CJ Day
Staff Writer
If you plan on living past 40, do not vote for a moderate this upcoming election.
Of the current crop of Democratic candidates, only two give the climate emergency the attention it deserves. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren’s plans to combat climate change are the only ones that might be able to mitigate the disaster, if not prevent it outright.
First, let us get a sense of the scale of the climate emergency. It is easy to reduce global climate change to ‘things are going to get a little bit warmer’, but that is only one symptom of the crisis. Things are going to get a bit warmer, yes, but hurricanes will be more violent, tornadoes will become more widespread and happen at a greater frequency, cities at lower elevations will experience more flooding and places that are already dry will see their water deplete faster.
This is just what is going to happen in the short term. Long term, scientists are less sure of the consequences of climate change, though most predictions are pretty dire. Some forecast that rising ocean temperatures will lead to a massive die-off of ocean life, massively curtailing the global biosphere’s ability to replenish the atmosphere’s oxygen. Without the ocean acting as a carbon sink, the atmosphere will slowly fill with carbon dioxide, which in a few centuries could render the planet completely uninhabitable.
Of course, this is just one model, but climate scientists have had decades to refine and predict. The consensus agrees that at the very least, climate change will lead to the extinction of anywhere from 50 to 95% of the planet’s species. This is already in process – a 2017 study by a German entomological society found that insect populations in Europe decreased by 76% over a 26-year period of study. Evidence suggests that amphibian populations are undergoing a similar decline, and in some places, bird populations are too.
With an issue of this scale, politicians have a moral obligation to do all they can to prevent it. If there were an asteroid pointed at Earth, politicians would be doing everything they could to divert it, but as soon as people start talking about the environment, politicians start urging moderation.
Moderation will not work to solve this issue. Three of the moderate Democratic candidates – Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden – have vowed to make the US a net zero fossil fuel emitter by 2050. This is one of the more popular moderate plans to deal with climate change, and it is also one of the worst.
There are two main problems with this promise. First, it is way too slow – 2050 is still 30 years off. To avert the worst of the climate emergency, we will need to move a lot faster than that. The 2050 promise is fast enough that it looks like these candidates are focused on solving the issue, but slow enough that fossil fuel emitters can still pollute for another quarter-century until they are forced to stop.
Second, it is too easy for fossil fuel emitters to get around. ‘Net zero’ does not actually mean we stop putting carbon into the atmosphere; it just means that all the carbon emissions are off-set in some way. In practice, this has often meant that oil companies just plant a few trees for every barrel of crude they suck out of the ground, and nothing really changes except for numbers on a spreadsheet.
Far more palatable is Sanders’ plan to reach net zero emissions by 2030 and absolutely no carbon emissions by 2050. This plan gives the climate emergency the importance it deserves by speeding up the timetable by 20 years, and also has the added bonus of completely stopping fossil fuel production by 2050. If I were Sanders, I would pledge to end carbon emission completely by 2030, but this is a good first step.
Another favorite plan of moderates is investing further money into green energy research and development. Buttigieg, in particular, is a fan of this, pledging to quadruple the money invested into green energy. This is good, and I am not about to argue that it is a bad thing. The problem, however, is that it belies the moderate belief that a complete transition to green energy is not possible given our current level of technology.
Moderates would have you believe they just need a couple more years to invent their solar roadways or offshore wind farms or whatever, and then after the silver bullet technology is invented, we can implement it and turn America into a green utopia. The key here is that for centrists, the perfect technology is still a decade away, and it will always be.
With careful stewardship, the US could meet all of its energy needs through clean technologies that already exist. Nuclear power plants, geothermal technology and dams are not as sexy as solar or wind farms,but they are efficient, and even solar and wind farms are getting cheaper to produce and maintain by the day.
This only scratches the surface of all the ways moderates are ineffective on the climate emergency. Some candidates, like Michael Bloomerg, have not even bothered to put forth any plans on the environment. Buttigieg accepts campaign donations from oil companies, and will not end the government subsidies to those companies if elected. Klobuchar’s only plan to become carbon neutral by 2050 is to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, which is not going to get us there. I also did not mention a lot of the very good plans by Sanders and Warren, like Sanders’ plan to declare climate change a national emergency and Warren’s vow to make all new government construction carbon-neutral by the end of her first term.
You want slow, gradual change? Then elect a moderate. You want to live past 40? Elect someone who actually wants to solve the problem.
