"The Democratic National Committee voted over the weekend not to hold a climate debate. Actually, it’s worse than that: they voted not to allow candidates to participate in such a debate. The move signaled that the party leadership is not serious about the most urgent matter facing humanity, and is out of touch with its own grassroots base, which is open to left ideas and increasingly worried about the burning planet.

Bay Area journalist Christopher Cook described the scene at the DNC meeting in a report for 48 Hills, an independent local paper: while the leadership killed the debate and gave lip service to the issue, young activists chanted “We Can’t Wait” and “The Whole World Is Watching.”

The Sunrise Movement and other youth climate groups like US Youth Climate Strike had been pushing for the climate debate. The New Republic and other organizations had planned one earlier this summer, but don’t get me started on the ridiculous plutocratic, pearl-clutching imbroglio that sunk that event (actually, I wrote about it here on this website).

While tech money is important, the biggest donors to the DNC in the 2020 cycle are overwhelmingly financial companies, whether hedge funds, private equity, or more traditional investment management. Obviously, most of these firms want to be able to continue to invest in fossil fuels as well as in companies looting the Amazon. Such companies are run by — and depend on the continued existence of — the very rich, our planet’s biggest liability. (Not only do they create immense pollution through private jets and multiple homes, the rich also support such lifestyles through immensely planet-ravaging investments.) The finance class does not want to hear plain talk about solutions to climate change; in many cases, they are getting rich from destroying the planet and do not wish to stop doing this. That’s probably why DNC head Tom Perez called the idea of a climate debate “dangerous.”

The DNC also seems to be trying to avoid two likely outcomes of a climate debate: Joe Biden looking bad and Bernie Sanders looking good.

Besides being a centrist unable to seriously tackle this problem, Biden is an addled fool who can’t intellectually endure sustained questioning on any topic (please note that the DNC ruled out any single-issue debates), so it’s hard to imagine that a climate debate would go well for him."