Voting for Conservation (EOC BONUS episode)

Voting for Conservation

My Tuesday evenings are usually spent editing podcast interviews in preparation for our Wednesday Eyes on Conservation podcast release. Last night was different – I was participating in Idaho’s Democratic Caucus. As it turned out, the caucus that was held here in Ada County where I live was the largest single caucus in US political history! The line to cast our first ballot and enter the caucus venue was 20 blocks long, and although the event was supposed to start at 7pm, voters were still filing in to the CenturyLink Arena at 9pm!

(I’m happy to say that 80% of those caucusing were supporters of Bernie Sanders – see detailed results from Idaho’s Democratic caucus here.)

Suffice to say it was a long night, and I wasn’t particularly motivated to sit down at my computer and finish piecing together a podcast episode for today’s release. So you’ll get this blog post instead – my musings on the importance of voting with conservation issues in mind.

Now here on the podcast we talk about a wide variety of conservation issues, but in this post I’m going to talk about only one – climate change. As I’m sure most of our followers are acutely aware, climate change is a conservation issue that impacts every ecosystem on the planet. It’s an issue that will undoubtedly have catastrophic effects on both human communities and wildlife species in every corner of the globe.

But it is really possible to have an impact on such a far-reaching global issue like this by simply voting? I would argue that your vote is a far more powerful tool in addressing climate change than any personal reduction in carbon emissions that one could impose upon oneself. This is because of the nature of the climate change issue, and the fact that truly dramatic decreases in carbon emissions are needed over a very short period of time if we are to have any hope of having a positive impact.

This fact dramatically changes the approach that must be taken to address the climate change issue. If we hope to completely eliminate carbon emissions within the next 15-20 years, a top-down approach is required. This is not to say that grassroots activism has no role – these grassroots efforts just need to focus on influencing politics and putting pressure on politicians to take the dramatic actions that are needed to avoid catastrophe.

This is what the good folks at 350.org have been doing for the past 6 years or so. Founded by Bill McKibben, the well-known author who’s been writing about climate change since the late 1980s, 350.org is focused on using civil disobedience to bring attention to the climate issue. This is the group that spearheaded protests against the Keystone XL pipeline starting back in 2011. Nobody in the Obama administration was questioning the Keystone project before these protests began. It was assumed that the president would give the final go-ahead for the project until thousands of protesters began to congregate outside the White House. After many months of civil disobedience the Keystone Pipeline project was put on hold – a huge victory for the climate movement.

But what if we could elect politicians to office who understand the importance and the urgency of the climate change issue? It just so happens that we currently have a candidate running for president who is talking about climate change with a sense of urgency only previously expressed by third party candidates with virtually no chance at being elected to office. Bernie Sanders supports a tax on all carbon emissions, as well as a ban on all fossil fuel extraction from public lands, and also a complete ban on fracking for natural gas. He also has pledged to dramatically reduce the influence that the fossil fuel industry currently has over the political system by banning fossil fuel lobbyists from working in the White House.

Let’s put all of these promises aside for a moment however. We stand in a moment of time when many climate experts believe we have already reached a tipping point, a point at which it may be impossible to reverse some of the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Despite this, we have never elected a leader here in the US who is willing to take the very simple step of recognizing the extreme urgency of addressing this issue.

Bernie Sanders is the first viable presidential candidate in the history of the US who talks about climate change with the sense of urgency that is needed to have any kind of positive impact. I don’t care if you disagree with Bernie on every single other issue that he stands for – he is on the right side of the one issue that is more important by orders of magnitude than anything else being discussed on the campaign trail right now.

Do you support the continued existence of coastal communities all across the planet including many of the world’s largest cities?

Do you hope to avoid a human-induced mass extinction event?

Many would ask: Are you wasting your vote by supporting a candidate who is behind in the delegate race and now faces pretty long odds at winning the democratic nomination? I would argue that there is no such thing as a wasted vote. Even if your candidate doesn’t win an election contest, you aren’t truly an active participant in the democratic process if you’re voting for the lesser of two evils. Use your vote to send the message that you will only support a candidate who recognizes the need for urgent and dramatic action to prevent the looming global crisis posed by climate change.

-Matt Podolsky

 

Links:

Bill McKibben’s recent article in The Nation highlights the frightening role that dramatic increases in methane emissions are having on our climate, while also pointing out the counterproductive role that the Obama administration and the State Department have played in this issue.

The Bernie Sanders Campaign’s stance on climate change.

 

Listen to the EOC mini-podcast version of this post here: