Election day in the US is fast approaching.
As a country our votes get tallied in less than 30 days.
So if you were a one issue voter -- and that issue was climate change -- who should you
vote for?
Note -- don’t be a one issue voter.
Note 2 -- there are WAY more elections and votes going on in the US on November 8th than
just the presidency, in a lot ways your votes there are equally if not more important.
I’ve included links below on how to learn more about your local elections.
Okay on to climate change.
We’ll start with Donald Trump, mostly because that will be the quickest.
And then I can place the bar, or standard I will hold an actual legitimate, not trash
cheeto candidate to at a reasonable height.
If somehow you can ignore, which honestly i can’t -- the horrible things he has said
about women, including the tape that was just released, muslims, immigrants, people with
disabilities, really he’s said something awful about basically everyone.
If you ignore all that and JUST look at what he has said about climate change.
Well frankly you aren’t left with a lot, and i’m willing to bet you’ve heard most
of it before.
He’s tweeted his climate change denial several times, that its a hoax, its perpetuated by
the chinese, and it is actually freezing so climate change can't be real.
*heavy sigh*
He does have an issue page about energy on his website surprisingly.
Climate change isn’t mentioned once.
But he wants to “Open onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands, eliminate moratorium
on coal leasing, and open shale energy deposits.”
Which would be disastrous for the climate.
We need to be taking carbon out of the atmosphere, not putting more in.
Trump also wants to pull us out of the Paris Climate Accords.
Which, like really?
One of the only, if on paper, successful climate talks in the world?
An agreement the majority of emissions polluting countries have already signed??
He wants to pull us out of that?
He ignores the science and reality of a planet on which humans have already increased the
atmospheric carbon and the temperature.
And we're going to continue doing that unless we get our acts together and start dramatically
cutting emissions.
Something Trump wouldn't have us do.
So that's that.
A Donald Trump presidency, which by the way the Sierra Club claims would give the US the
only sitting world leader who denies climate change.
So Moving on.
Gary Johnson
His website does have a section on the Environment.
And affirms how great the National Parks are -- which I heartily agree with.
I even made a video!
He also supports the existence and work of the Environmental Protection Agency.
But thinks Washington politicians are too involved in regulating industry to decrease
emissions and questions the effectiveness and cost-benefit of these regulations at all.
Unfortunately his website doesn’t get into any specifics about the kinds of actions he
would take so that the federal government could “prevent future harm by focusing on
regulations that protect us from real harm.”
Whatever that means.
For that it seems we have to look at his statements, which is where Johnson’s thoughts on climate
change become well.
Listen.
Gary Johnson: "Should we take the long term view when it comes to global warming?
I think that we should.
And the long term view is that in billions of years the sun is going to actually grow
and encompass the earth.
Right, so global warming is in our future.
Mir: Granted that video was from 2011, so here he is in July of 2016.
Gary Johnson do you have a comprehensive plan to combat climate change?
[laughter]
Gary Johnson: Do I have a comprehensive plan?
Uh, No.
BUT!
For one tiny second -- he thought a carbon tax might be useful, so that shows some hope.
Unfortunately some headlines scared him back into his old, more hard-line libertarian position.
So I would say, it is pretty safe to argue that as President, Gary Johnson would do very
little about climate change.
And his stance to deregulate the energy industry and ‘allow the free market determine the
best energy sources” isn’t going to help us meet the necessary goals fast enough to
decrease the effects, particularly the ones we are already seeing, of climate change.
At best, he thinks climate change is a non-issue, at worst, he would actively deregulate and
de-fund the areas of the government working to combat climate change.
And now Hillary Clinton
Since announcing her candidacy this time around, Clinton’s stances on climate change and
the environment have continued to progress.
Her website features posts on tackling the threat of climate change, rural communities
and local and regional farming, and protecting wildlife.
Unlike some of the other candidates, Clinton’s web presence can go VERY in depth on some
of her plans and proposals, like in this post about Flint: the proposed goals are outlined,
followed by her reasoning -- which is generally heavily fact based.
Here the dangers of lead are explicitly outlined as well as plans to prosecute the criminal
behavior that exposes communities to these environmental poisons.
I’ve said it before on this channel -- but it bears constant repeating -- I think climate
change is one of the greatest challenges right now - that will affect generations to come.
But what we really need is climate justice.
And Clinton has an actual plan to Fight for Environmental and Climate Justice.
She even calls out Environmental Racism and has goals for combating it.
I could be wrong, but I’ve never heard of that on a major political party’s campaign
for president.
Ever.
But, her stance is not 100% pro-climate and the environment.
Clinton hasn’t said anything about the Dakota Access Pipeline, a pipeline running thru Native
American lands in North Dakota that has seen reports of protesters being attacked by dogs
and still hasn’t been stopped.
And unlike Bernie Sanders during the primaries, she hasn’t denounced Fracking as much as
I personally would like.
However she has offered some diplomatic nuance on the subject because in reality, you can’t
simply pull the plug on an entire energy industry like that.
In a lot of ways Clinton has a similar policy position on the environment as Obama.
While the Obama administration has accomplished a great many things, and has recently doubled
down on his conservation efforts, he has opened more federal land and water to oil and gas
drilling and promoted fracking.
In a lot ways, I would like to see a stronger positions for the environment from Clinton.
There are no perfect candidates -- and like Obama, the environmental movement will push
a Clinton presidency toward our goals.
But she is running on the most pro-climate campaign in the history of the Democrats.
Even when not asked about climate change at debates she brings it up, and as mentioned
before Clinton has gone out of her way to talk environmental justice.
And as an extremely viable contender for the presidency.
A vote for Clinton would be, among other things a vote for our planet’s climate.
Finally, I'll throw Jill Stein a bone.
While she is not going to be on the ballot in every state she does tout a strong environmental
message.
One of the “four pillars” of the green party is ecology, and on her website Stein
makes it very clear how import the environment is to her campaign.
She wants to transition to 100% clean energy by 2030.
Lead on a global treaty to halt climate change.
End destructive energy extraction including fracking, tar sands, offshore drilling, oil
trains, mountaintop removal, and uranium mines.
And Protect our public lands, water supplies, biological diversity, parks, and pollinators.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a lot more on Jill’s eventual policy plans more than
just these statements.
And since she only served on the Lexington Town Meeting, the local legislative body in
Lexington, Massachusetts -- I can't really vouch for her diplomacy abilities, whether
she would be able to get these incredible and necessary, but highly ambitious proposals
to pass.
She also has slightly outdated views on GMOs -- and wants to place a moratorium on them.
Which in my personal opinion attacking GMOs is only useful if you’re using it as a tool
to show the dangers of massive monocultures that many large scale agricultural companies
utilize in conjunction with GMOs and not because they are ‘unsafe.’
But that's a whole nother topic.
This was just a basic sampling and overview of the 3 major candidates, and jill stein,
that are up for election to be the president of the united states of america.
Granted, they’ve done a lot more talking on the campaign trail than I could possibly
fit into a video.
So i’ve included tons of resources down below, you can find my sources, additional
sources, ALL SORTS of ways for you to get more informed on this issue, and a few others.
If you aren’t as excited about your choices as you could be -- I highly encourage you
to look downticket.
I’ve included down below, the list of endorsements from the Sierra Club.
Which is a good place to start in find a meter for where your local candidates stand on the
environment.
Plus, I’ve left copious links on how to vote.
So please.
Vote.
Especially if you care about the climate.