CHAPTER 1

Dollar Democracy Has Brought Us

Global Warming, Climate Change,

Climate Disruption

Seacoast Drive Goes Underwater

It was a sunny sparkling day in Southern California with mild spring temperatures around 70°F (21°C). I was driving with a friend heading south along the beautiful California coast towards the city of Imperial Beach, just south of San Diego. As I viewed the aquamarine Pacific Ocean to the west, the euphoria I felt while gliding over the freeway in my electric Tesla was tempered by my understanding that the State of California had recently ordered coastal cities to come up with plans to address the dangers of rising sea levels due to global warming! I live in a coastal California city and recently attended a presentation to the community of plans by city agencies, architects and engineers to address the threats and challenges of rising sea level. I recall that standing-room-only meeting several months ago at the Golden Sails Hotel on Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach, California.

I remember several hundred concerned faces in the packed room, as we were told by the experts that within a couple of decades we would have basically one of two choices to avoid the catastrophic effects of rising sea levels due to increased global warming: managed retreat, which means selling your house and moving inland; or if your house was at sea level or only several feet above it, spending thousands of dollars

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to retrofit your foundation and raise your house, in order to survive devastating flooding, at least for a while. Stanford University doctoral student Miyuki Hino says "managed retreat" involves the strategic relocation of assets and people away from areas at risk, enabling restoration of those areas to their natural state." ("Adapting to Climate Change Through 'managed retreat', by Miyuki Hino in carbonbrief.org)

The world's oceans have risen by three inches since 1993. Mayor Serge Dedina of Imperial Beach should know. Because of global warming causing the Polar ice caps to melt and ocean temperatures to increase, the sea level rise around Imperial Beach has resulted in more frequent and intense "king tides" generating huge waves crashing through large rock barriers called riprap, even tossing sand bags and flooding streets and homes. The latest of these extreme weather events hit in January 2019 in this tranquil Southern California town of 27,000. Mayor Dedina said, "There's not much we can do once the ocean reaches a certain level and the surf a certain height. There's not much we can do."

Scientists from San Diego's Scripps Institution recently spent time in Imperial Beach studying the rising sea levels in order to develop a warning and prediction system that could save lives. Meanwhile Mayor Serge Dedina, who has to plan for the city's future, poignantly asked, "What are we going to do with our sewer pump stations? What are we going to do with our roads? What are we going to do with our electrical outlets? We're working with SDG&E (San Diego Gas and Electric) on that. We have a school that's on the bayfront. And then how are we going to deal with actually mitigating rising seas and increased erosion?.... What we are learning is that this is kind of the new normal and with a little bit of tide we're seeing a lot more coastal flooding than we used to," Dedina said (kpbs.org, "Scripps Institution Scientists Study Imperial Beach As Sea Level Rises", January 29, 2019, by Erik Anderson).

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Now my friend Tony and I were driving to Imperial Beach to interview residents and frequent visitors to the Seacoast Drive neighborhood. Houses and condos on Seacoast Drive had backyards that were right up against the beach sand. I began thinking about how the residents of Imperial Beach would deal with the more frequent and powerful storm surges from the ocean that threatened their city, such as the vicious storm and flooding they had recently survived. My friend and I had stopped once on our way for lunch, arriving in Imperial Beach in the early afternoon, with plenty of time and sunlight left to survey the beach and talk to the neighbors on Seacoast Drive. This was where some of the heavy flooding had occurred. The Seacoast Drive neighborhood was truly beautiful. It was nestled between the open Pacific Ocean and the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, full of birds and other wildlife. Just beyond the Refuge I could see the hills of the city of Tijuana in Baja California, Mexico.

One of the first people we met and spoke with was Yadira Figueroa, who was enjoying a walk on the beach with her daughter Maya, at the South end of Seacoast Drive. Yadira told us that the January storms and flooding she had experienced a few months ago were unbelievable. She

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described how the ocean waves had slammed against the protective rock barriers, broken through them and flooded Seacoast Drive. As her little daughter ran around the sand, Yadira said to us that this was the strongest storm with the largest crashing waves that she had experienced in her 12 years of living there, and she expressed deep concern.

Another person we met was Steve Padilla Jr., a college student. Steve, carrying his skateboard, spoke to us while accompanying us for some time, as we met and talked to other people in the neighborhood as well. He told us he had been visiting this beach for a few years while living in South Western California all his life. Steve Padilla Jr. said he is "a devout Christian and geology major at Grossmont Cuyamaca College." He said he "Always had a love for Christ and the Earth", and that "the beach doesn't even look like the beach anymore but just a harbor for the fish and sharks of the sea. Just a few steps to reach the ocean.... Within just a few years there has been the highest of dramatic climate change throughout the U.S. and the entire globe." Steve is right about that: according to a United Nations estimate, 62 million people worldwide were affected by extreme weather produced by climate

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change. ("Extreme weather affected 62 million people last year, UN climate change report says", CBS news, March 28, 2019).

Steve, Tony, and I had walked a block up from the beach to show Steve the Tesla, since he was interested in seeing such a zero- emission car. As Steve and I were chatting, a young woman and her friend had walked up and were talking to Tony. In a minute Tony introduced them to us. I began explaining to Emily and her friend, both of them college students, why we were visiting Imperial Beach. I asked them if they had experienced the severe January storm and flooding, and if they thought that climate change/global warming may have been a factor. Emily, who had experienced the storm and flooding in the area, and her friend also felt that climate change/global warming is playing a role in the severe weather.

