Climate change is one of my top considersations for why I am supporting Bernie Sanders. The effects of climate change will be upon us ever more significantly year by year, not decade by decade. if we don't have a movement and a leader to drive us towards the rapid reduction in our use of fossil fuels our planet will soon be inhospitable to humans and most other life.
The latest science is that to avert climate disaster we have to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
Emissions will have to drop 40-70 percent between 2010 and 2050, and to zero by 2100.,,,The 2 C target "has become extremely ambitious," said Stocker, who helped compile the IPCC report, but "substantial reductions over the next few decades can reduce climate risks.
"That necessitates a transformation in the energy sector"—from emissions intensive coal, gas and oil to more sustainable sources like solar and wind.
Bernie, per his usual curse and blessing to be prescient and always ahead of the curve, understands the pressing need to address climate change forcefully and not in half measures. Bernie is strongly against the Keystone Pipeline.
Hillary, despite now having a grandchild who will not escape the hardships of climate change, says one thing about the topic and then acts the opposite.
More over the orange squiggle -->
Here's a new article over at HuffPo re Hillary's significant ties to the fossil fuel industry.
On the one hand we have Hillary correctly stating this:
Clinton, the former secretary of state, has called climate change the most “consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world” and says it would be a major focus of her administration if she wins the White House.
Yet Hillary "is inclined" to sign off on the Keystone Pipeline despite
10 Nobel Peace Prize recipients and 20 of the nation's top scientists urging leaders to kill this climate destroyer.
She's attempting to have it both ways, to hold mutually exclusive positions. This compromises her credibility, to say the least.
She might truly believe that climate change "is the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges..." but her credibilty on affecting serious policy on this issue is severely challenged not only by her supporting the Keystone pipeline but by the fact that bank investors in the Keystone pipeline
paid Hillary $990,000 for speeches in the months leading up to her presidential announcement. Another Canadian financial institution with an interest in Keystone XL, TD Bank, paid her $651,000 for speaking engagements.
They had some extra cash and just needed to off-load it, and hey, why not give it to Hillary Clinton. It's not like it's going to buy influence -- or so will argue Hillary and her supporters.
If that is not enough, now we learn that Hillary has hired a Keystone pipeline lobbyist, Jeff Berman, as a key campaign operative.
You can book it: if Hillary is elected, the Keystone pipeline is a go.
If nothing else Hillary has chutzbah. This is classic Clinton trying to have it both ways.
I can only gather that she is incredibly tone deaf, and/or counting on an apathetic, low information support base, and/or counting on a corporate-friendly media to not point out her glaring hypocrisies, and/or, counting on her supporters to have a very high threshold for cognitive dissonance.
If this was a Bush, or Cruz, or Walker, or Trump, liberals would be giddy with pointing out how compromised they were with their hypocrisy, conflict of interest and general unsavoriness of saying one thing,and actions totally doing the opposite.
She has shown the same inconsistency with income inequality--- yes to the TPP , no to Glass-Steagall, but supposedly crusading for the average American all the while her actions are crusading for multi-national corporations and banks.
Will Americans vote for someone lacking credibility on two of the biggest challenges to our country and world -- climate change and economic injustice? Will the media or her opponents highlight her contradictions, doublespeak and divided loyalties?
Of course Hillary's "out-the gate" poll numbers are great thanks to name recognition, identity and brand politics, etc. Once voters start focusing more on their choices and on the issues, will her numbers hold?
From May 2015
Clinton's early state honest and trustworthy numbers follow what a CNN/ORC poll released earlier this month found: 42% of Americans consider her honest and trustworthy, while 57% don't.
And her favorability numbers are slipping with time and exposure, not going up.
Can Hillary overcome some credibility issues to carry her thru the primaries or the general? Despite her massive warchest (with only 17% of donations less than $200) she doesn't have raging support from the grassroots. We shall see. It is early yet.
I'd just ask all voters who care about the future of their loved ones, of the planet, to carefully consider how someone so beholden to the fossil fuel industry and who is for the climate destroying pipeline is going to forcefuly and decidedly lead on --her words--the most “consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world” -- i,e, climate change.
Hillary supporters chide people for being selfish if they refuse to vote for Hillary in the general, yet, who's being the ultimate selfish when they vote for any leader who will not forcefully lead on de-celerating climate change?
Please, THINk BIG! If not for your sake but for the ones after us. We can't afford incrementalism at this juncture in earth's history.
Bernie's pic should be in the collage with this quote.