldened white supremacy unseen since the 1960s and a reckoning on race long overdue.
And the undeniable, accelerating, and punishing reality of climate change and its impact on our planet and our people — on lives and livelihoods — which I’d like to talk about today.
Jill and I continue to pray for everyone in California, Oregon, Washington, and across the West as the devastating wildfires rage on — just as we’ve held in our hearts those who’ve faced hurricanes and tropical storms on our coasts, in Florida, in North Carolina, or like in parts of New Orleans where they just issued an emergency evacuation for Hurricane Sally, that’s approaching and intensifying; Floods and droughts across the Midwest, the fury of climate change everywhere — all this year, all right now.
We stand with our families who have lost everything, the firefighters and first responders risking everything to save others, and the millions of Americans caught between relocating during a pandemic or staying put as ash and smoke pollute the air they breathe.
Think about that.
People are not just worried about raging fires. They are worried about breathing air. About damage to their lungs.
Parents, already worried about Covid-19 for their kids when they’re indoors, are now worried about asthma attacks for their kids when they’re outside.
Over the past two years, the total damage from wildfires has reached nearly $50 Billion in California alone.
This year alone, nearly 5 million acres have burned across 10 states — more acres than the entire state of Connecticut.
And it’s only September. California’s wildfire season typically runs through October.
Fires are blazing so bright and smoke reaching so far, NASA satellites can see them a million miles away in space.
The cost of this year’s damage will again be astronomically high.
But think of the view from the ground, in the smoldering ashes.
Loved ones lost, along with the photos and keepsakes of their memory. Spouses and kids praying each night that their firefighting husband, wife, father, and mother will come home. Entire communities destroyed.
We have to act as a nation. It shouldn’t be so bad that millions of Americans live in the shadow of an orange sky and are left asking if doomsday is here.
I know this feeling of dread and anxiety extends beyond just the fires. We’ve seen a record hurricane season costing billions of dollars. Last month, Hurricane Laura intensified at a near-record rate just before its landfall along Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.It’s a troubling marker not just for an increased frequency of hurricanes, but more powerful and destructive storms. They’re causing record damage after record damage to people’s homes and livelihoods.
And before it intensified and hit the Gulf Coast, Laura ravaged Puerto Rico — where, three years after Hurricane Maria — our fellow Americans are still recovering from its damage and devastation.
Think about that reality.
Our fellow Americans are still putting things back together from the last big storm as they face the next one.
We’ve also seen historic flooding in the Midwest — often compounding the damages delivered by last year’s floods that cost billions dollars in damage.
This past spring Midland, Michigan experienced a flood so devastating — with deadly flash flooding, overrunning dams and roadways, and the displacement of 10,000 residents — that it was considered a once-in-500-year weather event.
But those once-in-many-generations events? They happen every year now.
The past ten years were the hottest decade ever recorded. The Arctic is literally melting. Parts are on fire.
What we’re seeing in America — in our communities — is connected to that.
With every bout with nature’s fury, caused by our own inaction on climate change, more Americans see and feel the devastation in big cities, small towns, on coastlines and farmlands.
It is happening everywhere. It is happening now. It affects us all.
Nearly two hundred cities are experiencing the longest stretches of deadly heat waves in fifty years. It requires them to help their poor and elderly residents adapt to extreme heat to simply stay alive, especially in homes without air conditioning.
Our family farmers in the Midwest are facing historic droughts.
These follow record floods and hurricane-speed windstorms all this year.
It’s ravaged millions of acres of corn, soybeans, and other crops. Their very livelihood which sustained their families and our economy for generations is now in jeopardy.
How will they pay their bills this year? What will be left to pass on to their kids?
And none of this happens in a vacuum.
A recent study showed air pollution is linked with an increased risk of death from COVID-19.
Our economy can’t recover if we don’t build back with more resiliency to withstand extreme weather — extreme weather that will only come with more frequency.
The unrelenting impact of climate change affects every single one of us. But too often the brunt falls disproportionately on communities of color, exacerbating the need for environmental justice.
These are the interlocking crises of our time.
It requires action, not denial.
