Jeanette Robinson and Charlie Garlow

Jeanette Robinson, of Wilmington, is a retired teacher, longtime environmental advocate and member of American Promise Delaware. Charlie Garlow, of Rehoboth, is a retired environmental enforcement attorney, and member of Mid-Atlantic Solar Energy Society and American Promise Delaware.

President Trump is right that we are facing a national emergency, but it has nothing to do with immigrants crossing our southern border. Our country’s real emergency is climate change resulting from the burning of fossil fuels and our failure to take the bold steps necessary to mitigate it.

Climate change, and our country’s failure to address it effectively, could serve as the poster child for what has gone wrong in our representative democracy over the past several decades, and especially since 2010. That was the year when the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that Congress could not restrict the “free speech” rights of for-profit and non-profit corporations and labor unions by limiting how much they spend on electioneering communications during our elections.

This ruling opened the floodgates to special interest “dark money” in our elections, filling our airwaves, mailboxes, and social media with negative, often misleading or downright false claims about candidates who pose a threat to their corporate or union interests. These smear campaigns have contributed to the steep rise in partisan incivility and are tearing apart the very fabric of our society.

Moreover, with the money stakes so high, our legislators are spending half of their time dialing for dollars, rather than working for their constituents.

Most concerning, however, is the influence of “Big Money” donors on the legislative process. Instead of working for the common good, our elected representatives are beholden to the donor class.

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More than 40 years ago, climate scientists reported to the Department of Energy that carbon dioxide emissions raise temperatures of air and oceans. They estimated that by the year 2035 greenhouse gas emissions would double, causing an increase in temperature of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius.

They predicted that “dust bowl conditions would threaten large areas of North America, Asia, and Africa; loss of access to drinking water and agricultural production could cause massive migrations… Even a minimal warming could lead to rapid melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet [which contains] enough water to raise the level of oceans 16 feet.”

This ice sheet is now melting at an increasingly rapid rate.

Consistent with predictions of stronger, wetter storms due to warmer oceans, Hurricane Florence devastated wide regions of North and South Carolina in September, and Hurricane Michael destroyed Mexico Beach, FL and caused widespread destruction across Florida’s panhandle in October.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its most recent report on October 7, less than a month after Florence, and just days before Michael. The report issued a dire warning that aggressive action is required if we are to stave off the worst consequences of climate change.

In November, as California battled the deadliest, most destructive, and costliest fire in its history, the US government released its Fourth National Climate Assessment. It warns that the US and the world face an apocalyptic state of total chaos by the end of this century, with mass deaths, global food shortages, crumbling infrastructure, and economic devastation resulting from extreme weather events and sea level rise.

So why are we still so dependent on fossil fuels for our energy? Because large corporations’ first priority is to maintain and increase profits.

Fossil fuel industries and their wealthy shareholders have poured well over a billion dollars into our elections and in lobbying legislators. Instead of putting a price on carbon pollution, which economists say is the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or doing everything possible to expand renewable energy sources and fund de-carbonization technology, we are seeing enormous tax cuts for the fossil fuel industries, deregulation of carbon emissions, a push to bring back coal, and efforts to discourage solar and wind energy development.

None of these are in the best interests of our citizens.

We can and must mitigate the disastrous consequences of burning fossil fuels. To do so, we must first fix our democracy by freeing it from the grip of Big Money.

That is why we are working to inspire, organize, and empower Americans to win the cause of our time: the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution. This amendment would correct the Supreme Court’s mistaken determination that the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections nationwide is a necessary component of free speech, rather than what it is: a major lever of influence for the already powerful.

By passing the 28th Amendment, we the people — of all political persuasions — can put the rights of individual citizens and the interests of the nation before the privileges of concentrated money, corporations, unions, political parties, and super PACs.

It is time to renew our national covenant of human liberty, equal citizenship, and responsible self-government.