[MCN] In the recent Pence-Harris debate, Harris blew it on climate change

[Lance Olsen]

The Biden team — and the DLC — seem to have somehow chosen to send Kamala Harris into the VP debate largely to denounce Trump, but left her disappointingly unprepared for arguing the case for reining in climate change . 

For example, when Pence trotted out the argument that Biden, she, and the radical environmental left approach to climate change would damage the economy, she had a golden opportunity to inform people all across the county that climate change is itself a threat to the economy, and that the Richmond, San Fransisco, and New York branches of the Federal Reserve have said as much.

She could have easily asked Mr. Pence if he was even aware that climate change now threatens farm and food, or whether he has heard that sprawling fires and stronger hurricanes are putting many Americans at risk of losing their home insurance, and their homes. 

Her allotted two minutes gave her all the time she needed to counter Pence by facing the camera and telling viewers that American Banker magazine has stressed that climate issues constitute an increasing risk to banks. She could easily have added that an executive with AXA, a major insurance company, told an industry gathering that at some point “the world is uninsurable.” 

Far too few Americans are are aware of these issues and questions, and she missed a chance to get them out where viewers could learn of them.

She even could have asked Pence why, when he poses as a defender of the economy, he keeps defending the fossil fuels that now endanger the economy and the environment at the same time.
 
Similarly, when Pence trotted out the argument that Biden, she, and the alleged radical environment left approach puts many energy jobs in danger, she had a golden opportunity to tell the audience that many new forms of energy jobs will come with that same radical environmental environment left approach to climate change, and that, yes, these jobs are already replacing the fossil fuel energy jobs that are part of the danger to the rest of the economy.

I was disappointed, even disgusted by her poor performance on climate, and even left wondering if the Biden campaign or DLC was fully awake when preparing her for this nationally broadcast debate. For that matter, hardly any Democrats are rolling up their sleeves to engage voters with these issues. 

It’s not that the information is beyond the reach of the Biden campaign, the DLC, or Democrats in Montana. For that matter, it’s not that the Republicans can plea ignorance. 

To get these issues out front, Jeff Smith, John Woodland, Carla Abrams and I co-signed an op-ed about it for the Missoulian, and it was also printed in other Lee papers.

Here it is

A rising climate challenge to political elites

The combustion of fossil fuels is no longer understandable as only a danger to nature. It’s now been increasingly recognized as an equal danger to the economy. This double jeopardy puts all Montanans at risk twice over, and the world of business and industry has increasingly added its own voice urging political action.

The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change is a group of 415 investment firms managing combined assets worth more than twice the size of the entire Chinese economy. In December of 2018, recognizing risk to these assets, this group urged that political elites must now 1 -- quit reliance on thermal coal, and 2 — stop subsidizing all fossil fuels, and 3 — get on with putting a price on carbon. 

Taking these 3 steps one step further, this group also pressed for 4— corporations to come clean on reporting their climate risks.

Try as they might, political elites can’t dismiss this prominent group as a just bunch of socialists. Nor can political elites so dismiss Barron’s, a major financial weekly. On June 1 of this year, under a headline proclaiming that “Climate Change Risk is Chronic and Acute,” Barron’s reported that “We can no longer talk about global warming as a niche issue that affects only certain industries.” 

Articles stressing the increasing danger from combustion of fossil fuels have now appeared in American Banker magazine as well as Sierra Magazine, in The Economist as well as The Ecologist, in warnings from the Financial Times as well as Trout Unlimited, and from Business Week as well as the Montana and National Wildlife Federations. 

World Finance magazine has pointed out that, “It is becoming more and more apparent that the developing threat of climate change is not simply damaging the earth’s natural ecosystem, but is also harming the world economy.” 

The Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and San Franscisco have warned that climate change is a threat to the US economy. The headline over an April 4 2019 Fortune magazine report on climate risk said “Central Bankers Are The World’s Newest Climate Activists.”

Underscoring the economy’s exposure to climate risks, a leading insurance company’s top executive has even said that, at some point, “the world is uninsurable.” 

All in all, there’s escalating concern that the consequences of firing up the fossil fuels are, now, already, forcing us to a point of no return, and increasing conviction that prevention has a friendlier price tag than anything we’d be forced to spend in hope of cure.

We increasingly agree with 16 year old Greta Thunberg’s observation that too many political elites are “acting like children.”  It doesn’t have to be that way. The recent surge of concern for the economy and the environment at the same time, and for the same reason, may yet challenge political elites to find maturity enough to tell it like it is. Is that too much to ask?

Jeff Smith, John Woodland, and Carla Abrams are co-chairs, 350 Montana

Lance Olsen runs a listserv on climate and related issues




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It's too easy to blame the corporations for the climate crisis, when we subsidize them every time we buy what they’re selling. 

Corporate policy does matter. At the same time, corporations are totally dependent on their customers. 

This buck stops everywhere.

<<https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/25/caught-in-a-trap-of-our-own-making-climate-change-blame-and-denial/>>

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