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politics, have handed us climate change (climate disruption, climate chaos, global warming, rising sea levels, melting polar ice caps, severe drought and fires, more frequent and severe hurricanes, and more); they have handed us huge and widening income and wealth inequality; a yawning gap between wealthy public schools, and middle and low income public schools; college students and graduates drowning in debt from skyrocketing tuition costs; unaffordable and inadequate healthcare; a dangerously polluted environment; pesticide coated and genetically modified food; polluted water from fracking, industrial and agribusiness waste , and the Great Recession without a strong recovery. They have also brought us waste fraud and abuse in the Pentagon and unnecessary military spending; a race to the bottom with the middle class shrinking; the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer; and the biggest fiasco of all, the selection of Global Warming Denier Donald John Trump by the Electoral College, to be the 45th President of United States, despite receiving almost 3 million fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton.

In the 2016 Republican Primary Election, Trump had bragged that he would be independent of wealthy special interests by spending his own money to get himself elected. He promised to "drain the swamp" of lobbyists and special interest groups. In addition to the approximate $1 billion worth of free television news coverage that he received, Trump did spend $66 million of his own money to defeat other well-known Republican Primary candidates such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, Ohio Governor John Kasich, and other lesser-known Republican candidates.

Immediately after winning the Primary, Republican presidential nominee Trump made an about-face and started raising money for his general election campaign from wealthy special interests including big donors from Wall Street, fossil fuel companies, and other big business corporate interests (track Trump's and his Democratic opponent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's funding from wealthy donors at opensecrets.org). Trump and Clinton also benefited from spending on their behalf by wealthy super PACs. In 2017, his first year in office, Trump delivered for his wealthy donors: he successfully got the Republican majority in Congress to deregulate their big businesses, and to pass a gigantic tax-cut plan worth $1.5 trillion, 82% of which went to

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his super-rich donors, including himself. Trump's deregulation included lowering Obama's 50 miles per gallon CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standard to a resulting 37 miles per gallon for new cars and light duty trucks by 2025. Trump's roll back on auto fuel efficiency increases oil sales and profits, increases global warming emissions by over 870 million tons of carbon dioxide, and "To our knowledge, there's no single policy on the planet with this much climate impact."(Daniel Sperling, Forbes.com, August 2, 2018). The CAFE standard is the average gas mileage that the vehicles in a fleet must attain.

Trump, who called the Paris Climate Accord (to reduce greenhouse gases that produce global warming) a burden on American business and economy, has announced the U.S. will withdraw from it (November 4, 2020 is the earliest allowed withdrawal date). The accord had been painstakingly negotiated among almost 200 nations of the world and supported by the Obama Administration. Trump called Global Warming a "Chinese Hoax" to damage the U.S. economy.

In this first chapter I will show the reader how Dollar Democracy affected the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary Election contest between Secretary Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders. As I analyze the General Election contest between Clinton and Trump, you will see how Dollar Democracy played a key role in making Hillary Clinton the Democratic Presidential Nominee and in bringing us President Donald Trump, after he defeated her in the Electoral College, but not in the popular vote. Most importantly in Chapter 1 you will see how Trump's triumph through Dollar Democracy has brought us to the brink of climate catastrophe through policies perpetrated by President Trump, his cabinet members and administration. The climate change fiasco did not begin with President Trump. Many decades of climate change/global warming denial by gas, coal, and oil fossil fuel corporations and their enablers, who are among many of our politicians in government, have brought us to the brink of climate and societal disaster.

Today we stand at the precipice facing climate catastrophe, reflected by severe weather patterns, including stronger and more frequent

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hurricanes, “bomb” cyclones that destroyed grain and livestock in the Midwest, rising sea levels, polar ice caps melting, severe drought and extreme wildfires, millions of climate refugees, including those from island and low-lying nations, and many more dire circumstances. At the helm of our nation stands President Donald John Trump, a climate change denier, whose 2016 general election campaign was heavily funded by corporate interests, including oil and gas corporate interests that gave $1,027,843. In the 2018 election cycle oil and gas gave Trump $223,428 (opensecrets.org). Fossil fuel energy corporations and their executives donated at least $7 million to President Trump's inauguration committee (thehill.com). This has bought them heavy influence with Trump, who gave us cabinet members such as recent Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt (Oklahoma's pro-fossil fuel recent Attorney General who sued the EPA on behalf of Oklahoma utilities companies), and Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, former lobbyist for coal industry giant Murray Energy. Both of them have acted as foxes guarding the chicken coop: using government to serve the interests of the fossil fuel industry, and not protecting the American people and natural environment from it.

Also, because of Dollar Democracy, the lower 99% of Americans are in danger of either losing the American Dream that they worked hard to achieve, have lost the American Dream they had once achieved, or will never realize the American Dream for themselves or their children. It will never become a reality for them if things continue the way they are going in American Elections, Politics, Economics, and Society. The top 1% of Americans will continue doing fine, and even magnificently better, as time passes. The income gap ratio, which today is 361 to 1, was 40 to 1 in 1980. In other words, the richest Americans, who are generally CEOs and owners of large corporations, are making 361 times the income of the average American worker. If you think this is just a dry economic statistic, think again: the economic power of the 1% gives them a tremendous amount of political and social power.

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Page and Gilens Study: Policies Preferred by the Wealthy Elite and Corporate Business Groups are Implemented Far More Often than Policies Supported by the Majority of Americans

For example, the bulk of money given to, and spent on, the campaigns of candidates for Congress and candidates for U.S. President, in a presidential election year, is provided by wealthy Americans in the top 1% of the population (opensecrets.org). In a ground-breaking study Political Scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found that the policies supported by these wealthy people get implemented far more often than the policies preferred by regular Americans.

(https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf).

