APRIL 2020 / ROLLING STONE / 73
ing in the Midwest, they know they’re
not just losing the future, they’re los-
ing the present.
What about the Democrats? In
2009-10, they had a majority in the
House and 60 votes in the Senate,
and they were unable to pass a much
more modest climate bill. Can you trust the
party to address climate change in a mean-
ingful way?
This is where I find who takes the White House
to be important. In terms of the party itself,
those basic tendencies are absolutely still there.
There is an extraordinarily pro-corporate wing
of the party that will block a lot of meaningful
change. If we had the ACA [Affordable Care Act]
fight today, we would still have people trying to
kill the public option. Back then there was [Sen-
ator] Joe Lieberman; that was that clinch vote.
Today it’s [Senator] Joe Manchin — and Manchin
is way worse. That’s why you need that muscle
from the White House. Obama ultimately saw
what was going on and his priority was to win
over Republican votes, and that’s where there
was this kind of rollover on the public option.
And we didn’t get any Republican votes anyway.
What’s the strategy for pushing a climate
agenda forward under a Bernie Sanders pres-
idency versus under a Biden presidency?
Bernie inherently understands those three prin-
ciples outlined in the Green New Deal. And he’s
been making that effort for a very, very long
time. He will not be afraid to corral the votes he
needs to corral. And I think he acknowledges
the inherent bad faith that the Republican Party
now operates in, which a lot of members donot. They have been here a long time,
and they think we can get back to the
Nineties or something. And that ship
has sailed. It is gone. And I think Sen-
ator Sanders understands that. Biden
doesn’t. He thinks that Trump is an ab-
erration and that once Trump is gone,
everything will go back to normal and that he
can, I don’t know, play baseball with some guys
and win them over. And I just don’t think that
that’s the reality anymore. While I understand
the deep, deep desire to get past this polarized
period, this is the moment that we’re in and we
need to deal with it.
It doesn’t mean lean into [the polarization],
but it also doesn’t mean to worship bipartisan-
ship for bipartisanship’s sake. The PROMESA Act
that gutted Puerto Rico and is the reason why
people are dying, was bipartisan. Going to war
is bipartisan. The largest tax giveaway before
the GOP tax scam was the permanent extension
of the Bush tax cuts — that was bipartisan. These
are some of the most corrosive pieces of legisla-
tion we’ve had in the last decade. And so it’s not
just about, “Let’s pass this thing because it has a
Republican vote on it.” It’s about, Are we actual-
ly improving people’s lives?
In 2016, Hillary Clinton, while talking about
transitioning fossil-fuel workers to other jobs,
said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners
and companies out of business.” It didn’t go
over very well. What is the strategy for phas-
ing out coal while protecting workers’ jobs?
I’m glad you bring this up because it shows how
the Green New Deal approach is fundamentally
different than traditional Democratic climate pol-icy. It is a winning policy. We are winning swing
elections on a Green New Deal. Virginia ran on a
Green New Deal. The gubernatorial race in Ken-
tucky — he won largely on a Green New Deal mes-
sage. And the reason for that is because we actu-
ally center these communities. And it’s not just,
“Oh, here’s a six-month apprenticeship transi-
tion plan” and then there’s nothing real for those
people. I’ve met with coal workers, and we have
committed to bailing out their pensions. Because
while all of these coal companies use their work-
ers to get bailout after bailout, once they get
that money, they never give it to their workers.
It doesn’t go to those families with black lung. It
doesn’t go to fully funding coal miners’ pensions.
And we’re here to have that fight. Because we’re
not interested in turning oil barons into solar
barons. We’re here to make sure that workers
are centered in our economy.
What do you say to people who think Dem-
ocrats aren’t doing enough on climate and
who want to support a Green Party candidate
in November?
If you want a true third party — a strong Green
Party, independent party, et cetera — you need
to actually build the party. The presidency
doesn’t do that. You need to make sure that you
grow those caucuses. That’s, frankly, what a lot
of Democratic Socialists of America members are
doing across the country. They’re not trying to
mount a third-party presidency. They’re captur-
ing city councils and state assemblies and getting
things done from the ground up. That happens
to be my take. And I do think that the stakes are
too high right now. We need to acknowledge that
this regime is authoritarian and it’s a threat to a
lot of people, and we need to make sure that we
elect a Democrat this year.
Do you think we can continue growing the
economy while radically cutting emissions?
It’s a GOP talking point, but there are good-
faith actors who say progress requires a shift
away from consumerism and will result in a
shrinking GDP.
I think it depends on how we measure our econ-
omy, right? It does pose a threat to the fossil-
fuel industry, and that is one of the Republican
Party’s main sources of income. So for Repub-
licans it ends a great degree of the economic
power they rely on. [But] I think that this transi-
tion represents an increase in prosperity for ev-
eryday people, because fossil fuels are reliant on
a system that is dependent on obscene levels of
inequality. This is an extractive economy — you
need to extract from land and from people in
order to grow.
If you wake up at 3 a.m., freaked out about
the climate crisis, what’s on your mind?
I worry about families that don’t have the abil-
ity to run away. I worry about the interconnec-
tivity of our systems, the compounding effects
of climate change. For example, a huge amountOcasio-Cortez
with Sanders last
year, introducing
a bill to reduce
carbon emissions
in public housingMICHAEL REYNOLDS/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK