This Is a Climate Emergency. We Need More Than Half-Measures from Democrats

From dere­chos in Iowa to duel­ing hur­ri­canes in the Gulf Coast, 2020 is promis­ing to be an elec­tion year shot through with cli­mate dis­as­ters. Even now, rag­ing wild­fires have spawned apoc­a­lyp­tic land­scapes from Wash­ing­ton State on down to the Bay Area. In style and sub­stance, there are few issues on which the two major par­ties are as far apart as cli­mate change. The Repub­li­cans have become the offi­cial par­ty of cli­mate denial­ism. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has rou­tine­ly cen­sored cli­mate sci­ence and gut­ted com­mon sense, often life-sav­ing reg­u­la­tions to ben­e­fit the fos­sil fuel indus­try. Under Repub­li­can lead­er­ship, the U.S. has become the only coun­try to quit the flawed but essen­tial Paris cli­mate accord. The Democ­rats are dis­tinct­ly bet­ter. They've rolled out a raft of dif­fer­ent cli­mate plat­forms and promi­nent­ly cam­paigned on the issue. Grass­roots move­ments have pushed the Biden cam­paign in par­tic­u­lar to sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the ambi­tion of its com­mit­ments on climate.But the real test of even a "bet­ter" plat­form is whether it keeps glob­al warm­ing to with­in 1.5 degrees Cel­sius above pre-indus­tri­al lev­els. The answer is a mat­ter of life and death for bil­lions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the world's most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple.To go from mere­ly "bet­ter than the Repub­li­cans" to "suf­fi­cient to save the plan­et," the par­ty needs to shift its think­ing in sev­er­al areas. Key among these are end­ing fos­sil fuel pro­duc­tion, tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for U.S. emis­sions inter­na­tion­al­ly, and humane­ly wel­com­ing refugees impact­ed by cli­mate change.