For example, nearly 81% of Americans support tuition free college for everyone (PSB Research, February 2018), 70% of Americans support Medicare for All universal healthcare (Reuters.com), and 52 % of Americans support a Federal jobs guarantee (Civics Analytics poll, thenation.com). Has the corporate-bought majority of Congress implemented any of these programs yet? No. Instead corporate-bought members of Congress and corporate-funded president Trump implemented a tax reform bill in 2017 with a tax-cut worth $1.5 trillion (Joint Committee on Taxation), 83% of which goes to the richest Americans, the top 1% (Dylan Matthews in Vox.com, December 18, 2017). In contrast, by 2027, 70% of Americans in the middle class would see their taxes go up (Tax Policy Center). This is a clear example of Dollar Democracy, whereby super-rich individuals and corporations with the big dollars to lobby and give to candidates for President and Congress, are rewarded with huge tax cuts and subsidies. These tax cuts and subsidies are passed by Congress and signed by the President, while programs that benefit the middle class, poor, and America as a whole, are slashed, or not expanded to meet the existing need: public education, affordable college, social and physical infrastructure, science and technology research and development, Head Start, health care, child care, and programs that would seriously address devastating Climate Change.

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"Dollar Democracy on Steroids: with Liberty and Justice for Some; How to Reclaim the Middle-Class Dream for All" is the story of how the United States of America has been taken off track by wealthy corporate elites who have bought our government and produced policies that are destroying the middle class and poor (the 99%), and destroying the Middle-Class Dream and our natural environment. I've told the story by using historical, political, economic, sociological, and philosophical analyses backed by empirical and scientific evidence. Most importantly I include stories of real Americans and their families, many of whom I personally interviewed, whose lives are teetering on the brink, or are being quickly destroyed by the crisis that America and the world are facing. The Mandarin language character for "crisis" has two parts: danger and opportunity.

This book provides critically important information that can help us limit the danger of steeply increased global warming, and help us seize the opportunity to get America back on track once again. This would include creating high-paying green technology jobs that save our economy and the natural environment. This book provides an Action Plan and blueprint of how to get there.

Woven throughout the book and clearly elaborated in the last chapter "With Liberty and Justice for All", are specific suggestions and clear-cut plans of how we can take out the corrupting and corroding influence of big money in American politics, and free our citizens to demand from our leaders that they start serving We the People and not their big donor overlords. For example, I will examine the issue of how Big Money in American Politics has prevented our leaders from seriously addressing the global warming crisis.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCSUSA) tells us that global warming is already having significant and costly effects on our communities, our health, and our climate (ucsusa.org). The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and the U.S. government's Fourth National Climate Assessment, have issued dire warnings for our immediate future, unless we act immediately. The

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UCUSA says that "unless we take immediate action to reduce global warming emissions, these impacts will continue to intensify, grow ever more costly and damaging, and increasingly effect the entire planet including you, your community, and your family. (These impacts include) rising seas and increased coastal flooding, longer and more damaging wildfire seasons, more destructive hurricanes, more frequent and intense heat waves, military bases at risk, national landmarks at risk, costly and growing health impacts, an increase in extreme weather events, heavier precipitation and flooding, destruction of marine ecosystems, more severe droughts in some areas, widespread forest death in the Rocky Mountains, increased pressure on groundwater supplies, growing risks to our electricity supply, changing seasons, melting ice, disruption to food supplies, plant and animal range shifts, and the potential for abrupt climate change."

Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change 2018 Report on Global Warming/Climate Change

The IPCC special report on global warming released in October 2018 says that we have to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5°C in order to limit the dire effects of climate change. And we only have until 2030 to do so. Global net human caused emissions of carbon dioxide would have to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050. The IPCC report finds that in order to limit global warming to 1.5° Celsius would require "rapid and far-reaching" transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. The activities of human beings have already warmed the planet around 1°C since the preindustrial era, which is defined by the IPCC as the second half of the 19th century. With the current rate of warming, the earth would reach the 1.5°C threshold between 2030 and 2052 (climatecentral.org).

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U.S. Government Fourth National Climate Assessment 2018 Report on Global Warming/Climate Change

The U.S. government's fourth National Climate Assessment report, released in November 2018, warns of a damaged environment and shrinking U.S. economy.

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The 1,656 page assessment "describes the effects of climate change on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. It says that American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s level by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast.... Climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago." (nytimes.com, Nov. 23, 2018, "U.S. Climate Report Warns of Damaged Environment and Shrinking Economy", by Coral Davenport and Kendra Pierre-Louis).

The Green New Deal

The Green New Deal is an ambitious and much-needed program to fight the ravages of climate change. Its roots go back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, created to lift America out of the Great Depression. FDR's New Deal created federally funded government programs that hired millions of unemployed Americans to go back to work building hydroelectric plants such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Hoover Dam, that put Americans to work beautifying and creating national parks, that put artists to work painting murals on the side of buildings to beautify cities, putting actors and directors to work performing plays to American audiences in small towns and rural areas where most had never seen a professional acting troupe before, and building and rebuilding much-needed American physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and sidewalks.

Today's Green New Deal is also deeply inspired by the modern-day environmental movement which was launched in the U.S. in the 1970s, including Earth Day. Its environmental component has been galvanized most recently by the scientifically based recognition of climate change, global warming, and climate disruption. The IPCC report, and the U.S. Government's fourth National Climate Assessment report provided extensive scientific evidence for the immediate causes, disruptions, and necessary solutions in order for us to possibly ameliorate the most

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devastating effects of climate change--- if we act immediately. The deadline set to take concerted and effective action is the year 2030, just 11 years away.

