Democrats Propose a ‘Climate Emergency’ Resolution, Calling for ‘Massive-Scale Mobilization’
After President Trump ignored climate change in an environmental speech, resolutions in the House and Senate seek to raise it to the level of a national emergency.
One day after President Donald Trump delivered an environmental policy speech devoid of any mention of climate change, Democrats in Congress are introducing a resolution seeking to declare a “climate emergency” in the United States, one requiring a “massive-scale mobilization to halt, reverse, and address its consequences and causes.”
U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders plans to introduce the resolution in the Republican-controlled Senate, where it will face an uphill battle against a party led by a president who has called human-caused global warming a “hoax.” But in the Democrat-controlled House, the same resolution, to be introduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), may have a better chance of passage.
“The scientific community is telling us in no uncertain terms that we have fewer than 12 years to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy,” Sanders said in a Tuesday morning press conference. “If we are going to leave this planet in a state that’s healthy and habitable for our children and grandchildren and future generations, this is a moral imperative. We have no choice.”
Even if passed, the resolution would not institute a national emergency declaration, or force the federal government to take any specific actions to combat greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming.
But its supporters call it an important step in focusing national attention on the dire effects of global warming, ranging from increases in extreme storms, flooding, drought, heat waves and sea level rise, to the potential for massive human suffering as a result — particularly for the poorest and most marginalized populations.
“In order for us to enact the scale of the solution, we have to recognize the scale of the problem,” Ocasio-Cortez said in Tuesday’s press conference. “That’s exactly what this climate emergency does.”
Specifically, the resolution calls for “a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive-scale to halt, reverse, mitigate, and prepare for the consequences of the climate emergency and to restore the climate for future generations.”
The resolution doesn’t detail the terms of this massive mobilization. But Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are both supporters of the Green New Deal, an aggressive and wide-ranging plan to combat climate change proposed by Democrats in Congress, which could be taken as a template for the efforts required. The resolution, introduced in February, calls for 100 percent clean energy to supply all U.S. power through a decade-long national mobilization on the scale of that undertaken to fight World War II.
“The green new deal is that framework,” Blumenauer said in Tuesday’s press call, before catching a plane to Washington D.C. to submit the resolution in the House of Representatives. “I think that declaring this emergency is a first step.”
Source: greentechmedia
