By Jan Barry
“Vote as if the Climate Depends on It”
That’s the headline of a call to action by Bill
McKibben in The Nation recently. This clarion call by the founder of 350.org to
counter Donald Trump’s disastrous environmental policies in November’s
presidential election also appeared in Rolling Stone and other publications.
Endorsing the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, McKibben
stated “their climate plan is the farthest-reaching of any presidential ticket
in history. More to the point, we can pressure them to go farther and faster.
Already, seeing the polling on the wall, they’ve adopted many of the proposals
of climate stalwarts like Washington Governor Jay Inslee. A team of Biden and
Bernie Sanders representatives worked out a pragmatic but powerful compromise
in talks before the Democratic National Convention; the Biden-Harris ticket
seems primed to use a transition to green energy as a crucial part of a push to
rebuild the pandemic-devastated economy.”
Furthmore, he added, “they’ve
pledged to try to lead the rest of the world in the climate fight. The United
States has never really done this. Our role as the single biggest producer of
hydrocarbons has meant that our response to global warming has always been
crippled by the political power of Big Oil. But that power has begun to slip.…”
Despite Biden’s
reluctance to rein in the hydro fracking industry in his home state of
Pennsylvania, his campaign platform endorses the goals of many states to phase
out fossil fuels by 2050, with a major milepost “to achieve a carbon
pollution-free power sector by 2035.”
Other steps in Biden’s
proposed transition includes hiring former coal miners and other workers to cap
old, leaking oil and gas wells, and safely close and remediate abandoned coal
and uranium mining sites that are polluting local waterways and communities. “Biden
will also hold companies accountable for the environmental damage of their
operations, including by clawing back golden parachutes and executive bonuses
for companies that shift the environmental burdens of their actions onto
taxpayers,” his website added.
Another transition
step, long sought by many environmental activists, would create a Civilian
Climate Corps that would hire diverse people “to work conserving our public
lands, bolstering community resilience, and addressing the changing climate,
while putting good-paying union jobs within reach for more Americans, including
women and people of color...” This plan would build on the pioneering work of
the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression that marshalled an
army of young men and military veterans to replant logged out forests and
create campsites, trails and other infrastructure in state and national parks.
Addressing a major
problem that many communities in cities and rural areas have faced for decades,
Biden pledges to “ensure that frontline and fenceline communities are at the
table when enforcement, remediation, and investment decisions affecting those
communities are made. Biden will ensure working groups on these issues report
directly into the White House, so that communities facing the dual threat of
environmental and economic burdens have access to the highest
levels of the Biden Administration.”
Bill McKibben’s call to
vote for Biden and continue pressing him to deepen his environmental plan should
be widely shared.
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