States with poor climate policy ‘overlap’ with those seeking to limit rights, Kamala Harris says, despite denial
By Michael Dimock
24 April 2019
The United States is awash in climate denialism and is pushing to roll back environmental protections.
State governors like Republican Scott Walker, who has proposed to ban the use of fossil fuels in Wisconsin, are carrying out laws to reverse the environmental movement and protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
The Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, has also instituted a cap-and-trade carbon reduction plan, making his state a model for the destruction of the environment.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is attacking the climate movement at the same time he is trying to reverse environmental protections for the sake of his corporate polluters.
In a statement on Friday, Democratic Congresswoman Kamala Harris of California described how she and state legislators have been the targets of the climate denial movement in the United States.
The California Democrat, a member of the House of Representatives and chairwoman of the Congressional Climate Change Caucus that Harris co-chairs, also detailed how Trump is actively pursuing a plan to block the implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of attempts to address global climate change.
Harris, a California congresswoman, said the US has been on a path to a climate catastrophe “that would end modern civilization” and told voters the only solution was a political fight against Trump and the Republicans in Congress.
“With [Trump] talking about pulling out of the Paris climate accord, it is clear that he is really putting the interests of corporate polluters ahead of [the] health of our children and families,” Harris, who at the age of 37 is the youngest woman elected to Congress, told the Guardian.
Harris began her statement by citing the example of Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, who has publicly and explicitly called for a Green New Deal to make the US a leader in the transition to a lower-carbon economy, while his Democratic colleagues in Congress have refused to support the legislation.
Casey has now also called on his colleagues in Congress to support a “Clean Air Act Clean Power Plan—passed by Congress almost 70 years ago to protect the health of Americans and