The Democratic Party is officially setting itself apart as the party of climate justice with the current draft of the party's platform.
While the platform committee fell short of embracing a carbon tax and an outright ban on fracking, the Clinton and Sanders camps did come together to agree that it's time for the Justice Department to investigate fossil fuel companies for potential fraud.
Bill McKibben presented the motion to the platform committee on
Friday.
This isn't just good politics to set the Democratic Party apart from the Republicans as the only major party that wants to take aggressive action to hold fossil fuel giants accountable for decades of deceit: this is good science, and smart economics.
Right now, seventeen attorneys general here in the United States are investigating allegations that ExxonMobil misled the public about how their business model threatens the planet and public health.
Those allegations are based on reports from
InsideClimateNews,
The Guardian, and the
LA Times, which show that nearly 40 years ago, Exxon's own scientists had started warning about the dangers of relentlessly burning CO2 into the atmosphere.
And while the Democratic Party is setting itself apart as the party of climate justice, the Republican Party is working hard to stall action at every turn.
Thirteen Republican attorneys general wrote in a
letter earlier this month that, "using law enforcement authority to resolve a public policy debate undermines the trust invested and threatens free speech."
The problem is, fraud and deceit isn't covered under First Amendment free speech protections, and the issue at hand isn't a "public policy debate", it's scientific consensus.
In fact, it's such a matter of scientific consensus that
Dr. Michael Mann told the Democratic Party platform committee that we really don't even need to be collecting data or testing models to prove that the climate is changing, because we can just turn on the TV and see the evidence.
The historic 100-year floods in West Virginia that killed dozens of people have gotten plenty of media attention, especially the dramatic video of a burning house floating down a flooded valley.
But few commentators have bothered to mention that West Virginia and the surrounding region of the country have seen a
71% increase in precipitation since 1958, because a warmer atmosphere also holds more moisture.
