The world can’t wait for campaign finance reform. And it doesn’t have to. Albert H. Teich/Shutterstock One doesn’t think of Bernie Sanders, with his ambitious proposals to provide free public college tuition and Medicare for all Americans, as someone whose imagination is unduly constrained by political reality. Yet when it came to climate change in Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, Sanders was surprisingly pessimistic. “Nothing is gonna happen unless we are prepared to deal with campaign finance reform,” said Sanders, “because the fossil fuel industry is funding the Republican Party, which denies the reality of climate change and certainly is not prepared to go forward aggressively.” Is that true? Is climate action impossible without first getting corporate money out of politics? If so, that’s discouraging for climate hawks. Enacting campaign finance reform would be at least a five-step process: Elect a Democrat president. Luck into a conservative Supreme Court justice leaving the Court while that Democrat is president. Appoint a replacement. Have that judge join the Court’s existing liberal wing in overturning Citizens United v FEC. Then have the very same corporate-funded Congress vote to reform the system that got them elected. The world cannot wait that long to deal with climate change. But it shouldn’t have to. Sanders’ analysis is overly pessimistic for three reasons: 1. He is thinking like a legislator, not a president. There is a lot the president can do to reduce emissions substantially in the next decade or so under existing laws. As I explained on Thursday, Sanders and Hillary Clinton have not yet explained in detail how they would use the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions. Will they regulate carbon emissions from other sources besides power plants, and tighten methane leakage regulation on fracking wells, as Martin O’Malley proposes? Will they ban fossil fuel extraction on federal land? As president, they could do those things, and more, thereby reducing emissions enough to meet the near-term goals we’ll lay out in any global climate agreement reached in Paris this December. Read the rest at Grist. Continued: 3 Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Is Being Overly Pessimistic About Climate Action ; ; ;
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3 Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Is Being Overly Pessimistic About Climate Action