It requires leadership, not scapegoating.
It requires a president to meet the threshold duty of the office — to care for everyone. To defend us from every attack – seen and unseen. Always and without exception. Every time.
Because here’s the deal.
Hurricanes don’t swerve to avoid “blue states.” Wildfires don’t skip towns that voted a certain way.
The impacts of climate change don’t pick and choose. That’s because it’s not a partisan phenomenon.
It’s science.
And our response should be the same. Grounded in science. Acting together. All of us.
But like with our federal response to COVID-19, the lack of a national strategy on climate change leaves us with patchwork solutions.
I’m speaking from Delaware, the lowest-lying state in the nation, where just last week the state’s Attorney General sued 31 big fossil fuel companies alleging that they knowingly wreaked damage on the climate.
Damage that is plain to everyone but the president.
As he flies to California today, we know he has no interest in meeting this moment.
We know he won’t listen to the experts or treat this disaster with the urgency it demands, as any president should do during a national emergency.
He’s already said he wanted to withhold aid to California — to punish the people of California — because they didn’t vote for him.
This is yet another crisis he won’t take responsibility for.
The West is literally on fire and he blames the people whose homes and communities are burning.
He says, “You gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests.”
This is the same president who threw paper towels to the people of Puerto Rico instead of truly helping them recover and rebuild.
We know his disdain for his own military leaders and our veterans.
Just last year, the Defense Department reported that climate change is a direct threat to more than two-thirds of our military’s operationally critical installations. And this could well be a conservative estimate.
Donald Trump’s climate denial may not have caused the record fires, record floods, and record hurricanes.
But if he gets a second term, these hellish events will become more common, more devastating, and more deadly.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump warns that integration is threatening our suburbs. That’s ridiculous.
But you know what’s actually threatening our suburbs?
Wildfires are burning the suburbs in the West. Floods are wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest. And hurricanes are imperiling suburban life along our coasts.
If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires? How many suburbs will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?
If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if more of America is ablaze?
If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is under water?
We need a president who respects science, who understands that the damage from climate change is already here, and, unless we take urgent action, will soon be more catastrophic.
A president who recognizes, understands, and cares that Americans are dying.
Which makes President Trump’s climate denialism — his disdain of science and facts — all the more unconscionable.
Once again, he fails the most basic duty to this nation.
He fails to protect us.
And from the pandemic, the economic freefall, the racial unrest, and the ravages of climate change, it’s clear that we are not safe in Donald Trump’s America.
What he doesn’t get is that even in crisis, there is nothing beyond our capacity as a country.
And while so many of you are hurting right now, I want you to know that if you give me the honor of serving as your President, we can, and we will, meet this moment with urgency and purpose.
We can and we will solve the climate crisis, and build back better than we were before.
When Donald Trump thinks about climate change he thinks: “hoax.”
I think: “jobs.”
Good-paying, union jobs that put Americans to work building a stronger, more climate resilient nation.
A nation with modernized water, transportation and energy infrastructure to withstand the impacts of extreme weather and a changing climate.
When Donald Trump thinks about renewable energy, he sees windmills somehow causing cancer.
I see American manufacturing — and American workers — racing to lead the global market. I also see farmers making American agriculture first in the world to achieve net-zero emissions, and gaining new sources of income in the process.
When Donald Trump thinks about LED bulbs, he says he doesn’t like them because: “the light’s no good. I always look orange.”
I see the small businesses and master electricians designing and installing award-winning energy conservation measures.
This will reduce the electricity consumption and save businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in energy costs.
While he turns us against our allies, I will bring us back into the Paris Agreement. I will put us back in the business of leading the world on climate change. And I will challenge everyone to up the ante on their climate commitments.
Where he reverses the Obama-Biden fuel-efficiency standards, he picks Big Oil companies over the American workers.
I will not only bring the standards back, I will set new, ambitious ones — that our workers are ready to meet.
And I also see American workers building and installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations across the country and American consumers switching to electric vehicles through rebates and incentives.
