Whatever You Do, Don’t Mention the Environment!

The DNC, the “Democratic” national committee, has decided that there will be no debate dedicated to climate change. Their bullshit excuse is that they don’t want to put any one issue ahead of all the others. Therefore, they will also not have debates dedicated to the economy and jobs production, improvements to the educational system, health care, election fairness and getting big money out of politics, ending private prisons, foreign policy, legalizing marijuana, sexism, racism, or immigration.
It’s bad politics. The more debates you have, the more people become familiar with the candidates, including whichever person is ultimately chosen. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of time, because they have from now until February. If they had a debate a week and picked a different topic for each one they could just about cover it.
They also have decided, in their infinite whatever the opposite of wisdom is, not to allow candidates to appear in any non-party-sanctioned debates. In other words if, say, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were to appear at a town hall together to discuss fracking, they would both be disqualified from the race.
The DNC really, really does not want their candidates talking about the environment. Why? It’s not politics. Politically it’s a winning issue. Although there is some disagreement about how great the danger is, almost everybody wants to save the planet. Almost nobody is openly pro-pollution.
So, the logical conclusion is that they don’t want to offend potential donors from the coal and oil industries.
What can be done about it? Well, there’s no rule (yet) against candidates participating in discussions on line. I’m no computer expert, so I’m just laying this idea out there for others to act on or not, but we should have a forum wherein candidates can present their environmental plans (Bernie’s plan, for a start, we could just download in toto), people could post questions, either for any specific candidate or for all candidates, and the candidates could answer as best they could. There would administrators to keep the hecklers (trolls) under control and the conversation polite and high toned, as well as to fact check the candidates’ statements. It would also be good to recruit the participation of some actual climate scientists.
We could talk about water use, tree planting, alternative sources of energy, public transportation including high speed rail, banning herbicides and pesticides, preventing the extinction of the honeybees, getting plastics out of the ocean, creating urban gardens, and much, much more.
If you like this idea, let me know. If you hate this idea, let me know.