Fossil fuel money is irreparably corrupting our politics, and to win on climate change, climate activists have to start caring as much about the pollution of our political system, as they care about the pollution of our skies. That’s why I spoke in Baltimore this past week at a MoveOn rally for
During the 2008 and 2010 election cycles the oil industry pumped nearly $50 million into Washington. To get a sense of just how appalling that is it’s helpful to try to visualize that money flowing into our political system like the oil that we saw gushing uncontrollably into the gulf of Mexico over the course of the summer. A powerful, relentless, destructive black jet of pollution. We need to have a reaction to that image, to that flow of money that is just visceral, just as emotional as our reactions to the image of that gusher in the gulf. And we need to summon all the energy and resource we can summon to plug that financial gusher as soon as possible. Because like the oil has been doing to the gulf, oil money is corrupting and killing our politics. If dirty oil is the enemy of healthy thriving ecosystems; oil money is the enemy of healthy thriving democratic systems. It’s absolutely toxic.

There is no better sign of just how detrimental, how destructive this money is to our politics than the fact that in the midst of one of the worst fossil fuel disaster in our history, during a summer with record heat, just months after the deadliest coal mine explosion on 30 years, that the United States Senate has effectively abandoned efforts to pass a comprehensive climate and clean energy bill. It’s an absolutely sickening state of affairs. As Bill McKibben recently wrote, we’ve got to get really mad, and then we’ve got to get to work making it right.

The time has come to plug that gusher once and for all; the time has come for an oil cleanup in Washington.
If we want to win the climate and clean energy fight, we don’t have a choice. To fight global warming we have to care just as much about stopping the pollution of our democratic process just as we care about the stopping the pollution of our air and our waters. We cannot pass the policies we need to clean up our skies and keep our beaches clean without also doing the work that’s needed to clean up our politics.

So keeping the image of that gusher in mind, we’ve got to commit ourselves to the work of the Great Washington Oil Cleanup. We’ve got to descend on DC like the hordes of cleanup workers that hit the beaches of the gulf. We’ve got to lay down booms around the capital building and the White House, we’ve got to go pluck our politicians out of the oil money they’ve been smothered in and give them a good scrub down so they can get back to the work of working for us! And we need every one of you to join the cleanup crew. It isn’t pretty work but we have got to tackle it immediately to save our democracy.