As the pivotal New York State primary nears, The Nation, has weighed in on Hillary Clinton’s connections to the fossil fuel industry.
And endorsed Bernie Sanders for president.
The venerable magazine’s Naomi Klein finds Clinton’s industry connections far more extensive than have been debated recently after the candidate was confronted by Greenpeace volunteer Eva Resnick-Day.
Klein writes:
First, some facts. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, including her Super PAC, has received a lot of money from the employees and registered lobbyists of fossil-fuel companies. There’s the much-cited $4.5 million that Greenpeace calculated, which includes bundling by lobbyists.
But that’s not all. There is also a lot more money from sources not included in those calculations. For instance, one of Clinton’s most prominent and active financial backers is Warren Buffett. While he owns a large mix of assets, Buffett is up to his eyeballs in coal, including coal transportation and some of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the country.
Then there’s all the cash that fossil-fuel companies have directly pumped into the Clinton Foundation. In recent years, Exxon, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron have all contributed to the foundation. An investigation in the International Business Times just revealed that at least two of these oil companies were part of an effort to lobby Clinton’s State Department about the Alberta tar sands, a massive deposit of extra-dirty oil.
Fossil fuel money is nothing to brag about in 2016, with the dire consequences of climate change rising in public consciousness thanks to Green Peace, Bill McKibbon, other scientists and activists around the globe. Our dependence on fossil fuel use is cooking the planet, endangering our way of life, while making some people very rich and powerful.
Powerful enough to shape their own destinies, and unfortunately, those of billions of others.
New York is at the epicenter of this battle for the planet, one of just two states to ban fracking.
The other is Vermont, across Lake Champlain, represented by Senator Bernie Sanders.
New York is home to educated voters who have fought a seven-year battle against the fossil fuel industry. We’ve had the land men, trying to cheat land owners into signing nightmarish contracts. We’ve had the local wheels greased with corporate giveaways. We’ve seen water contamination in Pennsylvania, earthquakes in the mid-west, heard about the man camps and campaigned mightily to keep the industry out of here. And as the primary looms, New York State is locked in a battle over Keystone East, the Constitution Pipeline, designed to ship fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New York.
A monument to hubris, the Constitution Pipeline is symbolic of a gigantic industry accustomed to getting its way from Saudi Arabia to Alberta to Dimock, Pa. The industry is wedded to unhealthy processes, risky technologies, but able to control its destiny because few politicians dare to stand up to a giant.
If we choose to save our planet, those whose products and bi-products threaten it, stand to lose their shirts.
As Klein writes:
A president willing to inflict these losses on fossil-fuel companies and their allies needs to be more than just not actively corrupt. That president needs to be up for the fight of the century—and absolutely clear about which side must win. Looking at the Democratic primary, there can be no doubt about who is best suited to rise to this historic moment.
That president is Bernie Sanders.
Earlier this year, editors at The Nation, America’s oldest continually published weekly news magazine, endorsed Sanders for president. On the cusp of New York’s primary, they’ve reaffirmed their judgment, writing that while Clinton and Sanders both are qualified:
...we endorsed Sanders with enthusiasm because we believe that he has additional qualifications rooted in judgement and vision. He did vote against authorizing the war in Iraq, and against the Patriot Act, and against trade deals that have done enormous damage to the prospects of American workers and American communities. He has steadily opposed the death penalty and argued for criminal-justice reform, and he recognizes and challenges the economic underpinnings of structural racism. He objects to regime change as a foreign-policy priority and instead argues for a focus on diplomacy and development. And he has recognized, along with Elizabeth Warren, that our rigged economy extends from a rigged political process in which special-interest groups and billionaires have far more influence that citizens.