DNC Tells Inslee It Won't Host Climate Debate

June 07, 2019

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by Tal Axelrod (The Hill) Democratic presidential hopeful and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced Wednesday that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is rebuffing his repeated entreaties for a primary debate focused on climate change.

"Today, my team received a call from the Democratic National Committee letting us know that they will not host a climate debate. Further, they explained that if we participated in anyone else's climate debate, we will not be invited to future debates," Inslee said in a statement.

"This is deeply disappointing. The DNC is silencing the voices of Democratic activists, many of our progressive partner organizations, and nearly half of the Democratic presidential field, who want to debate the existential crisis of our time. Democratic voters say that climate change is their top issue; the Democratic National Committee must listen to the grassroots of the party," Inslee added. READ MORE

'This Is an Emergency. We Need the Democrats to Act Like It': Outrage as DNC Announces It Will Not Host 2020 Debate on Climate Crisis (Common Dreams)

DNC Denies 2020 Democrats a Climate Change Debate (U.S. News and World Report)

Inslee: DNC rejecting climate change debate is 'extremely disappointing' (CNN)

Everyone’s got a climate plan. So where’s the carbon tax? (Washington Post/Catherine Rampell)

Members petition DNC chairman to hold presidential debate on climate change (The Hill)

OPTS OUT OF CLIMATE DEBATE: (Politico's Morning Energy)

Tweet of the Week: Sen. Schatz's Debate Advice (Our Daily Planet)

UP FOR DEBATE: (Politico's Morning Energy)

Miami on Front Lines of Climate Emergency, But Will Dems Get the Chance to Address It? (Our Daily Planet)

Excerpt from U.S. News and World Report: In an interview with CNN, he also pushed back against the DNC's decision to ban candidates who would like to participate in a climate change debate.

"That's outrageous to me, to muzzle candidates who want to go out and have this debate," he said. READ MORE

Excerpt from Washington Post (Catherine Rampell): These candidates, to their credit, have offered thoughtful solutions for addressing the most pressing policy challenge of our time. Their proposals are highly detailed and thorough, often running to dozens of pages in length.

And it’s precisely because they’re so detailed and thorough that it’s so bizarre none of them explicitly mentions the obvious, no-brainer tool for curbing carbon emissions: putting a price on carbon.

A carbon tax (or its cousin, a cap-and-trade system) is almost universally embraced by economists on both the left and the right. With good reason, too. Taxing carbon means pricing in, upfront, the implicit costs that come from using fossil fuels — especially, though not exclusively, the cost of warming our planet.

...

This approach has two main benefits.

The first is that it immediately nudges consumers and businesses away from purchasing carbon-intensive products, because (duh) those products get more expensive.

The second is that, over the longer run, it motivates entrepreneurs and investors to develop new green technologies, because they know they can make money as customers seek out cheaper, lower-carbon-footprint alternatives.

...

That’s in stark contrast to a more top-down approach, in which the government requires or subsidizes the use of specific clean technologies. These kinds of mandates can distort demand toward technologies that were promising yesterday but will be bested by other (cheaper, more efficient) technologies tomorrow; or they might just benefit the producers that have the most persuasive lobbyists and valuable voting blocs (for example: ethanol). READ MORE

Excerpt from The Hill: More than 50 members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are reportedly asking Chairman Tom Perez to hold a presidential debate on climate change after the governing body rejected repeated requests from Democratic presidential hopeful and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to host one.

According to HuffPost, the petition's signatories plan to collect more signatures before submitting the resolution for official consideration at a DNC meeting later this month.

...

"The first several DNC Presidential Debates should be focused on Climate Change issues and solutions," the resolution says, according to HuffPost. The letter also calls for Democratic candidates to be permitted to debate climate change through other forums if the DNC chooses not to sponsor a debate. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: OPTS OUT OF CLIMATE DEBATE: The DNC has shut down any hope of holding a climate change debate, a major blow to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is building his presidential campaign around the issue and had pushed for the forum.

Inslee called the decision "deeply disappointing" and out of step with Democratic primary voters, POLITICO's Anthony Adragna reports. He also said the organization threatened not to invite him to future debates if he participated in any other climate change debate.

In a statement, the DNC said climate change would remain a top priority during the debates but that it hoped to ensure "vigorous discussion" on all important issues to voters like the economy, climate change and health care.

Inslee told CNN late Wednesday: "I will tell them that what I'm hearing across the country is Democrats are insistent that we call the candidates to a higher plane of discussion of this, which was ignored for the last 20-30 years. So, I hope that they reconsider and I hope the other aspirants to this office join me, as 11 have already, to ask the DNC to reconsider this. The American people deserves this. Our party deserves this." Watch the clip here. READ MORE0

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: UP FOR DEBATE: Democratic candidates will appear in Miami on Wednesday and Thursday for the first two Democratic debates in the 2020 cycle. After a failed push from candidates like Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to hold a primary debate focused solely on climate change, environmental advocates will be watching to see just how deeply Democrats dive into the issue — if at all.

Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez has said that instead of a climate-focused debate, he's personally told the moderators "how important it is for climate change to be debated during each and every debate" but said there would be no single-issue events.

POLITICO's Michael Calderone reports the debate hosts have their work cut out for them: They'll have to balance keeping tabs on 10 candidates each night, while also addressing the complex issues at the top of Democratic voters' minds, like climate change. But even if candidates are addressing climate change, "the moderators are not going to want to go around the horn to have the same question answered 10 times," said Mark Lukasiewicz, who worked on 10 primary debates as an NBC News executive and now serves as dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University.

— In anticipation of the event, EDF Action is putting nearly $90,000 into an ad campaign, highlighting climate change as a key issue for the debates and calling for a 100 percent clean energy economy. As part of the campaign, EDF Action will run digital ads, English and Spanish ads on taxi cabs, and a Spanish billboard and two English billboards on the route to the debate. READ MORE