I completely, 100% endorse this idea
Democrats must go to war with fossil fuel industry to take on the climate crisis
Nearly every candidate that participated in CNN’s seven-hour climate town hall agreed that we need to invest trillions of dollars in building a clean energy economy fit for the 21st century, and create hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs in the process. However impressive these commitments are, they won’t be worth much if they don’t also take on the fossil fuel industry.
There was plenty of common ground to be found on Wednesday night, where candidates happily focused more on presenting their own visions than tearing down those of their opponents. On what to do with dirty energy companies, though, the differences couldn’t be starker. (snip)
Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has pledged in his plan for a Green New Deal to make the fossil fuel industry enemy No 1, cutting into their business model and holding them accountable for the years they spent spreading misinformation about global warming. Elizabeth Warren rightly called out the fact that focusing on plastic straws and lightbulbs – as last night’s moderators at CNN insisted on doing – distracts from the fact that responsibility for this crisis is concentrated among a small number of corporations; just 90 companies – most of them fossil fuel producers – have been responsible for two-thirds of manmade greenhouse gas emissions since the dawn of the industrial age.
There has been plenty of debate this cycle over candidates’ relative positions on nuclear energy, with policy wonks not unreasonably arguing that it could be risky to take that option off the table entirely. But any climate plan that doesn’t challenge the gargantuan power of the fossil fuel industry head-on is flatly denying several realities about our energy system. While the cost of renewables has plummeted over the last several years, their share of our energy mix has remained largely flat. Use of natural gas – what Amy Klobuchar called a “transitional†fuel – will need to decline 74% by mid-century, if we’re to take the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seriously, but is poised to grow dramatically over the next several years via fresh development in the Permian and Appalachian basins. Building even prodigious amounts of clean power won’t stop that, or magically outcompete incumbent fuels. In short, there is nothing “inevitable†about the transition to renewables. (snip)
There’s no way around it: curbing the climate crisis means going to war with the fossil fuel industry – not attending their fundraisers.
Well, good luck with this. They’d be promising to, again, skyrocket energy costs and the cost of living, all while making it almost impossible for citizens to get anywhere on their own, since most can’t afford to purchase an expensive hybrid (where will the energy to recharge them come from?). You can kiss air flights goodbye. How will the military operate? You can’t run a tank or non-nuclear ship on solar panels. So, they should push this line, showing citizens just how insane they are. It will make Trump’s re-election that much easier.
