June 27, 2019

Activists Outside the 2020 Debate Are Demanding That Climate Change Take Center Stage

“You can’t come to Miami without talking about climate change.”

Just a few hours before the second round of 2020 Democratic presidential contenders are set to face off, dozens of local activists in Miami, Florida held an “Underwater Climate Rally,” calling for more discussion about climate change at the second Democratic debate. A coalition of local environmental groups organized the march to the Arsht Center in Miami, where this round of debates is being held, with marchers sporting signs calling for a specific climate change debate and pushing for the Green New Deal.

Melissa Baldwin, co-organizer of Miami Climate Month, which organized the rally, says from the moment she and her fellow organizers found out the first debate would be in Miami, they wanted to “put a spotlight on climate change, because you can’t come to Miami without talking about climate change.”

Climate change and fossil fuels have already disturbed the daily lives of Floridians. Sea level rise and warming temperatures threaten cities like Miami. Kim Ross, ReThink Energy Florida leader, resident witnessed people in her community in Tallahassee feeling helpless after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, which damaged Gulf Coast ecosystems.

“This isn’t something in the future,” Ross says. “This is something that’s happening now and needs to be addressed now.”

At the first 2020 Democratic debate on Wednesday night, Democrats spent less than 10 minutes talking about climate change. Though not an extensive conversation, that was still more time spent talking about climate change than in all of three debates combined between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016.

Baldwin tells Mother Jones that climate and energy policy needs a prolonged conversation at every debate because “climate change is an issue that affects every other issue: agriculture, the economy, including tourism.”

She recalls a friend saying, “Who wants to go to Disney when it’s 105 degrees outside?”

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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