Brand New Congress (BNC), a nationwide activist organization dedicated to electing non-corporate sponsored, grassroots supported progressive candidates to Congress, whose most prominent success was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), sent out an email to its members dated Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 6:59 PM. The email outlined the key components of what later came to be called the Green New Deal. Drawing on JFK's visionary pledge to go to the moon within the 1960s decade, BNC outlined another bold vision to "Make America the first 100% clean energy economy in the world within 10 years."(brandnewcongress.org, February 14, 2019). The Brand New Congress' renewable energy plan had several parts in order to create well-paying green jobs and block the increase in global warming:

• Upgrade every home to run on renewable energy and weatherizing it

• Upgrade every building with zero interest loans to invest in new energy upgrades

• build a nationwide, decentralized smart grid designed to improve energy storage and transfer capability

• invest in new solar and wind power projects

• Buy fossil fuel companies

• spin off new profitable companies and take care of displaced workers. Empower energy companies to pursue free market clean energy solutions by purchasing their fossil fuel business segments. As old energy segments strategically wind down, provide support to workers displaced in the transition by funding retraining, relocation, and early retirements

• upgrade transportation by incentivizing car owners to trade in for electric models. Convert or replace all fossil fueled buses and trains, and invest in innovative systems like high-speed rail (brandnewcongress.org, February 14, 2019).

Justice Democrats is a Progressive Political Action Committee that recruits and supports non-corporate Democrats candidates to run for

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Congress. They are also strong supporters of the Green New Deal (Justicedemocrats.com).

In its current form, the Green New Deal is the "brainchild of the Sunrise Movement, a youth activist group that's been working with (recently elected Representative Alexandria) Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), since before she got elected. Sunrise was founded about a year and a half ago by six recent college graduates, veterans of organizing climate campaigns from their campuses. ... Sunrise Movement launched in July 2017 with a big idea: the Green New Deal, a series of proposals to move America off fossil fuels fast by creating millions of green jobs."(pri.org, January 14, 2019).

One of the six co-founders of Sunrise, Varshini Prakash said, "all of us were feeling the sense of unease and frustration that the hurricanes were getting bigger, the fires were getting bigger... But our movements weren't growing with them." (Carolyn Beeler, "The 'Green New Deal' started with six college grads. Now, they're recruiting an army of young people", January 14, 2019). So Prakash organized a successful fossil fuel divestment campaign at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In July 2017 the Sunrise Movement launched itself "with a big idea:

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the Green New Deal, a series of proposals to move America off fossil fuels fast by creating millions of green jobs.

"We really see it is not just a climate policy, but a socio-economic project to rival some of the greatest projects in American history," Prakash said (pri.org, January 14, 2019). The Green New Deal skyrocketed to fame when the Sunrise Movement staged a sit-in at the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Upon their invitation for support, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez showed up in person to join the Sunrise members in Pelosi's office. Immediately, the Green New Deal was put on the world map by the media who showed up. Interest in the group and the Green New Deal immediately skyrocketed.

GREEN NEW DEAL RESOLUTION

Introduced on February 7, 2019, outlined in a House Resolution (H.RES.109), authored by U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and co-sponsored by U.S. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, the Green New Deal states:

Exhibit 1-2

RESOLUTION

Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.

Whereas the October 2018 report entitled “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the November 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment report found that—

(1) human activity is the dominant cause of observed climate change over the past century;

(2) a changing climate is causing sea levels to rise and an increase in wildfires, severe storms, droughts, and other

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extreme weather events that threaten human life, healthy communities, and critical infrastructure;

(3) global warming at or above 2 degrees Celsius beyond pre-industrialized levels will cause—

(A) mass migration from the regions most affected by climate change;

(B) more than $500,000,000,000 in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100;

(C) wildfires that, by 2050, will annually burn at least twice as much forest area in the western United States than was typically burned by wildfires in the years preceding 2019;

(D) a loss of more than 99 percent of all coral reefs on Earth;

(E) more than 350,000,000 more people to be exposed globally to deadly heat stress by 2050; and

(F) a risk of damage to $1,000,000,000,000 of public infrastructure and coastal real estate in the United States; and

(4) global temperatures must be kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrialized levels to avoid the most severe impacts of a changing climate, which will require—

(A) global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from human sources of 40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030; an

(B) net-zero global emissions by 2050;

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Whereas, because the United States has historically been responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions, having emitted 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions through 2014, and has a high technological capacity, the United States must take a leading role in reducing emissions through economic transformation;

Whereas the United States is currently experiencing several related crises, with—

(1) life expectancy declining while basic needs, such as clean air, clean water, healthy food, and adequate health care, housing, transportation, and education, are inaccessible to a significant portion of the United States population;

(2) a 4-decade trend of wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and antilabor policies that has led to—

(A) hourly wages overall stagnating since the 1970s despite increased worker productivity;

(B) the third-worst level of socioeconomic mobility in the developed world before the Great Recession;

(C) the erosion of the earning and bargaining power of workers in the United States; and

(D) inadequate resources for public sector workers to confront the challenges of climate change at local, State, and Federal levels; and

(3) the greatest income inequality since the 1920s, with—

(A) the top 1 percent of earners accruing 91 percent of

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gains in the first few years of economic recovery after the Great Recession;

(B) a large racial wealth divide amounting to a difference of 20 times more wealth between the average white family and the average black family; and

(C) a gender earnings gap that results in women earning approximately 80 percent as much as men, at the median;

Whereas climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction have exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices (referred to in this preamble as “systemic injustices”) by disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preamble as “frontline and vulnerable communities”);

