PUTNEY — I think of myself as a lifelong environmentalist, from participating in the first Earth Day and in education about nuclear power via Seabrook activists in the early '70s, through today, when we are at the major decision time regarding the healthy future of the planet.
In those many years of observing presidential politics, I have never felt that we had a candidate who truly understood the importance of making real and lasting changes in our economic system in order to leave a livable world for our children and grandchildren.
When Bernie Sanders stood on the stage during the first Democratic presidential debate, among all the declarations of the primacy of the dangers of ISIS and other military threats (real as they might be), he declared that climate change is the greatest threat to national security and to the future.
This statement and others like it make clear that Bernie has been thinking deeply about the many ramifications of climate change and how disruptive and deadly it will be for the world.
Climate change will be even more disruptive and deadly if we aren't able to bend the curve and slow our emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
The plagues of drought, population displacement, extreme heat events, water wars, sea-level rise, and other unknown consequences are indeed the greatest threat to everyone's future, but especially that of the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
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In November 2015, with Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Bernie introduced the ambitious and absolutely necessary “Keep It in the Ground Act.” While having little chance of passing in the current Congress, many of whose members are bought and paid for by the fossil-fuel industry, this act is a model of how we need to start changing the “all of the above” strategy for powering our country that has long dominated in both political parties.
The bill would block all new leases for drilling or digging for fossil fuels on federal lands, and offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, as well as completely prohibit drilling in the Arctic or the Atlantic.
“What I say to my Republican colleagues who reject the science, who refuse to work with us to aggressively change our energy system: I say, worry less about your campaign contributions, worry more about your children and grandchildren,” Bernie said.
A classic Bernie quote.
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The fossil-fuel industry's current most aggressive tactic seems to be building a huge network of pipelines across the nation to ship and often export fracked gas. Protests are occurring daily in New England against the Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal from New York across Massachusetts and New Hampshire, as well as the Spectra pipeline going through Boston and a gas pipeline in northern Vermont.
In November, Bernie spoke out clearly and forcefully against the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
Bernie has made clear his opposition to fracking, and he has supported the opposition to the huge, multi-million-dollar expansion of the fossil-fuel infrastructure at a time when we need to be putting our money and energy into clean and sustainable alternatives.
The Climate Protection Act of 2013, co-sponsored by Bernie, would force the frackers to reveal the chemicals being forced into the ground, undoing the insane exemption still on the books as Dick Cheney's gift to the gas and oil industry.
Bernie understands the potential and real dangers and huge financial expenditures that accompany the nuclear-power industry, and therefore has called for a total phaseout of relicensing the aging fleet of nuclear reactors in the United States.
There are a small, but very vocal, group of environmentalists who claim that nuclear is the answer, but, as Bernie and so many others of us who are familiar with nuclear energy understand, the billions of dollars that subsidize nuclear construction, maintenance, insurance costs, and every other aspect of this industry, need to be spent on renewables and improving our efficiency.
As those of us in Vermont understand firsthand regarding our shuttered reactor, the issue of safe and permanent storage of radioactive waste is one that is unsolved and probably unsolvable, making nuclear an even less suitable power source for a clean and healthy future.
To those who look at the future and say that we are too far along this path, that we are unable to make real changes, and that Bernie Sanders is too idealistic, the answer is that we have already come so far.
Millions of good-paying jobs have been created in the clean energy field, the ever-dropping price of solar has made it affordable for many, the majority of Americans now understand that there is a crisis we need to confront, and battery technology is improving all the time to store the energy harnessed by renewables.
If the United States is willing to direct research and development money and brains to solve this problem, we might be able to make real changes in the direction in which we are headed.
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The disaster that has befallen the residents of Flint, Mich. is emblematic of the hard work we face in changing this system away from the idea that industrial poisoning of our natural resources and our children is allowable.
The fact that the residents of Flint tend to be Black and low-income allowed the Republican governor of Michigan's administration to think the state could save some money by switching the Flint water system from the relatively clean waters of Lake Huron to the toxic water of the Flint River.
We are now learning that the federal EPA administrator understood for six months that lead was reaching the residents of Flint but chose not to make the information public, instead sharing her concerns only with state bureaucrats, who also chose to cover up the results of testing. Thousands of residents of Flint have been injured and sickened from the lead reaching their bodies due to the corrosive nature of this water.
Bernie Sanders was quick to say that Rick Snyder, the governor of Michigan, needs to resign - just another example of how he understands the concept of environmental justice.
We need a president who puts the interests of all of us and our planet first.