Not only that, the United States owns and maintains an enormous fleet of vehicles — and we’re going to harness the purchasing power of our federal government to make sure we are buying electric vehicles that are made and sourced by union workers right here in the United States of America.
All together, this will mean one million new jobs in the American auto industry.
And we’ll do another big thing: put us on a path of achieving a carbon-pollution free electricity sector by 2035 that no future president can turn back.
Transforming the American electricity sector to produce power without carbon pollution will be the greatest spur to job creation and economic competitiveness in the 21st Century. Not to mention the positive benefits to our health and our environment.
We need to get to work right away.
We’ll need scientists at national labs and land-grant universities and Historically Black Colleges and Universities to improve and innovate the technologies needed to generate, store, and transmit this clean electricity.
We’ll need engineers to design them and workers to manufacture them. We’ll need iron workers and welders to install them.
And we’ll become the world’s largest exporter of these technologies, creating even more jobs.
We know how to do this.
The Obama-Biden Administration rescued the auto industry and helped them retool.
We made solar energy cost-competitive with traditional energy, and weatherized more than a million homes.
We will do it again — bigger and faster and better than before.
We’ll also build 1.5 million new energy-efficient homes and public housing units that will benefit our communities three-times over — by alleviating the affordable housing crisis, by increasing energy efficiency, and by reducing the racial wealth gap linked to home ownership.
There are thousands of oil and natural gas wells that the oil and gas companies have just abandoned, many of which are leaking toxins.
We can create 250,000 jobs plugging those wells right away — good union jobs for energy workers. This will help sustain communities and protect the environment as well.
We’ll also create new markets for our family farmers and ranchers.
We’ll launch a new, modern day Civilian Climate Corps to heal our public lands and make us less vulnerable to wildfires and floods.
I believe that every American has a fundamental right to breathe clean air and drink clean water. But I know that we haven’t fulfilled that right.
That’s true of the millions of families struggling with the smoke created by these devastating wildfires right now.
But it’s also been true for a generation or more in places — like Cancer Alley in Louisiana or along the Route 9 corridor right here in Delaware.
Fulfilling this basic obligation to all Americans — especially Black, Brown, and Native American communities, who too often don’t have clean air and clean water — is not going to be easy.
But it is necessary. And I am committed to doing it.
These aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams. These are concrete, actionable policies that create jobs, mitigate climate change, and put our nation on the road to net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.
Some say that we can’t afford to fix this.
But here’s the thing.
Look around at the crushing consequences of the extreme weather events I’ve been describing. We’ve already been paying for it. So we have a choice.
We can invest in our infrastructure to make it stronger and more resilient, while at the same time tackling the root causes of climate change.
Or, we can continue down the path of Donald Trump’s indifference, costing tens of billions of dollars to rebuild, and where the human costs — the lives and livelihoods and homes and communities destroyed — are immeasurable.
We have a choice.
We can commit to doing this together because we know that climate change is the existential challenge that will define our future as a country, for our children, grandchildren, and great-children.
Or, there’s Donald Trump’s way — to ignore the facts, to deny reality that amounts to full surrender and a failure to lead.
It’s backward-looking politics that will harm the environment, make communities less healthy, and hold back economic progress while other countries race ahead.
And it’s a mindset that doesn’t have any faith in the capacity of the American people to compete, to innovate, and to win.
Like the pandemic, dealing with climate change is a global crisis that requires American leadership.
It requires a president for all Americans.
So as the fires rage out West on this day, our prayers remain with everyone under the ash.
I know it’s hard to see the sun rise and believe today will be better than yesterday when America faces this historic inflection point.
A time of real peril, but also a time of extraordinary possibilities.
I want you to know that we can do this.
We will do this.
We are America.
We see the light through the dark smoke.
We never give up.
Always.
Without exception.
Every time.
May God bless our firefighters and first responders.
May God protect our troops.
