In the Post column, Hiatt quoted Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and chief executive of Paris-based oil giant Total, and advocated for a carbon tax plan from the Climate Leadership Council, a coalition launched by former Republican politicians that includes fossil fuel firms and other corporations such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. Anyway. As the polls on climate change shift, he talks about green jobs and energy independence instead of global warming, as if there’s nothing out there but pain-free, win-win solutions. It's certainly not going away anytime soon, but Sanders aims to speed up the replacement of natural gas with renewables. With no evidence of good-faith, you take him at his word. Its population of 127 million is forecast to shrink by a third over the next half-century. This is a far more dangerous rejection of reality. Because much of the world’s oil is located in poorer countries that depend desperately on oil exports, and they will gladly make up any shortfall. Both sidesing Trump and Sanders and credulously burbling out Big Oil talking points would be bad enough. Follow. Sanders' climate plan may be easy to attack in an Op-Ed because it's bold, far-reaching — and imperfect.

Sanders plan, in addition to helping low- and moderate-income Americans afford EVs, plans for a "nationwide electric vehicle charging infrastructure.". Because while a carbon tax alone may in fact be part of the solution, it is not, in itself a climate plan. You fail to challenge a powerful executive on his own self-interest. Why? See our Privacy Policy and Third Party Partners to learn more about the use of data and your rights. In a Twitter thread Sunday, climate researcher and University of California, Santa Barbara professor Leah Stokes pushed back against Hiatt's claims about the effectiveness and support for carbon pricing as well as the columnist's comparison of the current president and leading Democratic candidate. Not nearly. So while it's true Sanders' $16 trillion framework (and Democratic plans similar to it) is extremely ambitious, it grasps what's required to radically transform how we power our vehicles, homes, and economy. Everyone declares victory, and the government doesn't shut down. Alone, a carbon tax will not “work” to reduce emissions as rapidly as we need to prevent death and destruction from climate change. But I’m guessing this guy has a problem with Sanders’ plan to phase out fossil fuels, right? Indeed, Fred, you seem reluctant to admit that an effective plan to solve climate change requires us to stop burning and extracting fossil fuels, quickly. Take, for example, wind and solar energy in the United States. They did recently refuse all fossil fuel ads. Steven Bingler and Martin C. Pedersen: Planners talk about resilience in the face of climate change. Pouyanné is one of those people whose hatred Sanders might welcome; he is chairman and chief executive of Paris-based Total, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies. OPINION: Message to Republicans: You can be pro-growth. View Fred George-Hiatt’s profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. All rights reserved.

We believe that Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal proposal lays out a course of action that is matched to the scale of the challenge. Any bold rapid climate transition will cost billions of dollars. We are scientists here to refute Biden’s claim that “not a single, solitary scientist thinks that [Sanders’ Green New Deal would] work.” Not only do we believe that it is possible for the U.S. to decarbonize electricity and transportation by 2030, we know that such a goal is imperative. And it certainly doesn't compare to Trump's anemic efforts to combat a heating planet, which amount to infantile jokes on Twitter. “You have to reduce demand.”. Hiatt has consistently defended his decision to do this, even though he believes climate change represents an existential crisis. One example: “Any increase in global warming is projected to affect human health, with primarily negative consequences (high confidence).” Nonetheless, limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius can protect people and our planet from the most extreme anticipated consequences of climate change. Fred Hiatt. They are American in all but legal status. Please, I criticized the Washington Post’s editorial board, consistently defended his decision to do this, How Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both reject the reality of climate change, InsideClimate News’s investigation into what oil companies knew about climate change, and when they knew it, since you are a Pulitzer Prize finalist yourself, There is no room for new fossil fuel development, natural gas, we will break the carbon budget, so they’re working hard to regain their “societal license to operate”, Because while a carbon tax alone may in fact be part of the solution, it is not, in itself a climate plan, barely has any Republican support in Congress, every time we’ve tried to pass a meaningful climate bill that was supported by big, polluting industries, it died, when The Post asked the Democratic candidates. As President John F. Kennedy said to Congress at the advent of the Space Race: “I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. When Total's CEO says we should focus on "demand," not "supply," he's saying his company shouldn't be held responsible for destroying the planet, and that everyone else should. I have been covering climate change in D.C. for over six years and I have never seen this plan that adequately addresses climate change and is bipartisan, but we should definitely preserve it if it exists.