Whereas, climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States—

(1) by impacting the economic, environmental, and social stability of countries and communities around the world; and

(2) by acting as a threat multiplier;

Whereas the Federal Government-led mobilizations during World War II and the New Deal created the greatest middle class that the United States has ever seen, but many members of frontline and vulnerable communities were

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excluded from many of the economic and societal benefits of those mobilizations; and

Whereas the House of Representatives recognizes that a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era is a historic opportunity—

(1) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States;

(2) to provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States; and

(3) to counteract systemic injustices: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that—

(1) it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal—

(A) to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;

(B) to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;

(C) to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;

(D) to secure for all people of the United States for generations to come—

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(i) clean air and water;

(ii) climate and community resiliency;

(iii) healthy food;

(iv) access to nature; and

(v) a sustainable environment; and

(E) to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as “frontline and vulnerable communities”);

(2) the goals described in subparagraphs (A) through (E) of paragraph (1) (referred to in this resolution as the “Green New Deal goals”) should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization (referred to in this resolution as the “Green New Deal mobilization”) that will require the following goals and projects—

(A) building resiliency against climate change-related disasters, such as extreme weather, including by leveraging funding and providing investments for community-defined projects and strategies;

(B) repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States, including—

(i) by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible;

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(ii) by guaranteeing universal access to clean water;

(iii) by reducing the risks posed by climate impacts; and

(iv) by ensuring that any infrastructure bill considered by Congress addresses climate change;

(C) meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including—

(i) by dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources; and

(ii) by deploying new capacity;

(D) building or upgrading to energy-efficient, distributed, and “smart” power grids, and ensuring affordable access to electricity;

(E) upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification;

(F) spurring massive growth in clean manufacturing in the United States and removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as is technologically feasible, including by expanding renewable energy manufacturing and investing in existing manufacturing and industry;

(G) working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse

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gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible, including—

(i) by supporting family farming;

(ii) by investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health; and

(iii) by building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food;

(H) overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in—

(i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing;

(ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and

(iii) high-speed rail;

(I) mitigating and managing the long-term adverse health, economic, and other effects of pollution and climate change, including by providing funding for community-defined projects and strategies;

(J) removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and reducing pollution by restoring natural ecosystems through proven low-tech solutions that increase soil carbon storage, such as land preservation and afforestation;

(K) restoring and protecting threatened, endangered, and fragile ecosystems through locally appropriate and

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science-based projects that enhance biodiversity and support climate resiliency;

(L) cleaning up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites, ensuring economic development and sustainability on those sites;

(M) identifying other emission and pollution sources and creating solutions to remove them; and

(N) promoting the international exchange of technology, expertise, products, funding, and services, with the aim of making the United States the international leader on climate action, and to help other countries achieve a Green New Deal;

(3) a Green New Deal must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses; and

(4) to achieve the Green New Deal goals and mobilization, a Green New Deal will require the following goals and projects—

(A) providing and leveraging, in a way that ensures that the public receives appropriate ownership stakes and returns on investment, adequate capital (including through community grants, public banks, and other public financing), technical expertise, supporting policies, and other forms of assistance to communities, organizations, Federal, State, and local government agencies, and businesses working on the Green New Deal mobilization;

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(B) ensuring that the Federal Government takes into account the complete environmental and social costs and impacts of emissions through—

(i) existing laws;

(ii) new policies and programs; and

(iii) ensuring that frontline and vulnerable communities shall not be adversely affected;

(C) providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States, with a focus on frontline and vulnerable communities, so that all people of the United States may be full and equal participants in the Green New Deal mobilization;

(D) making public investments in the research and development of new clean and renewable energy technologies and industries;

(E) directing investments to spur economic development, deepen and diversify industry and business in local and regional economies, and build wealth and community ownership, while prioritizing high-quality job creation and economic, social, and environmental benefits in frontline and vulnerable communities, and deindustrialized communities, that may otherwise struggle with the transition away from greenhouse gas intensive industries;

(F) ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal

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mobilization at the local level;

(G) ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition;

(H) guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States;

(I) strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment;

(J) strengthening and enforcing labor, workplace health and safety, antidiscrimination, and wage and hour standards across all employers, industries, and sectors;

(K) enacting and enforcing trade rules, procurement standards, and border adjustments with strong labor and environmental protections—

(i) to stop the transfer of jobs and pollution overseas; and

(ii) to grow domestic manufacturing in the United States;

(L) ensuring that public lands, waters, and oceans are protected and that eminent domain is not abused;

(M) obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories,

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honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples;

(N) ensuring a commercial environment where every businessperson is free from unfair competition and domination by domestic or international monopolies; and

(O) providing all people of the United States with—

(i) high-quality health care;

(ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing;

(iii) economic security; and

(iv) clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and access to nature.

Widespread Oil and Gas Campaign Contributions Make Congressional Leadership Lukewarm or Hostile to the Green New Deal

After eight long years in the wilderness Democrats recaptured the majority in the House of Representatives in November 2018. The overwhelming majority of them were incumbents who had received corporate oil and gas money for their campaigns over the years. Several progressive Democratic challengers such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, had strong grassroots support and refused corporate money. They won impressively and are fighting for progressive policies in Congress. They have been strong leaders in the fight for the Green New Deal. In fact, Congresswoman

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Ocasio-Cortez is the lead sponsor of the Green New Deal resolution (H.Res.109) in the House and has been the bold, national leader and public face of the Green New Deal ever since.

