By: Marc Z. Gold, Cleantech Law Partners
Neither Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson
nor Green Party candidate Jill Stein can realistically gather the support
needed to win the U.S. election in November. Recent polls show Democratic
candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump fairly close in
support among registered voters, with Clinton leading by a small margin.
Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, and Stein, a former
Lexington, Massachusetts town meeting representative, currently garner around
6% in recent polls.[1] Yet the 6% or so
of voters currently supporting Johnson and Stein could decide whether the next
president of the United States is Hillary Clinton, or a man who believes
climate change is a
hoax invented by the Chinese.
In terms of environmental action, Stein’s
plan is admittedly the most aggressive. Her platform calls for a “Green New
Deal” to tackle climate change head on by transitioning America to depend 100%
on renewable energy by 2030, imposing a fee/tax on greenhouse gas emissions,
and encouraging large investments in sustainable agriculture and public
transportation. Whether Stein’s grand plans could be effected, however, despite
the current Republican-heavy congressional reality, is unlikely.
Clinton’s platform does not call for such
sweeping action, but is otherwise strong and, indeed, more pragmatic. For the
most part, Clinton seeks to preserve and build on the Obama administration’s
environmental efforts, including implementing the Clean Power Plan, and meeting
the goals of the Paris Agreement. Her platform calls for emissions cuts of 80%
relative to 2005 levels by 2050, and investment in clean energy infrastructure.
It also looks to promote environmental justice and public lands conservation.
She has, however, consciously
refrained from advocating carbon-pricing schemes (i.e. cap and trade,
carbon tax) for the very reason that they would likely require congressional
action, and because advocating for anything that could be called a new tax is
politically fraught. Like Obama, Clinton appears poised to take environmental
action at the administrative level, aware of the difficulties of trying to push
bold environmental legislation through Congress.
Johnson’s stance on the environment is
muddled and lacks detail. His website states, “Is the climate changing?
Probably so. Is man contributing to that change? Probably so.” Johnson is in
favor of “regulations that protect us from real harm,” but he would rather work
out the details later (or more realistically, never). He is, however,
definitely against any government push for clean, renewable energy. He did at
one point support a price on carbon – but then he
decided against it.
Trump, by contrast, has the worst
environmental platform of all the candidates. If effected, his plans would set
American environmental policy back decades, and possibly scuttle global efforts
to tackle climate change irreparably. Furthermore, on his website, his
environmental platform can be found under the heading “An America First Energy
Plan”, which cribs part of its title from the
movement to keep America out of WWII under all circumstances, and which
advocated for negotiated peace with Hitler.
Trump claims he will cancel the Paris
agreement, stop all American payments towards U.N. climate change programs,
rescind the Clean Power Plan, reduce environmental regulation across the board,
revive the Keystone Pipeline and bring back coal jobs. He is also upset because
he believes that regulations on chlorofluorocarbons, implemented after the
signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, have negatively impacted the quality
of hairspray. He (incorrectly)
claims that by spraying his old hairspray in his sealed apartment, those
contained propellants could never reach the ozone layer in any case.
This election’s two leading candidates are
often portrayed by the media as bad actors of relatively equal severity, one of
whom may be the lesser of evils. The facts suggest otherwise. In terms of
environmental policy, among other things, one candidate is clearly better, and
it is Hillary Clinton. She has a comprehensive plan to deal with climate
change, whereas Trump makes it a point of pride to completely ignore or attempt
to discredit the issue. Instead of looking to address environmental issues, he
simply hopes to drill, burn, and mine America’s natural resources to the very
last cent, regardless of the human and environmental cost.
Stein’s environmental plan may be the most
ambitious of all the candidates, but voting for her rather than Clinton in this
election would be useless at best, and catastrophic at worst. It would echo the
2000 election, in which Democratic candidate Al Gore lost the key state of
Florida, and ultimately the election, to Republican candidate George W. Bush by
537 votes. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader garnered just under 100,000 votes
in the state that year. If even a small portion of those voters had voted for
Gore, he would have become president. Instead of electing president a man who
would later win a Nobel Prize for his work to raise climate change awareness,
those Green voters in Florida effectively swung the election to the most
environmentally-unfriendly president in modern history.
In this year’s election, protest voters
supporting Stein risk helping history repeat itself. Albeit with an outcome far
more terrifying.
[1]Real Clear Politics Polling Average, November 1st, 2016.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html.
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