Sanders wouldn't be able to ban fracking, as no president can legally ban fracking on the private land where some 77 percent of fracking occurs. Unlike the U.S. president, he has no doubt that climate change is real and “a huge challenge for mankind.”. Please proceed. What else about Bernie Sanders makes him just as bad as Trump? Wait. Good boy. Dr. Emily Grubert, Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from Stanford University, Dr. Eric Rehm, Senior Research Associate, UMI Takuvik/Arctic Remote Sensing at the Université Laval, Dr. Dargan Frierson, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at University of Washington, Dr. Shannon Hateley, Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Peter Kalmus, Associate Project Scientist at the UCLA Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering, Matias Kaplan, PhD Candidate in Bioengineering at Stanford University, Isaac Larkin, PhD Candidate in Molecular Biology at Northwestern University, Yan Liu, BSc in Cell and Molecular Biology at San Francisco State University. Rapidly slashing carbon emissions in the U.S. will not solve all the globe's carbon woes, especially as more people in other countries can afford their right to the simple, taken-for-granted, life-improving technologies of the Western world, like refrigeration and electricity. Now, what is this bipartisan, “rigorous” climate plan you mentioned? I'm sure if this frustrates me, it's 100x for you since you've covered climate so long. We rely on readers like you to uphold a free press. That’s a legitimate debate to be had. Feel free to republish and share widely. It is again time to take urgent, visionary actions that rise to the challenge that we as scientists know is coming. The Sydney Morning Herald The need for charging stations is so apparent, two Democrats recently introduced a bill to create such an ambitious, electrified infrastructure. Japan is a pioneer and an extreme version of where much of the First World is headed as longevity increases and fertility declines. And here’s another Kindergarten-level climate policy fact: every time we’ve tried to pass a meaningful climate bill that was supported by big, polluting industries, it died—in part because those big, polluting industries themselves refused to compromise. But it's true that abandoning nuclear energy will almost certainly make slashing carbon emissions more challenging. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the national resources required for such leadership. Sanders' sweeping Green New Deal plan calls for transitioning to "100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by at least 2050." "This kind of ambition gets us into the ballpark that’s commensurate with the scale of the challenge," Max Boykoff, the director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Mashable last year. I had such a visceral line-by-line reaction while reading the piece that I decided to write my analysis as a series of chronological responses to each paragraph or set of paragraphs. Vox’s Dave Roberts said it best: The carbon tax policy proposal you cite is “first and foremost a bid by oil and gas and nuclear to secure the gentlest and most predictable possible energy transition.” It is not, first and foremost, a plan to protect people from climate change. It is time to commit to a Green New Deal. Greenpeace USA also issued a comprehensive response to Hiatt's op-ed with a lengthy "rage-thread" on Monday that featured scientists' warnings about planet-heating emissions, energy companies' lobbying efforts related to climate policy, and the group's scorecard ranking 2020 Democratic candidates based on their commitment to "kickstarting the #GreenNewDeal and saying #NoToFossilFuels.". For example, Hiatt criticized Sanders desire to ban fracking for natural gas, which Hiatt argues can be a credible "transition fuel" from coal (fracking means injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals into the ground to break open hard-to-reach pockets of fossil fuels). In many ways, Sanders' plan does take a hard look at reality. OPINION: Message to Republicans: You can be pro-growth. Because we’re rapidly running out of time to meet the goals of the Paris agreement. "You have to reduce demand. Of course, that would leave us still facing the big questions.

It is possible. We are running out of time. A vote to choke off immigration is a vote for stagnation and decline. Please enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue. Subscribe 0 items in Shortlist. We're using cookies to improve your experience. Give Trump the money for his wall (until he gets that check from Mexico). Mashable, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This site uses cookies. Washington Post's Hiatt Defends D'Souza Op-Ed. "Absolutely shameful." Just as importantly, it understands the challenge for what it is: A need to transform our economy to support a more sustainable, healthier future. She wrote to Hiatt that "some of these 'realities' you and your oil company CEO best friend describe are extremely misleading," and provided some examples before getting to "the core problem" with the list: "They are excuses from an oil company CEO about why his company should continue profiting from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, despite the well-established science that says the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels will devastate ecosystems, destroy economies, and kill millions of people.".