Democratic National Committee “quietly” bans fossil fuel company contributions
June 25, 2018
Some good news for a change:
While it's not a huge change in how the money is currently distributed, it will have a cascading effect as Democratic politicians find it increasingly hard to accept fossil fuel contributions, and then be influenced by those donations. I think it will be even more important at the state and local level, where we'll be seeing most of the climate action for the time being.
And at some point the Ds will have the same control in Washington that they had for six months of Obama's first term, and this will give them more freedom to act.
The Democratic National Committee voted over the weekend to ban donations from fossil fuel companies, HuffPost has learned.
The resolution....bars the organization from accepting contributions from corporate political action committees tied to the oil, gas and coal industries....
“We talk about how climate change is real and climate change is a planetary emergency, what we need to do is stop taking money from the institutions that have created this crisis,” said RL Miller, president of the super PAC Climate Hawks Vote Political Action and a co-author of the resolution.
The DNC may consider a second resolution at a full board meeting in Chicago in August to ban contributions over $200 from individuals who work for the fossil fuel industry. Miller said the proposal ― which has not yet been submitted to the DNC ― will hopefully lead candidates to adopt similar policies....
The energy and natural resource sectors, including fossil fuel producers and mining firms, gave $2.6 million to the DNC in 2016, according to data collected by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That’s a pittance compared to the $56.1 million that came from the finance and real estate sectors, the DNC’s largest corporate donors that year. This year, the energy and natural resource sectors’ donations totaled $186,100 by the middle of May....
The coal mining industry gave 97 percent of its donations to Republicans in 2016 ― a figure that has dipped to 95 percent this year.
While it's not a huge change in how the money is currently distributed, it will have a cascading effect as Democratic politicians find it increasingly hard to accept fossil fuel contributions, and then be influenced by those donations. I think it will be even more important at the state and local level, where we'll be seeing most of the climate action for the time being.
And at some point the Ds will have the same control in Washington that they had for six months of Obama's first term, and this will give them more freedom to act.
