TEASER: 152 - On labor and climate justice, with Aaron Ziemer of the Sunrise Movement (4.23.2021)

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California's Democratic leadership has outright given up on fighting climate change.

Earlier this month, a bill to end fracking--a practice Governor Gavin Newsom claimed he was against as recently as last September, before going silent in the midst of fighting a recall effort--died in the state Senate's Natural Resources and Water Committee, with key Democrats refusing to cast their votes. One of the deadbeat senators was Bob Hertzberg, who screamed at Sacramento City Councilmember Katie Valenzuela last session when she rose in support of a bill to create buffer zones around wells (a provision also included on this fracking bill).

Why do these Democrats hate fighting climate change? We know Newsom is afraid of the recall effort. But other state electeds are fearful of stepping on the toes of building trades labor groups, which formed an unholy alliance with Big Oil in recent years. Then there's the money.

The state Democratic Chair Rusty Hicks took $330,000 from fossil fuel interests after pledging that he would not do that very thing. When a young party delegate pressed him on this move, saying he wanted a world that he could live in when he was 80, Hicks derisively responded, "I bet you'll enjoy the lights on in your apartment and the gas in your car along the way."

Meanwhile, the entire goddamn state is a tinder box, with ongoing drought, unprecedentedly low water levels in our dams, and a promise of increasingly dangerous wildfires in our near future. Newsom has called for a water emergency in Mendocino and Sonoma counties, but he's holding off on any bolder/broader emergency declarations. I think you know the reason for that.

Better to downplay the current environmental crisis and ignore the determinants of climate change if it means your governorship is secure for a couple more years, right?

Right?