Senate Democrats Release Agenda For "Net-Zero Emissions" Clean Economy By 2050
The Senate Democrats’ Select Committee on the Climate Crisis has released a 263-page report detailing a “clean economy” agenda with “bold climate solutions.” Entitled “The Case for Climate Action: Building a Clean Economy for the American People,” the report, which repeatedly emphasizes economic growth and job creation, was developed by the ten-member committee chaired by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
Legislation must now be developed to meet the overarching goals of the committee:
- Reduce U.S. emissions rapidly to help achieve 100 percent global net-zero emissions no later than 2050.
- Stimulate economic growth by increasing federal spending on climate action to at least 2 percent of GDP annually—and ensure that at least 40 percent of the benefits from these investments help communities of color and low-income, deindustrialized, and disadvantaged communities.
- Create at least 10 million new jobs.
The report, while largely in the spirit of the Green New Deal platform – in particular in the listing of recommendations from environmental justice leaders – avoids any mention of that phrase. Several of the photographs in the report are of rallies and marches of Green New Deal advocates.
Unlike most Green New Deal advocates, the report makes space for “safer nuclear power” and “fossil generation paired with carbon capture and storage.” “Carbon capture and removal technologies are an essential supplement to decarbonization,” the report argues in an extended section.
An entire chapter of the report is dedicated to “Dark Money” – specifically, the “undue influence from the leaders of giant fossil fuel corporations” who “used weak American laws and regulations governing election spending, lobbying, and giving to advocacy groups to mount a massive covert operation” to “spread disinformation about climate change and obstruct climate action.”In order to advance bold climate legislation, we must expose the covert influence of wealthy fossil fuel executives, trade associations, and front groups that have done everything possible to obstruct climate action.
The report credits the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision with allowing “fossil fuel political power to effectively capture Republican elected officials nationwide.”
In addition to ten hearings, the committee held twelve in-depth hearings with advocates, four of which were exclusively with corporate executives (utilities, health care, insurance, and banks). Two meetings were held with international representatives (a United Nations representative and European central bankers). Two meetings were with union officials (one included environmentalists); two were with environmental justice activists and mainstream environmentalists; one was with youth climate activists. The last meeting was with surfers and surfing industry representatives.
Notably, the committee did not meet with any climate scientists in academia.
In addition to Schatz, the other members of the committee are U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), and Tina Smith (D-Minn.).
Hearings:
A Blueprint for Success: U.S. Climate Action at the Local Level (July 2019)
- Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta, GA
- Mayor Kirk Caldwell, Honolulu, HI
- Mayor Melvin Carter, Saint Paul, MN
- Mayor William Peduto, Pittsburgh, PA
- Mayor Ted Wheeler, Portland, OR
- Dr. Frank Luntz, founder and CEO, FIL, Inc.
- Kiera O’Brien, vice president of Students for Carbon Dividends
- Nick Huey, founder of the Climate Campaign
- Mike Richter, president of Brightcore Energy; Hall of Fame goaltender for the New York Rangers
- Jeremy Jones, founder of Protect Our Winters; professional snowboarder
- Caroline Gleich, professional ski mountaineer and adventurer
- Tommy Caldwell, professional climber
- Dr. Justin Farrell, professor, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
- Dr. Naomi Oreskes, professor, Harvard University
- Morton Rosenberg, congressional scholar, Project on Government Oversight
- Dylan Tanner, executive director & co-founder, InfluenceMap
- Dr. Cecilia Martinez, co-founder and executive director, Center for Earth, Energy, and Democracy
- Michele Roberts, national co-coordinator, Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform
- Celeste Flores, outreach director, Faith in Place
- Alice Hill, senior fellow for climate change policy, Council on Foreign Relations
- Laura Lightbody, project director, Pew Charitable Trusts Flood-Prepared Communities
- Mayor Tim Kabat, La Crosse, WI
- Rear Admiral Ann C. Phillips, United States Navy (retired)
- The Hon. John Conger, director, Center for Climate and Security
- Andrew Holland, chief operating officer, American Security Project
- The Hon. Sarah Bloom Raskin, former member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Deputy Treasury Secretary
