Bill McKibben writes at Grist that it's time Hillary Clinton got serious about climate change. He tells her why she's not getting support from environmentalists and what she could do about it.
FIVE REASONS ENVIRONMENTALISTS DISTRUST YOU1) Climate change has not been your issue.
2) You were terrible on Keystone. Even before the State Department began its review of the project, you said you were “inclined” to approve it. That’s been your last public word on the project, but your team performed an intellectually corrupt review of the plans, your campaign bundlers landed rich lobbying contracts, and your former advisers took jobs with Transcanada.
3) You took the Obama administration’s affection for fracking and ran with it.Working with a deep team of oil company advisers, you set up a whole office at the State Department whose job it was to push fracking all over the world (Cambodia, China, New Guinea); you gave speech after speech in country after country. This was bad policy in the extreme
4) As the world’s top diplomat, you presided over the monumental failure that was the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009. Six crucial years were lost as a result. Enough said.
5) All that endless money. The right-wing attacks on the endless speaking fees and foundation gifts aren’t actually just a concern to the right wing.
It's no longer enough for a politician to state that climate change is real. It's necessary to back that with action.
Bill McKibben lists some suggestions for Clinton to consider in order to gain some credibility on the climate issue. The first is to stop talking about a 'All of the above' energy policy. That doesn't work with climate. You can't have it both ways on climate you have to decide between having a livable planet or enriching your corporate buddies.
We know you love fracking. Well, fracking has been a huge environmental disaster. Bill tells Hillary to fall out of love with fracking.
Oh, and Hillary, Bill wonders if it's possible for you to have an opinion on Keystone XL Pipeline?
Bill thinks Hillary needs to tell her Wall Street pals that it's time for divestment from fossil fuels.
There is much more mentioned in the article that Hillary could do to make herself into a candidate environmentalists could support. She's evolved on most of her policies. Maybe she could evolve on climate before it's too late for the planet.