With the Democratic sweep of the House and the victory of several high-profile progressives, such as Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib, many environmental activists thought that House Democrats would take bold climate action immediately. However since the November, 2018 midterm election the House Democratic leadership has shown a lack of urgency on the climate change issue despite new alarming scientific information showing that the climate crisis is getting much worse at a faster rate than what was thought previously (thinkprogress.org, "New House climate committee even weaker than panel from more than a decade ago," January 4, 2019, by Mark Hand). Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive climate leaders had asked for the establishment of a powerful House Select Committee for a Green New Deal, that would have subpoena power and the power to write legislation. The select committee established by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was given neither power, unlike the previous select committee on climate in 2007, during Pelosi's previous Speakership, which did have subpoena power. This new and much weaker House Select Committee on Climate Crisis will allow its members to accept campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies and will have no language on racial and economic justice, which are important elements of the Green New Deal.

The Senate Republican leadership headed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been even more hostile to and critical of the Green New Deal. McConnell called it "socialism" and a "crippling proposal." In a blatant attempt to shame and divide the Senate Democrats, Majority Leader McConnell scheduled a procedural vote with no time for discussion or debate of this thought-provoking and far reaching resolution. It was voted down by 57 Senators, all Republicans joined by three Democrats and one Independent. 43 Senators, one independent and the rest Democrats voted "present." All 57 Senators who voted "no" on the Green New Deal have received more than $55,000,000 in contributions from fossil fuel companies, according to Oil Change United States. (ecowatch.com).

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Here's where the dirty little secret of Dollar Democracy shows its face: in the House of Representatives, the oil and gas industry, in the 2018 election cycle, had donated a total of $14,553,123 to 237 Republicans, an average contribution of $61,405 each; the oil and gas industry had donated a total of $2,357,732 to 161 House Democrats, for an average of $14,644 each. In the Senate the oil and gas industry had donated a total of $3,699,149 to 51 Republicans for an average of $72,532 each; the oil and gas industry had donated a total of $1,331,302 to 47 Democrats for a average of $28,325 each. Two independent senators received a total of $36,598 total for an average of $18,299 each, from the oil and gas industry (OpenSecrets.org). It would surprise many people to know that 92% of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives had taken campaign money from the oil and gas industry; and 100% of the members of the U.S. Senate had received money for their campaigns from the oil and gas industry. This money includes donations from owners, investors, and employees of the corporation.

Those donations were only for one election cycle. Imagine how much more money these elected officials have received for all of their other previous campaigns. Can they truly vote independently on behalf of the public interest and for the American people, not for the oil corporations?

Congressional leaders also receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry. For example, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House received $126,315 in oil and gas money contributions from 1998 to 2018. Democrat Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader received $355,195 during the same period. Republican Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader received $181,374 from 1998 to 2018. Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader received $6,046,751 from the oil and gas industry from 1998 to 2018. Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader received $819,400 from the oil and gas industry during the same period.

Given the millions of dollars donated to the vast majority of Members of Congress is it any wonder that the Green New Deal's

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momentum has being slowed by corporate-funded Congressional leaders as well as most rank-and-file Members of Congress?

Dollar Democracy in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Gave Us Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican President Donald Trump

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the U.S. Presidency in April 2015. She was immediately considered the front runner by the establishment media, the political establishment, and most of the so-called pundits, or political analysts. They based their judgment not only on her long visibility and service in public life, but just as importantly on her ability to raise tremendous amounts of campaign money, which enabled her to establish a nationwide state-by-state presidential campaign organization. After serving as First Lady of Arkansas, she served as First Lady of the U.S. and had a prominent leadership role in the Bill Clinton Administration's healthcare reform. She was then elected U.S. Senator from New York. After losing a high profile Democratic Presidential primary election contest against Senator Barack Obama in 2012, she proceeded to serve as President Obama's U.S. Secretary of State.

In addition to these personal political achievements, Secretary Clinton had at her disposal a juggernaut political fundraising machine built by her and her husband U.S. President Bill Clinton. Through the June 2016 primary elections Hillary's campaign and pro-Hillary super PACs raised $386.1 million and spent $301.4 million. Secretary Clinton's main rival in the Democratic primaries was U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders who raised just over $228 million. Sanders refused, on principle and in practice, to allow super PACs to aid his campaign.

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Early Money is Like Yeast, It Makes the Dough Rise!

There is a saying in American politics: "Early Money is like yeast, it makes the dough rise." This was never more true than with Hillary Clinton. Hillary's early money, much of it from wealthy individuals and political action committees, baked her a lot of bread which allowed her to capture the support of more big donors and political action committees from corporate interests, labor, Wall Street, from some small donors, and even from some environmental groups. Just as it takes money to make money in a deregulated capitalist system, it takes early campaign money to attract early support and more campaign money. This is how the Clinton political–financial juggernaut was able to capture the support of the majority of the Democratic Party insiders, organized interest groups, big donors and primary election super-delegates. The Democratic Party super-delegates were elected officials, Democratic members of Congress, Governors and party leaders, and were overwhelmingly supporters of the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton. The vast majority of super-delegates pledged their support early on to the Hillary for President campaign. Whenever the news media reported primary election or caucus results on the TV screen, the public could see a huge numerical advantage in delegates for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders based on the boost that her super-delegate numbers gave her. Due to reforms championed by the Sanders/Progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the power of super-delegates has somewhat been reduced: super-delegates will not be allowed to vote on the first round at the national convention.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were the exact polar opposites of each other as candidates in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary elections. Bernie refused to accept corporate PAC money while Hillary welcomed it and raised a lot of it; Bernie hailed from the small rural state of Vermont and was relatively unknown nationally despite being in the U.S. Senate and House for a couple of decades; Hillary was already a national figure when she was elected U.S. Senator from New York, a large diverse state with the biggest urban financial center of New York City, the home of the huge Wall Street investment banks, whose