- Dr. Bob Litterman, founding partner and Risk Committee chairman, Kepos Capital; chair of the Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee, Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- Dave Burt, CEO and founder, DeltaTerra Capital
- Frédéric Samama, head of responsible investment, Amundi; co-author of “The green swan: Central banking and financial stability in the age of climate change”
- The Hon. Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Secretary of Energy; founder and CEO, Energy Futures Initiative
- Tom Conway, international president, United Steelworkers (USW)
- Vivian Satterfield, director of strategic partnerships, Verde
- Jeff Allen, executive director, Forth
- Brad Schallert, director of carbon market governance and aviation, World Wildlife Fund
- Rachel Muncrief, deputy director, International Council on Clean Transportation
Meetings:
Utility executives (June 2019)
- Alan Oshima, president and CEO, Hawaiian Electric
- Bill Johnson, president and CEO, PG&E
- Maria Pope, president and CEO, Portland General Electric
- Terry Sobolewski, president, National Grid Rhode Island
- Eric Olsen, vice president and general counsel, Great River Energy
- Richard Trumka, president, AFL-CIO
- Liz Shuler, secretary-treasurer, AFL-CIO
- Sean McGarvey, president, North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU)
- Cecil Roberts, president, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)
- Terry O’Sullivan, general president, Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA)
- Paul Shearon, international president, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE)
- Warren Fairley, international vice president for Southeast, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers
- Austin Keyser, director of political and legislative affairs, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)
- Eddie Bautista, executive director, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance
- Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director, UPROSE
- Stephan Edel, director, New York Working Families
- Maritza Silva-Farrell, executive director, ALIGN
- Lisa Tyson, executive director, Long Island Progressive Coalition
- Marc Weiss, former board member, Sierra Club
- Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the 2019 Climate Action Summit
- Alexandria Villaseñor, co-founder, U.S. Youth Climate Strike; founder, Earth Uprising
- Jonah Gottlieb, founding youth member, National Children’s Campaign
- Levi Draheim, Juliana v. United States plaintiff
- Kevin Patel, co-deputy partnerships director, Zero Hour
- Lana Weidgenant, co-deputy partnerships director, Zero Hour
- Rachel Lee, head coordinator, Zero Hour NYC
- Daphne Frias, global outreach team, Zero Hour
Financial industry executives (September 2019)
- Roger Ferguson, president and CEO, TIAA
- Douglas Peterson, president and CEO, S&P Global
- Raymond McDaniel, Jr., president and CEO, Moody’s
- Edward Skyler, executive vice president for global public affairs, Citi
Signatories to the Equitable and Just National Climate
Platform (October 2019)
- Dr. Cecilia Martinez, co-founder and executive director, Center for Earth, Energy, and Democracy
- Michele Roberts, national co-coordinator, Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform
- Dr. Mildred McClain, executive director, The Harambee House
- The Hon. Harold Mitchell, Jr., executive director, ReGenesis Project; former state representative, South Carolina House of Representatives
- Richard Moore, co-coordinator, Los Jardines Institute
- Dr. Nicky Sheats, Esq., chairperson, New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance; director, Center for the Urban Environment of the John S. Watson Institute for Public Policy at Thomas Edison State University
- Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director, WE ACT for Environmental Justice
- Jumana Vasi, senior advisor, Midwest Environmental Justice Network
- Dr. Beverly Wright, executive director, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice
- Sara Chieffo, vice president of government affairs, League of Conservation Voters
- Jessica Ennis, legislative director for climate and energy, Earthjustice
- Lindsay Harper, representative, U.S. Climate Action Network
- Cathleen Kelly, senior fellow for energy and environment, Center for American Progress
- Lissa Lynch, staff attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council
- Liz Perera, climate policy director, Sierra Club
- Frank Elderson, executive director of supervision, De Nederlandsche Bank; chairman, Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS)
- Nathalie Aufauvre, director general of financial stability and operations, Banque de France
- Dr. Sabine Mauderer, member of the Executive Board, Deutsche Bundesbank
- Dr. Egil Matsen, deputy governor, Norges Bank
- Katie Wickman, sustainability manager, Advocate Aurora Health
