Columnist Marty Nathan: Scoring the candidates through climate change prism

First the bad news: The global average carbon dioxide level for 2018 was 407 parts per million, a height not sustained in the last 3 million years. The last time this occurred, the planet was 1-2 degrees Centigrade warmer than it is today and sea levels were 50 to 80 feet above their present levels.

Next, the bad news: January 2020 was the hottest January globally since records began, with temperatures 1.1 degree C above the 20th century average. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the four hottest Januarys in recorded history have occurred since 2016. Then Antarctica broke 20 degrees C (68 degrees F) on Feb. 9, a reading called by scientists “incredible” and “abnormal.”

This is not the news I want to give you. These facts should have been banner headlines for every major media outlet in the nation, not squirreled away in the first Monday column of the Gazette. That they weren’t reveals much about self-same media and its corporate and political influences.

Now for the good news. We need it. Probably the most important of all is the injection into national politics of real solutions to the climate crisis. Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity both put out their rankings of the environmental platforms of the presidential primary candidates, with Greenpeace covering Republicans Donald Trump and Bill Weld, as well as Michael Bloomberg. CBD stuck to Democrats minus Bloomberg since he didn’t participate in early primaries, caucuses and debates.

Not surprisingly, Trump and Weld got F’s on the Greenpeace report card, with Trump’s evaluation underscored by his recent Environmental Protection Agency decision to rollback an important Obama-era regulation requiring owners and operators of refrigeration equipment to detect and prevent leaks of hydrofluorcarbon coolants from their gear. HFC’s are superpollutants, with greenhouse gas potency hundreds to thousands of times per molecule that of carbon dioxide.

This new rule change would save industry $24 million. In return, its climate effects are calculated as equivalent to putting a million more cars on the road. Your average sixth grader could answer the inevitable question, “Is it worth it?” better than Trump EPA Director Andrew Wheeler seems able.

At the good news end of the reports, Bernie Sanders scored A+ and A, and Elizabeth Warren A and A-, in the Greenpeace and CBD grades. There was much overlap in their climate programs, but also significant differences and quite a bit more detail in the Sanders plan than in Warren’s.

Here are some highlights: Both Elizabeth and Bernie would declare the climate crisis a national emergency. Both have Green New Deal plans that call for reaching 100% carbon-free electricity and 100% emissions-free vehicles on or before 2030. Sanders’ grid would be publicly owned and not-for-profit and his goal would be complete decarbonization of the economy by 2050.

Both propose creating tens of millions of jobs with living wages and access to unions in the green energy and service sectors.

Both plan to invest in frontline communities most affected by pollution and the climate crisis and workers displaced by the transition off coal, gas and oil.

Both would invest in family farms practicing sustainable agriculture and in protection of public lands. Warren would create a Blue New Deal to deal with climate impacts on oceans.

Both would pump massive investments into research and development of clean green technology.

Both would ban fracking and end the export of fossil fuels. Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have already proposed a bill in Congress to that effect.

Both oppose nuclear energy as a transitional power source.

Both would rejoin the Paris Climate agreement. Sanders commits $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund to provide adaptation and mitigation for poorer countries least responsible for but most impacted by climate change. He also would negotiate peace internationally with the objective of eliminating the massive worldwide military pollution and converting military spending into the global transition away from fossil fuels.

Sanders’ plan would cost $16 trillion and Warren’s $10 trillion. Sanders is explicit about how he would pay for his plan, Warren not so much. Bernie says he would end fossil fuel subsidies and instead demand fees, taxes and legal penalties from them based on the damage they have wreaked; rollback U.S. military spending for domination of the world’s fossil fuel supply; and tax the wealthy and major corporations.

Economists agree that his plan would pay for itself in 15 years. The cost of not combating climate change is estimated at $224 billion annually through most of this century in combating flooding, fires, drought and displacement.

Just prior to Super Tuesday, Pete Buttigeig, Tom Steyer and Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race. We are left with Joe Biden, who scored B+ and C+ with Greenpeace and CBD, and Bloomberg, who did the worst of the Democrats with a C+ on the Greenpeace scorecard.

Biden’s Green New Deal has neither the broad scope nor the depth of emissions cuts called for by Sanders and Warren. Bloomberg, despite his self-promotion as a climate change fighter, does not support a Green New Deal and his plans are far too vague to rely on.

Climate change and the just transition off fossil fuels are the existential issues of our times. Two of our presidential candidates get that. The rest don’t. We cannot cast our fate and that of our children to those who don’t.

Marty Nathan, M.D., is a physician, mother and grandmother and serves on the steering committee of Climate Action NOW and the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition. She may be reached at martygjf@comcast.net.