David
-
Climate
change is an existential threat to humanity. Today, I introduced with Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a resolution in Congress declaring climate change to
be a national emergency. I am writing to ask for your support for this idea.
This is how our resolution starts:
There is a
climate emergency which demands a massive-scale mobilization to halt, reverse,
and address its consequences and causes.
Climate
change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing
devastating harm to the United States and countries around the world.
Yesterday,
parts of Washington, DC experienced nearly unprecedented flooding because of a
rain storm. Devastating storms regularly rip across the Midwest at increasing
scale. Alaska had 90 degree temperatures this weekend, which was the hottest
ever recorded.
Yet it
is not just the United States. All over the world, you see communities
displaced by climate change. People suffer daily because of floods, storms, and
more.
Let's
be clear. Failure to act decisively on climate change will mean more drought,
more famine, more rising sea levels, more floods, more ocean acidification,
more extreme weather disturbances, more disease and more human suffering.
Climate change is about our survival of the human race.
The
good news is that we now have the knowledge and technology to address climate
change, and it starts with creating an international energy system that is
clean, efficient, and sustainable. The bad news is that we are up against the
fossil fuel industry, which is one of the most powerful political forces in the
country.
They
spend hundreds of millions of dollars on campaigns and lobbying every election
cycle to protect their interests, while they continue to lie and deny the
reality of climate change. And they make billions in profits by continuing to
pump, refine, and burn oil, while future generations will be forced to deal
with the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
It is
past time for the United States to call climate change what it is: an emergency
that is an existential threat to humanity that requires an urgent, massive
response.
In
doing so, we will be going against the fossil fuel industry’s army of
lobbyists, PACs, and bought-and-sold legislators. But that is a fight worth
having.
The
only way that we can be successful in the fight against climate change is if
the American people stand up to the fossil fuel industry and make their voices
heard. So I’m asking you today:
We
have a president who not only believes that climate change is a hoax
perpetrated by the Chinese government, but is pursuing policies which make a
frightening situation even worse. Further, we have a major political party, the
Republican Party, that marches in lockstep behind the ignorance of the
president.
But in
our campaign, we have an opportunity for the U.S. to be a leader in the global
fight against climate change.
Thank
you for being a part of this fight.
In
solidarity,
Bernie
Sanders
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