Boston for Bernie: Climate Crisis

Day two was very exciting. I started the day at 7AM by talking with commuters outside of the subway station. Lots of people seemed excited about Bernie and I got almost no negative responses. The online world is so hostile, and I expected a lot more disapproval, but in person the people are a lot more reasonable and willing to engage. 

It is difficult for me to concisely explain why I support Bernie in that setting. For me, my go-to issue is the climate emergency. As a young person, with another 50+ years left on this planet, I have some authority when I explain how Bernie is the only candidate who will give me a liveable future. 

My whole life, I've been taught to pretend that the future will be just like the past. I can have kids, work 9-5 for some big company, and grow old and retire, just like my grandparents and parents did. This is patently untrue. In the next 50 years, there will be massive food and water shortages, uninhabitable heat in much of the world, and increasingly frequent and dangerous natural disasters. Climate chaos will impact every facet of life. Immigration from countries in crisis will lead to dangerous nationalism and war. Resource scarcity will disproportionately hurt minorities and cause the wealth gap to grow. The science is unmistakably clear that the course that we are on is doomed. It’s clear that the ‘green capitalism’ approach that is being pushed on us by neoliberals is doomed. School ignores the facts, workplaces ignore the facts, and most people I know ignore the facts.

Bernie is the only candidate who comes even close to terms with the frightening science. He sets his goals high and doesn’t shy away from talking about the scale of the issue. His plan has a timeline that is in line with climate science. As climate villains for so many year, he realizes that it’s time for the USA to become global sustainability trendsetters. His plan includes fully banning fracking, and cancelling many existing pipeline and extraction projects. His plan addresses environmental racism at every step. His plan creates new jobs that could revitalize the economy much like FDR’s New Deal.

Sunrise, a brilliant climate justice youth movement, has endorsed Bernie. They campaign relentlessly for him because of his effort to engage and learn from them. The author of critical climate books This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, has made the first endorsement of her life because she realizes that this is our last chance and that Bernie is that chance. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the woman behind the Green New Deal, is one of Bernie’s closest surrogates, and she would undoubtedly inform his policy when in office. His support among young people, who have the most at stake, is off the charts. Young people realize that the deadline to tackle the climate crisis before we fall into unstoppable feedback loops, and that four or eight years of a neoliberal is a death sentence for our future.

Even though he is the climate candidate, he still doesn’t go nearly far enough on environmental issues. He is the one who won't see an issue with going up against power when he needs to. Bernie has shown time and time again that his policy is not informed by big corporations. He strongly believes in protest as a theory of change, and he would leave his mind open to more radical climate action. He would listen to groups like Extinction Rebellion, centrist candidates would write off as too extreme or unrealistic. It is unrealistic is to let big corporations continue to turn a profit committing ecocide, ruining the lives of future generations.

If you think that just ‘believing in climate science’ is good enough, think again. It’s one thing to think that humans are affecting the climate. It’s a whole different thing to realize that it is an existential threat and to burn our corrupt systems to the ground, against the will of the powerful people responsible for the climate crisis. Obama ‘believed in climate science,’ and where did that get us?