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Preview of #ClimateForum2020 - ODP's  Exclusive Interview with Tom Steyer

Next week, Tom Steyer will be with MSNBC, New York Magazine and Our Daily Planet, at Georgetown University for #ClimateForum2020 - a chance for students to question Democratic Presidential candidates about their ideas and plans to tackle the climate crisis.  We were fortunate to get an exclusive preview of what he will say.

ODP:  Are you looking forward to our #ClimateForum2020 next week where you will get to hear from young people about their concerns about the Climate Crisis? What do you hope to achieve at the Forum?

TS:  Absolutely. I hope to hear from these activists on their solutions to the Climate Crisis and engage with them on my thoughts for a Civilian Climate Corps.

ODP:  Why are young people so important to the climate movement and how do they factor into your path to winning the Democratic nomination?

TS:  I founded NextGenClimate in 2013 to engage, register and activate young people on this issue. They understand that this is not a policy fight, it’s a fight for their future, their lives, and our planet. 

ODP:  California has been at the forefront of battling climate change.  Since you will be the only candidate at our forum from the state, how do we translate their successes to the national level?

TS:  Not only do I live in California, I am also proud of my role in beating Big Oil by closing corporate tax loopholes there. Working on the ground in coalition with local communities and organizations we successfully passed a ballot initiative that provides $1.7B in funding to schools for money-saving investments in energy efficiency, clean energy, and electric school buses. Another measure I successfully led was the No on Prop 23 coalition which defeated a ballot initiative sponsored by out of state oil interests that would have rolled back California’s nation-leading climate laws.

ODP: You put out a report earlier this week detailing how climate action can create 46 million new, good-paying jobs over the next 10 years.  But that is a big number. Would some of these jobs be created anyway, even without your plan?

TS: The jobs estimate is based on the assumption that we invest $2 trillion, which leverages another $4 trillion, and additional jobs that come from building a 100% clean grid, compared to business as usual assumptions. Historically, we have dramatically underinvested in infrastructure, so our presumption here is that this investment is over and above current levels. We believe this is one of the most robust jobs calculations done to date and the number of jobs we found demonstrates how ambitious climate action truly will take workers from all sectors to succeed. 

ODP:  How do we keep climate change in the news and the political conversation after the Climate Forum next week?  

TS:  Climate change is a crisis as big and urgent as any other that this country and our planet has faced. It demands our immediate attention on all levels of government and society. It is frankly, why I am running for president. Our country needs a strong president who will make this a top priority. On my first day in office, I will declare the climate crisis a national emergency and use the emergency powers of the presidency to implement a plan to build a safer, more sustainable world, with or without Congress. This is truly a global crisis, and it is long past time for the United States to take the lead in solving it.

Thank you so much for speaking with Our Daily Planet - we will see you at #ClimateForum2020 next Friday!  

 Water

Trump Administration Rolls Back WOTUS Rule, Undermines the Clean Water Act

Yesterday the Trump Administration's Environmental Protection Agency rolled back one of the most important environmental rules put in place by the Obama Administration - the Waters of the U.S. Rule ("WOTUS") - which protects wetlands that are the best natural barriers to storm surge and flooding and also keeps agricultural pollution out of our waterways. 

• The Administration re-instated the definition of waters that can be regulated by the Act that was put in place in 1986 and promised to put in place a "uniform regulatory approach” -- a new definition for which water bodies deserve federal protection within a few months. 

Why This Matters: The President claims we have crystal clean water -- but this rule will make our lakes, rivers, streams, and coasts dirtier than ever. Administrator Wheeler of the EPA announced this rule at a meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers because special interests like big-ag, real estate developers and other industries wanted it gone.  And the Trump Administration promised to repeal it from day one.

The WOTUS rule was groundbreaking because it paved the way for controls of "non-point" sources of pollution, which have fouled groundwater, drinking water, and even major bodies of water like the Gulf of Mexico that has a massive dead zone caused by nutrient pollution from farms thousands of miles away.  The protection of wetlands is more important now than ever - they are key to fighting the impacts of climate change in vulnerable areas near rivers and coasts.  The Clean Water Act is significantly weaker today as a result of this rollback.

Wetlands  Read more...

 Hero

Hero of the Week: Angelika Soriano

Twelve-year-old Angelika Soriano lives in East Oakland which has the highest volume of trucking traffic in the San Francisco Bay Area and also suffers from asthma. After a climate change Youtube video piqued her interest in activist Soriano's 6th-grade teacher suggested she connect with some youth activists who were fighting a coal terminal proposed for the Port of Oakland as a local developer planned to ship Utah coal to the port and then on to overseas markets.

As Sierra Magazine reported, for months, she and other youth activists tried to get the developer, Phil Tagami, to meet with them. On the night before Halloween in 2017, she and about 200 other people protested outside Tagami's house. They covered themselves in ashy face paint and fake blood and declared themselves coal zombies. "We got the idea of dressing up as zombies as a way of saying we might be killed by coal," Soriano says.
 

Now there's a Halloween costume idea: a coal zombie. Despite her young age, Angelika serves as an example to all people to exercise their civic duty and to pressure our government to act in the best interest of people and planet.

 Read This

Read This: TIME Devotes Entire Issue to Climate Change

This morning TIME magazine published a special issue devoted solely to the issue of climate change. Thirty years ago TIME published Endangered Earth, its first issue on the then-nascent climate crisis and now, in 2019, we're thirty years from 2050--the year by which the IPCC says we must reach carbon neutrality. You can also head to time.com/2050 for some really awesome interactive pieces like a 3-D journey into the Amazon narrated by famed conservationist Jane Goodall.

What's super cool about this edition: In TIME's own words:

"Notably, what you will not find in this issue are climate-change skeptics. Core to our mission is bringing together diverse perspectives. Experts can and should debate the best route to mitigating the effects of climate change, but there is no serious doubt that those effects are real."

 Climate Change