By Dino Grandoni, The Lightbulb (Washington Post)
The debate among Democrats about holding a climate change debate is not going away.
The back-and-forth between Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and advocates for a climate-themed debate has at times turned acrimonious. The uproar underscores the degree to which ensuring the United States is addressing the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere — and preparing to deal with their effects — has become a priority among Democratic voters.
The DNC came down with its decision last week, writing in a letter to Democratic candidates that “the DNC will not be holding entire debates on a single issue area,” DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said. Democratic candidate and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has tried for years to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions in his own state, had formally asked the DNC for a climate debate in a letter.
Inslee, who has centered his campaign around climate change, fired back at the committee for “silencing the voices of Democratic activists.”
Perez followed up by penning a longer explanation on Medium explaining that the party has received more than 50 requests for issue-specific debates. “And we knew it would be unfair and unrealistic to ask the candidates to participate in so many,” he wrote.
But activists are not taking no for an answer. In Washington on Wednesday, a coalition of groups delivered a petition with more than 200,000 signatures to DNC headquarters calling for a climate change debate. And that same day in Kansas City, activists with the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group, confronted Perez, accusing the chairman of using the party rules as “a very thin defense.”
Perez promised that portions of the scheduled debates will be on climate change. “You carve out a section of the debate, and it’s on issue A or issue B,” Perez responded. “We will be doing that throughout the course of the debate season.”
