Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is making a big bet that his climate credentials can propel him a victory in the Iowa caucuses and secure him as a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
On Saturday, Sanders is slated to hold a live-streamed summit on the climate crisis at Des Moines’ Drake University. The event will feature Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), author Naomi Klein and U.S. Youth Climate Strike co-founder Isra Hirsi, the 16-year-old daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
The event marks a new emphasis on climate for Sanders’s Iowa campaign, as the 78-year-old’s base of 18- to 30-year-old voters looks increasingly up for grabs in a heated competition with fellow progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), ascendant moderate South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden.
It’s by no means a pivot for Sanders. The senator, long a climate champion, endorsed the Green New Deal movement early on. He hosted a televised town hall on the climate crisis in Washington, D.C., last December featuring the yet-to-be inaugurated Ocasio-Cortez, teenage activists and climate scientists.
in an August survey from the Yale Program on Climate Communication, 69% of Iowa voters said they were worried about climate change, while 74% acknowledged warming was having an effect on the state’s agriculture.
The trend bears out nationally. Sccording to an August nationwide survey roughly 38% of registered voters favored a Green New Deal proposal that spent upwards of $10 trillion eliminating climate-changing emissions by 2030. That compares to 32.5% who preferred a $1.7 trillion plan to zero out emissions by 2050 ― something more in line with what Biden proposed.
But it’s biofuels, a controversial environmental policy that Sanders excluded from the Green New Deal blueprint his campaign released in August, which could broaden the senator’s appeal. In May, Sanders described “biofuels like ethanol” as “an economic lifeline to rural and farm commodities in Iowa.” At a popular fundraiser in the state this month, Sanders offered biofuels his full-throated support.
It’s an approach that could draw criticism from some in the environmental movement who argue that industrial-scale corn farming poses its own ecological problems and investing in lower-carbon fuel potentially detracts from efforts to rapidly convert the U.S. car fleet to battery-electric vehicles.
But it’s good politics in the near term. The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to exempt some small oil refineries from the federal biofuels mandate known as the Renewable Fuel Standard sent markets tanking.
Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association said Iowa farmers saw the move as a “betrayal” by President Donald Trump that could “open the door” to a Democrat like Sanders winning voters even in red districts.
Championing ethanol, said Iowa congressional candidate J.D. Scholten, could warm otherwise skeptical Iowans to some of the more novel proposals in Sanders’ Green New Deal, which earmarks nearly $15 billion for worker-owned grocery co-ops and calls for a massive expansion of federally owned power plants.
“People who haven’t voted for a Democrat in years ― maybe never ― are giving us a chance,” said Scholten, the Iowa Democrat who nearly unseated King in the last election and hopes to face off with the nine-term congressman again next year. “I personally think if they do it right, the Green New Deal can be a winning message in rural Iowa.”
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