In case you missed it, today the Boulder Daily Camera published an op-ed from John Hickenlooper on the urgency of addressing the climate crisis and how he’d approach climate action in the Senate.
As Governor, John brought people together to launch clean-energy projects and enact pioneering climate change legislation, such as implementing methane pollution limits considered to be the “gold standard” for the country and protecting public lands from drilling. Meanwhile, Senator Cory Gardner has voted to confirm a coal industry lobbyist as EPA administrator, blocked protections for public lands in Congress, and rubber-stamped Mitch McConnell and President Trump’s environmental rollbacks.
Hickenlooper wrote:
Our country is on an unsustainable path. We have no time to waste in confronting this existential threat. We can’t call climate change a “hoax” and pretend it isn’t happening like President Donald Trump. And we have no time for another six years of rolling back environmental protections sanctioned by U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner.
Time after time, Sen. Gardner has sided with Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump to undermine efforts to combat climate change. Sen. Gardner voted to put a coal lobbyist in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency and to cut its budget by nearly a third. He voted against national limits on methane pollution that were modeled off the “gold standard” we implemented in Colorado when I was governor.
Gardner even pledged to ram through a Supreme Court justice weeks before Election Day, a justice who could block regulations to fight climate change.
I offer an alternative proposal: a bold, science-based approach to the climate crisis that will help restore our leadership in the world, improve the economic wellbeing of Colorado and the United States, and protect our natural resources for future generations.
We can and must move the United States to a clean energy future of net-zero emissions. We need to act rapidly to reduce emissions, incentivize green energy, and in the process, create jobs. This is not just a moral imperative, but an economic one as well. Anyone who tells you that we have to decide between aggressive climate action and good jobs is giving you a false choice.
