Pirate's Cove

People say they care about Hotcoldwetdry, but, at the end of the day, it usually polls last or next to last on the issues that people care about, even among Democrats. So, sure, why not create a big fuss?

Climate Activists Have Their Next Target: The DNC Debates

No city better embodies the challenges of climate change than the setting for the first Democratic debate in June. At least 10 candidates who meet the DNC’s set of polling and grassroots fundraising criteria will take the stage in Miami, a city that will face the threat of encroaching seas on a daily basis in the next 25 years. Many of the climate activists who have spent their time recently urging presidential hopefuls to embrace the Green New Deal and reject donations from fossil fuel industries are preparing for their next battle: pushing for a future presidential debate focused entirely on climate.

Environmental and progressive groups including 350.org, Greenpeace, Sunrise movement, Credo Action, and Friends of the Earth plan to ramp up campaigns in the coming weeks and months calling on the Democratic National Committee, as well as the major networks and individual 2020 candidates, to dedicate one of the dozen official debates to a subject that has never gotten its due in primetime.

Awesome. They’ll all be traveling using sources other than fossil fuels, right? BTW, if sea rise was so important for the Miami area, you’d think NOAA would have an active tide gauge. Nope. It was last active in 1981. The closest good ones are in Vaca Key, which shows a sea rise of 1.2 feet per 100 years, way up in Mayport, which shows .86 feet per 100 years (this is a long term gauge), and Key West, at .79 feet (another very long term gauge). These are all less than average for a Holocene warm period.

“We’re seeing a shift in people’s consciousness,” Janet Redman, Greenpeace USA’s climate program manager, told Mother Jones. “We need to see that starting to be reflected in our politics—that it’s not an isolated set of incidents or phenomenon. The public is craving politicians to have a conversation on this. They want to know real solutions.”

“Craving!” It was virtually a non-issue during the 2018 mid-terms. Same with 2016. 2014. 2012. Etc. It wasn’t even that big an issue when Al Gore was running. Those pushing it now, like Jay Inslee (who’s made it his #1 issue), are polling low. If the Green New Deal is so important, why are Warmists not demanding a debate and vote in the House?

But this year is likely to be different. After another year of record wildfires and extreme weather, capped off by alarming headlines from the normally staid Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Democratic primary voters have never been more concerned about climate. According to a Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom poll in March, 80 percent of those polled said candidates should spend “a lot” of time talking about climate change, placing this issue only second to concerns about health care. And the vision for the Green New Deal, when stripped of partisan context, has polled at astoundingly high ratesacross partisan lines.

No, it won’t be different. But, hey, I’d love for Democratic candidates to be asked what they want to do, whether they support carbon taxes and fees, if they’re for forcing people to give up their fossil fueled vehicles and take trains and buses, have the government take over the energy sector and the economy, control our lives at the federal level, and so forth.