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members and investors provided a great campaign-finance base for her. Hillary was widely criticized for making three private speeches to Wall Street audiences for $250,000 each in personal income. Bernie railed against the big banks and other corporate interests that he felt had bought the American government. His campaign stressed the need to fight for the 99%, not the elite corporate 1%. While refusing their corporate-generated money for his campaign, he relied primarily on campaign money from small individual donors. He had over 2.5 million individual donors in the primary elections; in contrast Hillary had 467,230 individual donors, over half were large donors giving over $200 each, in both the primary and general elections. Sanders relished the chance to remind people that his average donation was $27. Federal Election Commission records show that the majority of his donors were small donors who gave less than $200 each to his campaign (opensecrets.org).

In the 2016 Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton's early and big-money advantage and fame over Bernie Sanders allowed her to garner early support from Democratic Party and financial donor elites. This enabled her to win a majority of votes cast in the early first-half of the Democratic primaries, which together with her large super-delegate lead, provided her the momentum to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Bernie's remarkable grassroots campaign, despite being outspent by Hillary, galvanized enough support, particularly among young voters, to provide him with a majority of popular votes in the second half of the Democratic presidential primary season. However, this was inadequate to put Bernie over the top in the end. Bernie had other headwinds that he faced: the Democratic Party elite and establishment favored Hillary throughout the primaries. Besides Bernie being a registered Independent voter all his life, until he ran for president in 2016, the Democratic Party and financial elite did not favor his position on the issues such as single-payer Medicare for All healthcare, tuition free college education, and a financial transaction tax on Wall Street to pay for it. The Democratic Party elite also did not like Bernie Sanders' criticism of big money in politics, which they of course accepted and favored. The Democratic Party elite were heavily tied to Wall Street. Just visit opensecrets.org to learn more about campaign contributions from the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) industries to both the

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Democratic and Republican Parties and their candidates for office.

In the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Dollar Democracy was on steroids: Hillary's campaign committee and super PACs that supported her from the outside raised and spent approximately $794,875,608 in the 2016 election cycle. Donald Trump's campaign committee and super PACs that supported them from the outside raised and spent approximately $408,396,207. In addition, Donald Trump was a well-known television personality, a real estate multibillionaire, and a candidate for president. Also, he received approximately $1 billion worth of free airtime from the various television networks, particularly during the Republican primary election season. As pre-election polling data predicted, Hillary Clinton won almost 3 million more popular votes than Donald Trump. Yet she lost the presidential election in the Electoral College. Most of the data from polling after the primary election showed that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in the November general election by 5 to 7 percentage points. Data from the same polls showed that Bernie Sanders would beat Donald Trump by 8 or 9 percentage points, if he had been the Democratic Nominee. On November 3, 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the nationwide popular vote by two percentage points, 48% to 45.9%. She lost the electoral college votes 232 to 306, and lost the presidential election to Donald Trump. (nytimes.com, August 9, 2017).

The American Petroleum Institute, Exxon, and Other Major Multinational Oil and Gas Corporations Knew About Climate Change/Global Warming Over 40 Years Ago, and Concealed It from the Public

The biggest and most prominent lobbying group for the multinational oil and gas corporations is the American Petroleum Institute (API). At the time, its leading members such as Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, Philips, Texaco, Shell, Sunoco, Sohio, as well as Standard Oil of California, and Gulf Oil, Chevron's predecessors, created and used a

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task force to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and 1983. James J. Nelson, a former career Air Force pilot and director of the first air quality monitoring system in Fairfax County, Virginia served as director of this Climate and Energy Task Force. The task force members included senior scientists and engineers from these oil and gas corporations. This indicates that the oil industry, including Exxon, was aware of the possible impact on the world's climate of its activity of producing fossil fuels, the burning of which, produced global warming greenhouse gases. According to a memo by an Exxon task force representative, a background paper on CO2 informed API members in 1979 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was rising steadily and it predicted when the first clearest effects of climate change might be felt. An investigation by the Pulitzer prize-winning nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization, Inside Climate News, found that Exxon "launched its own cutting-edge CO2 sampling program in 1978 in order to understand a phenomenon it suspected could harm its business. About a decade later, Exxon spearheaded campaigns to cast doubt on climate science and stall regulation of greenhouse gases." (insideclimatenews.org, December 22,2015).

Before President George W. Bush handed the fossil fuel industry a major victory by withdrawing the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, a worldwide agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) authority was growing as early as 1983, and oil companies felt that the EPA was silencing them. It was getting harder for corporations to get scientific papers published or to gain favorable attention from the media. Oil company leaders were worried that this would bring government overregulation. So, the American Petroleum Institute decided that it would not be enough to have scientists meeting in a task force on climate change or other pollution issues. It was going to need lobbyists to influence politicians on environmental issues! (insideclimatenews.org).

By the 1990s the American Petroleum Institute (API) joined Exxon, other fossil fuel companies and major manufacturers in the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). The GCC was a lobbying group with the objective of blocking international efforts to curtail heat trapping emissions. The year after the Kyoto Protocol was adopted by countries

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to cut back on fossil fuel emissions, in 1998 the API created a campaign to convince American lawmakers and the public that climate science was too uncertain for the U.S. to ratify the treaty. The GCC and the API could declare victory when U.S. President George W. Bush pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto agreement. A top State Department official is recorded in a June 2001 briefing memorandum, thanking the GCC because Bush "rejected the Kyoto Protocol in part based on input from you."(insideclimatenews.org, December 22, 2015).

