A8 FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2019 LATIMES.COM
THE NATION
PARADISE, Calif. — Sur-
veying the ruins of a mobile
home park incinerated in
November in the deadliest
wildfire in California history,
Bernie Sanders said there
could be a “silver lining” to
the tragedy: public under-
standing “that we need bold
and aggressive action to
combat climate change.”
“We’re fighting for the fu-
ture of the planet,” the Ver-
mont senator said Thursday
as he walked amid black-
ened pine trees towering
over scorched and rusty
pickup frames and armchair
springs.
Sanders used the back-
drop of Paradise, a town
nearly destroyed in a fire
that killed 86 people, to in-
troduce his sweeping $16-
trillion plan to fight global
warming.
Sanders became the lat-
est Democratic presidential
candidate to advance a cli-
mate change agenda that
would have a far-reaching ef-
fect on the day-to-day lives
of all Americans. His is the
costliest by far.
“It is expensive but the
cost of doing nothing is far
more expensive,” Sanders
told supporters later Thurs-
day at a forum in nearby
Chico.
Sanders compared his
proposal to President
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New
Deal programs to recover
from the Great Depression
and America’s mobilization
to fight World War II. He pre-
dicted it would create 20 mil-
lion jobs, despite the long
odds that the Senate, now
controlled by Republicans,
would adopt even a fraction
of the plan.
With solar, wind, geother-
mal and other renewable
power sources, the plan
says, the U.S. can achieve
100% sustainable energy for
electricity and transporta-
tion by 2030.
On his visit to Paradise,
Sanders spoke with Susan
Dobra, 64, who recalled
President Trump visiting
the town and mistakenly re-
ferring to it as “Pleasure.”
The editor and teacher, a
Sanders supporter who lost
neighbors in the Camp fire,
told reporters that Trump
“stood in the ruins of our
town and denied that cli-mate change is real. But it is
real and you can see the ef-
fect of it all around you.”
Scientists say climate
change is lengthening wild-
fire seasons and increasing
the heat and drought that
can fuel the blazes.
Standing alongside Do-
bra and several other fire
survivors, Sanders criti-
cized Trump, who rejects
the science showing that hu-
mans’ burning of fossil fuels
is a cause of climate change.
“We have a president of
the United States who
thinks climate change is a
hoax; President Trump is
dangerously, dangerously
wrong,” he said.
“If there’s any silver lining
in this terrible tragedy in this
beautiful town is that, Ihope, the people of the
United States, the people of
the world, understand that
we need bold and aggressive
action to combat climate
change.”
Highlights of the plan in-
clude $2.2 trillion in spend-
ing on need-based grants to
families and businesses to
weatherize homes and busi-
nesses; $2.1 trillion to help
people replace gasoline-fu-
eled cars and trucks with
electric vehicles; $526 billion
to rebuild the U.S. electricity
grid; and $407 billion to buy
electric buses for schools
and other public transit.
Sanders was less specific
about how he would pay for
the plan. He said he would
stop federal subsidies for the
fossil-fuel industry and forceit to pay for its pollution
through lawsuits and un-
specified taxes.
He said he would also
scale back military spending
that’s aimed at maintaining
oil dependence, generate
new income tax revenue
from the 20 million new jobs
he says he’d create, and re-
quire wealthy Americans
and big corporations to “pay
their fair share.”
Sanders would also ban
imports and exports of fossil
fuels and prohibit fracking
and mountaintop-removal
coal mining.
He vowed a “fair transi-
tion” for displaced coal min-
ers and other fossil-fuel
workers, such as five years of
unemployment insurance,
job training, housing assist-ance and healthcare.
Leah Stokes, an assistant
professor at UC Santa Bar-
bara who specializes in cli-
mate and energy politics, de-
scribed the proposal as very
ambitious and a bit unrealis-
tic. “I think implementing
this plan would be really dif-
ficult,” she said.
But, she said, the fact
that Sanders, Massachu-
setts Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
former Vice President Joe
Biden and others in the race
have backed bold climate
plans speaks to the potency
of recent youth-driven activ-
ism on climate change.
“We have already wasted
four decades, so the stakes
are really, really high.”
Trump has abandoned
the global Paris agreement
on climate change and
sought to dismantle the cli-
mate protections put in
place by President Obama.
Climate change has be-
come one of the top concerns
of liberal Democrats over
the last several years, par-
ticularly among young peo-
ple, polls show.
Although it remains a
source of little or no concern
to many Republicans, more
and more Democrats and in-
dependents have been see-
ing global warming as a con-
crete threat as wildfires and
storms become more deadly
and as chronic high-tide
flooding hits low-lying
coastal areas.
“Each of the candidates is
now responding to the fact
that the base of their party is
keenly interested in this is-
sue,” said Anthony Leis-
erowitz, director of the Yale
Program on Climate Change
Communication.
However, Washington
Gov. Jay Inslee, who made
climate change the main
focus of his campaign,
dropped out of the race
Wednesday after failing to
gain substantial support.Talking climate change in Paradise
Sanders unveils
a $16-trillion Green
New Deal plan while
visiting the site of last
year’s epic wildfire.
By Michael Finnegan
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATESen. Bernie Sanders greets Geralynne Radar, a volunteer
with the Paradise, Calif., Police Department, as he tours a mobile home park destroyed by last year’s wildfire.Rich PedroncelliAssociated Press■ ■■ ELECTION 2020 ■■■