IOWA CITY, Iowa — Bernie Sanders took a veiled swipe at center-left rivals such as Joe Biden, warning that even if a Democrat were elected president this fall, climate change policy can’t return to what it was in the past.
“So if anyone tells you that, ‘Hey, we’ve got to beat Trump.’ Ok, but then we go back to where we were? Not good enough,” he said in Iowa City, Iowa, Sunday.
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Sanders, 78, was in Iowa City for a climate rally co-hosted by the Sunrise Movement. The youth-led coalition of environmental activists, who frequently protest Biden’s campaign events, this week announced it was endorsing the Vermont senator for the 2020 nomination.
On Sunday, Sanders told supporters that he, like the Sunrise Movement, understood the “fierce sense of urgency” regarding the issue of climate change, citing Australia’s wildfires as an example of what could unfold around the globe without decisive action.
“If you do not get our act together in a very bold and aggressive way, what you are seeing in Australia right now will be common for countries all over the world in the years and decades to come,” he said.
He added that he couldn’t fathom climate change deniers given the possibility that inaction could “lead eventually to the deaths of over a million people a year throughout the world.”
Sanders and Biden first clashed over their climate change proposals shortly before the former vice president, 77, released his plan last summer when reports emerged that his platform would occupy the “middle ground” between idealism and pragmatism.
“There is no middle ground,” Sanders said in June.
