New DNC Council aims to change how we deal with climate crisis
By Michelle Deatrick, Our Revolution Michigan
It was disappointing that the climate debate resolution didn’t pass at the recent DNC meeting in San Francisco. However, we were able to move forward in a different way when the DNC passed my resolution to create an Environment and Climate Crisis Council — a permanent entity that will help to elevate and empower the voices of those most impacted by the climate crisis. This council, which I’m proud to chair, would never have been created if Our Revolution members hadn’t worked tirelessly to push DNC members to make it a reality. And because of that on the ground organizing, I had more than 50 other DNC members signing on as co-sponsors before we even took a vote on the resolution calling for the creation of the council.
With the creation of this new council, members of the Democratic Party will now have a place to discuss, deliberate, and further our democratic commitment to protect the environment, to uphold environmental and intergenerational justice, and to address that defining issue of our time, the climate crisis. In using this council, we’ll be able to fight to ensure that the DNC and state parties take real action on climate change.
We know that the Republicans are way too cozy with the fossil fuel industry to do anything meaningful about climate change and we know that it’s up to the Democrats to stop talking and start acting, and to walk their talk. And that’s why I won’t stop fighting for change within the Democratic Party until we are doing the real work of providing opportunities for positive change to save our planet.
There’s no simple one-step legislative solution and the work has to be done at the local, state, and national level. I know that Our Revolution is going to be leading the way and supporting elected officials and candidates who are fighting for the funding we need to modernize our electrical grid, to accommodate renewable energy, for the candidates who have a plan for creating good union jobs, for workers transitioning away from fossil fuel jobs, for candidates who will prevent new drilling permits from being passed, or new fossil fuel infrastructure from being built, who will make the climate crisis and everything that comes with it our top priority as a nation.
The work we’re doing here at the party level is an important first step. But it’s not the only step and there is no question that this is the most important work of our generation.
This work is about even more than halting climate change and the mass extinction event we’re already living through. It’s about healing this beautiful, astonishing earth, healing ourselves, healing and transforming our fractured institutions.
The creation of the DNC council is just the beginning, and as I said, now the real work begins. The good news, because we are the grassroots, we are the movement. You don’t need to be a member of the DNC to be a member of the Environmental and Climate Crisis Council. So if you’d like to apply to become a member and I hope you do, please contact Our Revolution. I would love to have you partnering with those of us already in the council to do that important work of building a better future and a better Democratic Party.
