The DNC and Climate Change

One of the more startling realizations of climate change is that there is as much of a “plan B” as there is a “planet B” if we now fail to decisively act. Which means no plan anything.

Aside from the tin-foil hat wearing flat-Earth brigade, of which Donald Trump is the most famous member of, climate change is accepted science. The options of inaction and not having robust discussion about this literal matter of life and death for the planet are no options at all.

Which makes the latest revelation by the DNC about climate change extraordinarily hard to fathom out.

On Thursday last week, the DNC’s resolution committee voted to reject a proposal for a single-issue debate on climate change. As if we didn’t have enough material from the DNC as to just how out of touch they are with the majority of the American people, now this.

It is clear that the establishment dinosaurs at the heart of the DNC brazenly still call the shots. So, it should surprise no-one that in the immediate run up to the vote, one of Joe Biden’s senior advisors, Symone Sanders, declared: “[Such a debate] would be dangerous territory in the middle of a Democratic primary process.” [1]

That statement alone is simply staggering. Dangerous territory for who exactly?

With a planet that is steadily over-heating and threatening ever more fires, floods and huge coastal erosion (New York or London half under water anybody?), isn’t that dangerous territory enough?

As recently as October 2018, the United Nations issued yet another wake-up call of a report when it comes to climate change. That report identified that unless greenhouse gas emissions are halved within the next ten years, the planet will be set to see its average temperature rise by 2.7 Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius).

Those are deeply troubling numbers and spell huge problems for the planet in the very near future.

One gets the distinct, heard-it-all-before feeling that Biden and the other dinosaurs don’t want such a debate for one good reason – that they fear such a debate would spook their numerous corporate donors and other vested interests.

This is another betrayal of democracy on behalf of the DNC. It is also monumentally foolish of them as the issue of climate change is of huge importance to younger voters – and rightly so. Younger voters have a greater appreciation of the future than the sort of voters that

Biden is trying to court – older whiter and way more establishment-minded. (It is of course no coincidence that older voters went noticeably more for Trump and Brexit than their younger counter-parts.)

Younger voters are becoming more and more of a potent force, literally by the day. To ignore them, and what they identify as being important policies and issues, is potential electoral suicide.

“According to a Pew Research Center analysis, voters under the age of 53 cast 62.5 million votes in the 2018 midterm elections. Those 53 and older, by contrast, were responsible for 60.1 million votes.” [3]

As hard as this may be to believe, even within the ranks of younger Republican voters, let alone Progressives, Democrats and Independents, climate change is becoming more and more of a pressing issue. Further, the Green New Deal is an attractive proposal to many young voters.

“Nearly 60 percent of Republicans between the ages of 23 and 38 say that climate change is having an effect on the United States, and 36 percent believe humans are the cause. That’s about double the numbers of Republicans over age 52.” [4]

What does that tell us? More importantly, what does is not just tell, but yell, at Biden, Pelosi and the rest of the DNC?

There can be no more singly important issue facing us than the planet that we all live on. Consequently, by extension, there can be no more important a debate subject to have.

The DNC are making quite a habit of shirking their responsibilities and obligations to the American people. If it’s not failing to try and take down Trump withimpeachment, it’s sticking their head in the sand when it comes to climate.