Want to address climate change? Fix campaign finance first, 2020 Democrats say.

6/20/19

It is not just about the Earth’s rising temperatures. Many Democrats running for president are see climate change as symptomatic of another problem: too much money in politics.

One White House hopeful, Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), on Thursday unveiled an anticorruption plan that is explicitly meant to make it easier for Congress to address global warming — and other Democratic priorities.

“So much of what we’ve got to get done, from climate change to health care to changing tax code, is going to require us to change the way our politics work. Because for the decade that I’ve been in the Senate, it largely hasn’t worked,” Bennet told reporters Thursday.

He’s just one of many 2020 candidates tying legislative action they want to take on climate change with the need to overhaul how money is spent on electoral campaigns and lobbying. Their thinking goes: As the oil, gas and coal industries pump money into political campaigns, these fossil-fuel interests have been able to forestall meaningful legislation to slow climate change.

Source: Washington Post