Local weather change: What Democrats operating for president will do to carry fossil gas corporations accountable

To learn how 2020 Democratic candidates would use their presidential powers to handle local weather change, we despatched six key questions to each marketing campaign. This put up contains seven candidates’ solutions to the fifth query. You could find solutions to the opposite 5 questions on the touchdown web page.

Proper now there’s a nationwide push to carry fossil gas corporations accountable by way of lawsuits, shareholder resolutions, and divestment for his or her contributions to local weather change and campaigns to mislead the general public. Do you help these efforts? What do you see on the authorities’s function in holding polluters accountable?

Joe Biden: [I] will take motion in opposition to fossil gas corporations and different polluters who put revenue over folks and knowingly hurt our surroundings and poison our communities’ air, land, and water, or conceal info relating to potential environmental and well being dangers.

As president, [I] will maintain polluters accountable. Plain and easy. Underneath the Trump Administration, the EPA has referred the fewest variety of felony anti-pollution circumstances to the Justice Division in 30 years. Permitting companies to proceed to pollute — affecting the well being and security of each their employees and surrounding communities — with out penalties perpetuates an egregious abuse of energy. [I] will direct [my] EPA and Justice Division to pursue these circumstances to the fullest extent permitted by legislation and, when wanted, search extra laws as wanted to carry company executives personally accountable — together with jail time the place merited.

Elizabeth Warren: Sure, I do. I’ve introduced legislation to carry high company executives criminally accountable if, because of their negligence, corporations pollute the air or trigger hurt to our surroundings.

Bernie Sanders: Sure. [My] Green New Deal features a complete plan to carry fossil gas government accountable and finish their greed as soon as and for all. For many years, fossil gas companies knowingly destroyed our planet for short-term income. The fossil gas trade has identified since as early because the 1970s that their merchandise have been contributing to local weather change and that local weather change is actual, harmful, and preventable. But, they saved going. As a substitute of working to search out options to the approaching disaster, the fossil gas trade poured billions into funding local weather denialism, hiring lobbyists to combat even the slightest authorities regulation and oversight, and contributing to politicians who would put the pursuits of fossil gas executives over the security and safety of the planet. Fossil gas companies have fought to flee legal responsibility for the air pollution and destruction attributable to their greed. They’ve evaded taxes, desecrated tribal lands, exploited employees and poisoned communities. [I] imagine that is felony exercise, and, when [I am] president, [I] will maintain the fossil gas trade accountable.

Transitioning to 100 p.c renewable vitality can’t be accomplished with out standing as much as fossil gas companies. As president, [I] will prosecute and sue the fossil gas trade for the harm it has precipitated. When it was revealed in 2015 that the fossil gas trade knew their actions have been contributing to local weather change a long time in the past, [I] despatched a letter to then-Legal professional Common Loretta Lynch asking her to open a federal investigation to search out out whether or not the trade violated the legislation.

[I] will be sure that his Division of Justice and Securities and Change Fee examine these corporations and produce fits — each felony and civil — for any wrongdoing, simply because the federal authorities did with the tobacco trade within the 1980s. These companies and their executives mustn’t get away with hiding the reality from the American folks. They need to additionally pay damages for the destruction they’ve knowingly precipitated. We will even help state and regional motion to find out the projected hurt to communities and pave the best way for actions that remunerate devastated communities requiring care and restore and the {dollars} to do it.

[I] will make the fossil gas trade pay for his or her air pollution by massively elevating taxes on company polluters’ and buyers’ fossil gas earnings and wealth. We are going to elevate penalties on air pollution from fossil gas vitality technology. The EPA has traditionally under-enforced the prevailing penalties for polluting beneath the Clear Air Act. As president, [I] will elevate and aggressively implement these penalties.

[I] would require remaining fossil gas infrastructure house owners to purchase federal fossil gas danger bonds to pay for catastrophe impacts on the native degree. Federal danger bonds can then be paid to counties and municipalities when there are fossil gas spills, explosions, or accidents.

[I] will divest federal pensions from fossil fuels and use the Federal Reserve and different monetary regulatory our bodies to pressure and strain and monetary establishments, universities, insurance coverage companies, and enormous institutional buyers nonetheless invested in or insuring fossil fuels to transition these investments to wash vitality bonds.

Pete Buttigieg: Local weather change and local weather safety is the defining problem of our technology. We should always push for change by way of each obtainable avenue. Company social accountability means little if an organization’s enterprise practices are harming folks, and we should have strong enforcement and critical accountability for wrongdoing.

Tom Steyer: I strongly help the efforts to carry fossil gas corporations accountable for his or her corrupt actions to mislead and endanger the general public — in truth, I’ve been straight concerned within the divestment effort. I spent my years on Stanford College’s board efficiently convincing them to dump coal holdings and pushing exhausting for full divestment from fossil fuels. It’s time that we break the grip that these companies have over our political system and strengthen legal guidelines that shield employees and the atmosphere. Prior to now, as soon as fossil gas corporations have gotten all the cash they will out of a group or a bit of land they attempt to pull up stakes and transfer on with out repairing the harm they’ve accomplished within the course of. This must cease. We have to step up enforcement and prosecute corrupt corporations that poison our air and water. It’s time that we inform these executives that they won’t forestall us from taking motion on the local weather disaster, and create actual — probably felony — penalties for actions they might have taken to knowingly unfold false info and sluggish local weather motion. I’ll enact structural change that ends authorities giveaways to huge company polluters, manages public sources for all People, and invests in a regenerative economic system with good, clear jobs in fossil gas communities.

Amy Klobuchar: [I] help efforts to carry corporations accountable for his or her contributions to local weather change and campaigns to mislead the general public. [I have] signed the No Fossil Gasoline Cash Pledge and imagine we additionally want aggressive marketing campaign finance reform that takes on the political affect of particular pursuits just like the fossil gas trade.

Mike Bloomberg: Polluters needs to be accountable for cleansing up the harm they’ve accomplished. That’s why we’ve environmental guidelines and rules that embody civil and felony penalties. President Trump has slashed these guidelines to learn particular pursuits, and that places public well being and our surroundings in danger. I’ll reverse his rollbacks and strengthen guidelines, together with those who permit the Division of Justice to deliver civil and felony circumstances in opposition to violators of environmental and different legal guidelines.

We will even enhance how corporations measure and report local weather dangers and local weather impacts. Extra transparency permits buyers to make smarter choices, which inspires funding in corporations which are serving to to prepared the ground on local weather change – and it offers corporations info they should allocate sources in ways in which shield our planet and our economic system.