 Dear John, If you were watching the debate last night, you know it was a disgraceful, incoherent mess. But there was one moment of hope: for the first time in 12 years, the presidential debate had a question on climate. And that’s thanks to movements like ours. We’ve completely transformed the politics of climate change. We made it a top issue for the American people and the demand for a Green New Deal gets louder every day. So when the topics for the first debate were released and climate was nowhere to be found, Sunrise and partners sprang into action, encouraging almost a quarter of a million people to demand moderators focus on climate. Our voices were so loud, even Fox News felt the need to address climate change. We need to keep that pressure up. Help us send a message to moderators that climate must be a priority discussion in any future debates. Click here to use our tool. The climate questions last night were a welcome surprise and a credit to all our hard work. But a mere ten minutes—mostly wasted by Trump’s double speak and chaotic interruptions—aren’t going to cut it. We expect future debate moderators to do better, push harder, and demand concrete answers to questions about climate plans. They can’t let Trump dance around the fact that he has no real plan for climate disaster. Just like he’s done with every other crisis we’ve faced in the last four years, he’s going to sit back and let people suffer while he bails out his corporate buddies. Moderators can’t let him lie about the Green New Deal, a concept he doesn’t even understand well enough to realize it isn’t just one bill, but a whole framework to guide us in meeting the climate challenge over the next 10 years. If we work to make climate change as burning an issue on the debate stage as it is in the minds of over 70% of Americans¹, it would expose even further the disaster a second Trump term would be for climate—and push Biden to see that getting bolder with his climate plan is a path to victory. We can make this happen, together. Aracely, Deputy Communications Director 1: “A Growing Majority of Americans Think Global Warming is Happening and are Worried”, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, February 21, 2019 https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/a-growing-majority-of-americans-think-global-warming-is-happening-and-are-worried/ |