Recently, I listened to Cynthia Sharf, the United Nations Secretary-General’s climate expert, summarize the dire situation indicated by the latest scientific findings on a range of
measures of global warming and its extant and rapidly growing disastrous effects. Then I saw posted on the AParallelWorld.com website, Senator Keith Ellison’s Survey seeking priorities from Bernie supporters to aid Ellison’s work on the Democratic Presidential Platform Committee. The struggle within the Democratic Party for how the platform will set policy priorities is no small matter. The Sanders supporters are expected to work hard for inclusion of the key policies Bernie has promoted throughout his campaign, and many hope, beyond his run for the presidential nomination. Bernie Sanders’ “political revolution” is about changing the political process itself and redirecting the nation to respond to the converging catastrophic crises of our time. Sanders’ proposals are directed to addressing those crises, the most urgent — because it is global and local and affects the entire human population as well as all living earth systems — the Climate Crisis.
Despite the fact that as a sociologist I have conducted many surveys and sometimes don’t want to ever see one again, I was both curious and concerned. Bernie’s primary influence on the presidential race and on U.S. policy if HRC is elected, may be initially felt through his supporters on the platform committee. Of course, party platforms don’t necessarily dictate actions, but they at least reflect putative intentions. We must all push HRC as hard as possible to move much further toward a sustainable political position, particularly regarding the CLIMATE CRISIS. Yes, it is a crisis now and we dare not ignore its immediacy any more.
Here are the “topics” Senator Ellison offered as choices to rank 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, as priorities for the Democratic Presidential Party Platform:
Raising the minimum wage
Civil rights
Making college more affordable
Protecting women’s health care choices
Immigration reform
Protecting and expanding Social Security
Overturning Citizens United
Reducing economic inequality
Wall Street accountability and consumer protection
Common-sense gun reform
Affordable housing
Criminal justice reform
Other
Here are the questions and my responses to the survey:
1st Priority (select topic): OTHER
Tell us more about your 1st priority below:
It is shocking that the ACTION on the CLIMATE CRISIS is not listed among the above priorities for the Democratic Party Platform. Achieving a stable ecologically balanced relationship to our environment is the MOST CRITICAL human, therefore political, priority going forward. Most of the above topics either 1) can contribute to reducing the human carbon footprint [environmental, social, political, and economic justice all imply transforming the extremely unjust system that is concentrating wealth among the richest and the giant corporations, while squeezing everyone else] by leading to an ecologically balanced low-energy-waste society; or 2) cannot be achieved without also transforming the extractive plunder-capital system to stave off climate destabilization [before it is too late] and avoid the catastrophic convergence of extreme drought and flooding, crop loss, starvation, armed violence, mass migration that makes the current problem look like a picnic, and widespread social destabilization and accelerated ecological disintegration, all leading to massive loss of life.
2nd Priority (select topic): OTHER
Tell us more about your 1st priority below:
See Priority 1.
Action on all the listed “priorities” must be undertaken in such manner to drastically reduce carbon emissions, now. I cannot emphasize “now” enough. According to the latest scientific findings, as summarized two days ago by Cynthia Scharf, Senior Climate Officer for UN secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, we barely have five years to make radical changes to reduce carbon emissions to near zero or we will have passed the point of no return to climate stability. All measures of climate destabilization are accelerating far faster than predicted. Each IPCC report has underestimated the changes documented in the next report. All political priorities must be framed in this context — we must NOT mistake them for separate competing issues.
3rd Priority (select topic): OTHER
Tell us more about your 3rd priority below:
See Priority 2.
The climate crisis is NOW. The lag between emissions and climate destabilizing effects deceives us into thinking the crisis is somehow a future event. It is not. In this context it is pointless to rank the important goals you list. They must all be integrated into a policy of extreme carbon-emissions reduction that simultaneously strives for justice implied in those goals while striving to save humanity from joining the Sixth Mass Extinction already underway. When the bear is chasing you, it is good to be paranoid.
If your top priorities were not listed, or if you’d like to tell us more, please use the space below (optional):
My priority is clear from the above comments. My greatest concern is the luke-warm genuflection of HRC to the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced. It is most important that Bernie’s POLITICAL REVOLUTION is taken to every corner of this nation, within and outside of government policy. Only if masses of citizens continue to be mobilized to demand and achieve it, will the U.S. be able to set the gold standard for global climate action. After all, we are the greatest cumulative carbon polluter nation.
Politics being what they are, the greatest chance for significant immediate action is to mobilize people in their own communities to take personal, family, and organized community action to immediately achieve local sustainable life. That means major reductions in corporatist consumption and shifting all purchasing choices to ecologically sustainable products and services. This is what AParallelWorld.com is attempting to do by helping green consumers connect with sustainable vendors of all kinds in their local area.
Local communities around the world are organizing to resist the destruction of extractive capital, replace moribund political hierarchies dominated by corporate industrial and financial interests, and become resilient by taking steps to mitigate their own contributions to carbon emissions and to adapt to the increasingly unstable conditions we will experience, even if we achieve the unlikely but necessary limits to global warming proclaimed by the nations that met in Paris last winter.
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A slightly shorter version of this article was posted on my “Diary of a Mad Jubilado” at http://www.aparallelworld.com.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 