I know, I know. I am so tediously redundant, so boringly relentless. Just before each debate, I wonder if the moderator(s) will ask the candidates about climate change. And here I am doing it again. Aren’t I sick of this yet?
Well, yes, I am. Very, very sick of it.
I’ve heard all the arguments: The voters aren’t interested. Most Americans don’t put a high priority—or any priority—on dealing with climate matters. The moderators say climate questions don’t make for good television. The debates gotta have fireworks, and talking about climate change is a fizzle.
But, hey, since this is my last chance until 2020 when the seas will have risen a bit more, more coral reefs will have been bleached, more extreme weather events will have ruined communities and lives, more species will have been wiped out, the atmospheric load of carbon dioxide and methane will have gained a few more parts per million, et cetera, et cetera, let me make this one final attempt.
Since the chances that the deniers at Foxaganda are unlikely to have given Chris Wallace the go ahead to ask a climate question, I’d like to see you, Secretary Clinton, inject a couple or three climate answers into the debate. After all, we don’t see Donald Trump sticking to the topic when he responds. He just talks about what he wants to.
So, I’d like to recommend that you do the same as soon as the first ridiculous question gets asked. It’s doubtful you’ll have to wait long.
Now I know, Secretary Clinton, that you can’t go out there on the debate floor tonight and say the climate crisis is the worst fucking emergency in human history and ought to be our nation’s highest priority … even though it is. If you do, all we will hear from the talking heads for the rest of the month is more crap about how you’re an unladylike potty mouth.
So let me recommend a reprise of some of what you said Oct. 11, when you were in Miami with Al Gore and delivered your best speech on climate. Something, say, from this section:
We cannot risk putting a climate denier in the White House. At all, that is absolutely unacceptable.
We need a president who believes in science and who has a plan to lead America in facing this threat, creating good jobs, and yes, saving our planet.
So here’s what I want to do.
First, we need to do a lot more on clean energy. The clean energy superpower of the 21st century is probably going to be either Germany, China, or us—and I want it to be us. And I want you to be part of making it us.
And we need to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and create high paying jobs, building and installing more solar panels and wind turbines. Modernizing our electric grid. Retrofitting buildings. Building resilient, 21st century infrastructure, and we have to make sure no community is left out or left behind—not our cities or our small towns or our remote, rural areas. [...]
And I think Washington should back up and support doing more of that. As president, I want us to have 500 million solar panels installed across America by the end of my first term. And let’s generate enough renewable energy to power every home in America within the decade. Let’s make our buildings and factories more energy efficient and cut our oil consumption by one-third.
And we can get there by investing in cutting edge research, to keep developing cheaper and better clean energy technologies, investing in clean energy infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, putting big partnerships together between states, cities, and rural communities.
We can do all of this and create millions of good-paying jobs as we do. So I’m hoping that these good jobs will offer security and dignity while we produce the clean energy that will power the economy of the future. The clean energy solutions are being developed right here in America. We want them manufactured in America, installed in America, and putting people to work in America. [...]
Climate change needs to be a voting issue. We need to elect people up and down the ballot, at every level of government, who take it seriously and are willing to roll up their sleeves and get something done. Please, we cannot keep sending climate deniers and defeatists to Congress or to state houses—and certainly not to the White House.
And if you care about climate, your Senate race is also really important, and I’ll tell you why. It is unacceptable, it is an unacceptable response for Marco Rubio, when asked about climate change to say, ‘I’m not a scientist.’ Well, why doesn’t he ask a scientist and then maybe then he’d understand why it is so important that he, representing Florida, be committed to climate change? That’s why I hope that you’ll elect Patrick Murphy to the United States Senate.
Look, we need leaders who can get results. It’s easy to stonewall. It’s not enough to protest: we need creativity, we need hard work. And when it comes to climate change, we don’t have a minute to waste.
The reason we don’t have a minute to waste is because we already have wasted a boatload of minutes since climate scientists like James Hansen first testified nearly three decades ago that we were headed down a dangerous path with all our gaseous emissions.
And yet, here in 2016, which is headed toward being the hottest year on record, a year in which we’ve learned that ice is melting faster from Greenland than we thought, most of our pundits, our politicians, and our plutocrats won’t step up and say what needs to said and propose what needs to be done.
Please, please, please, Secretary Clinton, don’t stick with the climate-free script I suspect Foxaganda is going to lay out for you tonight—a script that has been laid out in every debate so far.