ExxonMobil: A Case Study in Dollar Democracy and the Politics of Climate Disaster

ExxonMobil's extensive research on the causes and effects of climate change on its business and profitability began even before the research done by the American Petroleum Institute. Exxon's climate change studies were published from 1977 to 2014. Two Harvard researchers, Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science whose work has focused on the energy and tobacco industries, and Geoffrey Supran, a postdoctoral fellow, reviewed nearly 200 documents representing Exxon's research and its public statements. They concluded that the corporation "misled the public about climate change even as its own scientists were recognizing greenhouse gas emissions as a risk to the planet.” (New York Times, August 23, 2017, "Exxon Misled the Public on Climate Change, Study Says", by John Schwartz). Oraskes and Supran published their peer-reviewed paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters. They also published their findings in an opinion article in the New York Times. They found that Exxon's climate change studies paralleled the scientific thinking at the time. 80% of the company's research and internal communications concluded that "climate change was real and caused by humans. But 80% of Exxon statements to the broader public, which reached a much larger audience, expressed doubt about climate change."(New York Times, August 23, 2017, "Exxon Misled the Public on Climate Change, Study Says", by John Schwartz).

Investigative reporting by the Pulitzer prize-winning Inside Climate

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News, the Los Angeles Times, and the Columbia Journalism School revealed that top Exxon officials had known everything about climate change that was to be known in the 1980s. Senior company scientist James Black told Exxon's management committee in 1977 "In the first place there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels." To verify this, Exxon outfitted an oil tanker with carbon dioxide sensors to measure concentrations of the gas over the ocean, and then funded elaborate computer models to help predict what temperatures would do in the future.(grist.org, February 19, 2016, "It's Not Just What Exxon Did – It's What the Oil Company Is Still Doing", by Bill McKibben).

As Bill McKibben points out, by 1982, in an internal corporate primer, Exxon leaders were told that, despite lingering unknowns, dealing with climate change "would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion." Unless that happened the primer said, citing independent experts "there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered... Once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible." But that document, "given wide circulation" within Exxon, was also stamped "not to be distributed externally."(grist.org, February 19, 2016). Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author, who has written extensively on the impact of global warming, is the founder of 350.org. McKibben puts it very well:

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proofing its facilities to head off a future its own scientists knew was inevitable."(grist.org, February 19, 2016).

Exxon did not release these actions or information to the public. Instead Exxon started funding think tanks that produced climate denial information and even recruited lobbying talent from big tobacco. Exxon followed the path of the tobacco industry which defended cigarettes by sowing doubts that cigarettes caused cancer. In the same way, Exxon highlighted "uncertainty" regarding the science of global warming. And last but not least, Exxon (ExxonMobile today) donated and still donates heavily to political candidates who often dismiss global warming and weaken policies needed to fight it (opensecrets.org). Policies that would make up the heart of the Green New Deal!

The current track on which to defeat the power of the big corporations in blocking the Green New Deal is to work to elect grassroots, small donor backed, non-corporate, non-oil money candidates to Congress and the Presidency. In this regard the 2020 elections for the Presidency and Congress are extremely crucial. There are Congressional and Presidential candidates in the 2020 elections who are rejecting corporate big money donations, and there are thousands of volunteers organized and organizing to help them win.

The second track on which to defeat the power of the big fossil fuel companies to block the Green New Deal is by holding big oil in particular responsible for concealing information that they had obtained through scientific research in the 1970s and 1980s. As noted earlier that research indicated the devastating effects that the burning of their product, fossil fuels, has had on the lives of Americans, the world's people, and the planet. They must be made to pay for their advent of Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Disruption. If the U.S. or state governments were to pursue this track, they would only have to learn from the playbook of the government's lawsuits against Big Tobacco.

The attorneys general of 46 states, the District of Columbia, and other jurisdictions sued the tobacco manufacturers to obtain reimbursement for the costs incurred by the state's taxpayers in caring for

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citizens suffering from smoking dash related illnesses. In 1998 the five major tobacco companies reached the "master settlement agreement", an agreement with the states' attorneys general to settle the litigation, estimated to be $206 billion for the first 25 years. The lawyers had uncovered internal tobacco company documents that exposed corporate deception and cover ups about addiction and nicotine manipulation.

Four states— Florida, Mississippi, Texas, and Minnesota-- settled separately with the tobacco companies. Total settlements for all the states add up to $246 billion. There may be some parallels here with Exxon and/or other oil companies.

In the last few years, two states, New York State and Massachusetts, have started fraud investigations into ExxonMobil over climate change. One state, Rhode Island, is suing ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and other major oil companies for contributing to climate change that is damaging infrastructure and coastal communities in the state. Cities small, medium and large such as Imperial Beach, Richmond, San Francisco, and Oakland in California, and New York City are also suing oil companies for costs related to climate change; so are counties such as San Mateo and Marin in California. If the government is successful in a lawsuit against the big oil companies, perhaps some of that settlement money can be applied to funding Green New Deal policies, and help us block the worst effects of Climate Change/Global Warming.

As students of politics and society, what we have learned from the crisis of climate change and its tragic aftermath of human death and suffering is the following: all the money that politicians have taken for their political campaigns from fossil fuel corporations and their lobbyists has enabled them to allow this tragedy to unfold. It has also made them slow, very slow in effectively dealing with it. The power and responsibility rests with We the People to take collective action in order to reverse global warming/climate change through grassroots organizing, political activism, peaceful protests, organized voting and donating small amounts of money to non-corporate funded candidates in our elections in America and the world. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "When the people lead, the leaders will follow."

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