- Brett Green, manager for remote operations, Ascension Medxcel
- Bob Biggio, senior vice president of facilities and support services, Boston Medical Center
- Jon Utech, senior director, Office for a Healthy Environment, Cleveland Clinic
- Rachelle Reyes Wenger, system vice president of public policy & advocacy engagement, Dignity Health
- Elizabeth Rogers, policy analyst, Gundersen Health System
- Charles Goyette, director of sustainability, Inova Health System
- Jean Garris Hand, senior utility & sustainability consultant, Providence St. Joseph Health
- Michael Waller, director of sustainability, Rochester Regional Health
- Jeanine Knapp, sustainability leader, ThedaCare
- John Leigh, director of sustainability, Virginia Mason Health System
- James Slevin, national president, Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA)
- Anna Fendley, director of regulatory and state policy, United Steelworkers (USW)
- Collin O’Mara, president and CEO, National Wildlife Federation
- Kathleen Rest, executive director, Union of Concerned Scientists
- Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs, League of Conservation Voters
- Jason Walsh, executive director, BlueGreen Alliance
- Evan Greenberg, chairman and CEO, Chubb
- Mike Mahaffey, chief strategy and corporate development officer, Nationwide
- Melissa Salton, chief risk officer, Munich Re
- Ian Branagan, group chief risk officer, RenaissanceRe
- Greg Long, pro surfer
- Leah Dawson, pro surfer
- Dr. Cliff Kapono, pro surfer, journalist, and chemist
- Pete Stauffer, environmental director, Surfrider Foundation
- Katie Day, staff scientist, Surfrider Foundation
- Stefanie Sekich-Quinn, coastal preservation manager, Surfrider Foundation
- Vipe Desai, co-founder, Business Alliance for Protecting the Pacific Coast (BAPPC)
- Chris Evans, Surf Industry Manufacturers Association (SIMA)
- Shea Perkins, senior manager for culture & impact marketing, Reef
- Madeline Wade, vice president, Signal Group (on behalf of REI)
Sunrise Movement Launches "Wide Awake" Campaign Confronting Politicians At Their Doorsteps
The youth climate activist collective known as the Sunrise Movement has begun protesting outside the homes of politicians they hold responsible for the “death economy” of rising climate, racial, and economic injustice. The “Wide Awake” campaign is inspired by the Wide Awakes, a militant youth abolitionist organization in the years leading into the Civil War.
We are Wide Awake. And, for the next hundred days, the architects of this death economy will be too.This is not just an uprising, it’s a mothafucking haunting. We will march to their homes at midnight so they understand that we are wide awake to their role in crafting this nightmare. When they try to dine at restaurants we’re forced to work at — despite the risk of COVID — because our unemployment is ending, we will not serve them. When they do nothing to stop federal agents from snatching us off the streets, when they force us to go back to school in unsafe conditions, when they do nothing to stop our democracy from crumbling, we will bang on their doors from dusk until dawn and make them hear us. We will make their lives a waking nightmare until they stand with us or give way to the power of the people and the vision we have for a new world.
“Wide Awake” actions so far include:
- August 20: U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr
- August 17: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)
- August 17: Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.)
No justice, no sleep @SenatorBurr pic.twitter.com/OUjuEmt2Fx
— Sunrise Durham 🌅 (@SunriseDurham) August 17, 2020 - August 15: University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel
- August 14: Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson
- August 14: Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.)
- August 14: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
- August 13: Gov. Tim Walz (R-Minn.)
Sunrise Twin Cities is outside @GovTimWalz's house keeping him awake with pots, pans, drums, and chanting, demanding action to block the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline pic.twitter.com/9MZCWjnKav
— The Mac Weekly (@themacweekly) August 14, 2020 - August 11: Calif. State Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg (D-San Fernando)
- July 21: D.C. Councilmember At-Large Anita Bonds
- July 17: Providence Mayor Jorge Elonza
- June 19: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
Climate Council Conversation: "Why Democrats Should Run on Climate"
Join our chair Michelle Deatrick July 22 at 7pm ET as she facilitates a conversation between actress and activist Jane Fonda, Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM), Sunrise Movement National Spokesperson Naina Agrawal-Hardin, and 350 Action’s North America Director, Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, about why Democrats need to run on climate.