Can Earth win battle of ‘Planet vs. Plastics’?
Many of my colleagues and students know that my biggest political pet peeve is campaign financing. In the last 20 years especially, it requires tens of millions of dollars to run for Congress and far more money to seek the presidency. Though parts of the campaign finance reform measures were struck down by the Supreme Court years ago, America’s political party duopoly is raising more money than ever, including recent presidential fundraisers for President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Biden recently held a fundraiser at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall with former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. As significant as it was to have two past presidents and the current president all on stage together, it was especially notable about their record-breaking fundraising record: more than $25 million from a single event.
A week later, Trump held a Florida fundraiser shattering the Democrats’ record, as more than $50 million was raised with minimum $250,000 donations. It was held at billionaire investor John Paulson’s Palm Beach home.
Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee announced raising more than $65 million in March (with more than $93 million in cash on hand) while Biden and the Democratic National Committee raised more than $90 million (and $192 million in campaign funds).
In other words, both campaigns and political parties are out-fundraising their opponents and opposing parties. This is hardly surprising, but it should be concerning particularly for political watchdogs and public policy reformers. The Citizens United court decision struck down parts of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) and the Supreme Court justices ruled campaign donations constitutes free speech. Plus, monitoring donors and requiring further disclosure laws remain limited.
Campaign finance reform is a necessity in national politics because so many large-scale donors can seek influence with public officials. Most importantly, a variety of politically significant interest groups have successfully lobbied and donated to elected officials for their causes. Such organizations and politically connected donors can sway candidates and lawmakers.
Unfortunately, much of our national government’s politics and political parties have become a semioligarchy centered on a politically connected elite than Americans writlarge. Confronting our nation’s hyper-partisan politics requires addressing campaign finance reform as a priority.
As a former congressional staffer, I was fiercely supportive of campaign finance reform. Aside from writing about gift reform measures for my master’s degree thesis, I also purposely worked for lawmakers from both major parties who sponsored BCRA. Former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays (RConn.), representing Fairfield County’s Fourth Congressional District, was one of the primary sponsors of the House legislation known as the Shays-Meehan version of BCRA with U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.). The U.S. Senate version was named for sponsors U.S. Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).
Americans should hardly rely on the two major parties to address campaign finance reform since they’re clearly successful at fundraising against one another. Instead, we need to recognize that constituents and reform-oriented organizations must lead with overdue initiatives. It was this way more than two decades ago and so many lawmakers were pressed to sponsor and ultimately support campaign financing legislation because the public outcry and interest group pressure were so significant.
Now may not be the time to push for new reforms since Congress has proven increasingly unsuccessful working across the aisle as well as between their legislative chambers. But we need to remember this month’s record-breaking presidential fundraisers should be reason enough to advance campaign finance legislation in a future congressional session — hopefully sooner than later.
Jonathan L. Wharton, Ph.D., is associate professor of political science and urban affairs at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven.
April is Earth Month. And in just over a week — Monday April 22 — it will be Earth Day.
The first Earth Day celebration, conceived by U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, was April 22, 1970. For more than a half century this day — always April 22 — has served to heighten awareness of the need to protect our shared planet, and to protect ourselves, from much of our own human activity.
That year 1970 was a watershed one, marking the beginning of legislation designed to address growing concerns about the air we breathe and the water we drink.
Rachel Carson had called public attention to environmental issues eight years earlier in her book “Silent Spring.” The book, published in 1962, stimulated public discourse throughout the 1960s regarding the damaging effects of DDT and other chemicals to our waterways, wildlife, and human health. The Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit agency founded in 1967 and consisting largely of scientists, contributed to this discourse with scientific evidence that supported Carson’s narrative.
This growing awareness, coinciding with the civil rights, second wave feminist, and antiwar movements — and 1960s student activism — sparked a 1960s environmental movement that would translate into government action. In December 1970, President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop policies that would address damage to the environment, stimulate human health and welfare, and educate the public regarding ecological systems and natural resources.
The decade that followed saw the enactment of many effective measures — such as those reflected in the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts — to address the harmful environmental effects of human activity. Since then, there has been much meaningful environmental legislation.
But while older problems are being addressed, new issues come to the forefront.
This year’s Earth Day is intended to bringthe serious problem of plastic waste into public awareness. The theme — “Planet vs Plastics” — highlights that the world produces more than 400 million metric tons of plastic each year, with China responsible for 32 percent of this. The next biggest producers are the rest of Asia (19 percent) and North America (17 percent).
Only a tiny fraction of all the plastic ever produced has been recycled. Plastic waste is polluting our planet everywhere. From oceans to forests, no place is free from this pollutant. It’s harming wildlife, destroying ecosystems, and impacting our health. Some of these plastics do not decompose for 500 years. The goal is a 60 percent reduction in plastic by 2040. If no change is made, the projection is a near tripling of plastic waste production to 1 billion metric tons a year by 2060.
A frightening thought. Also frightening is the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which poses a threat to our planet and all life on it. In less than 200 years, our human activity has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 50 percent, with the resulting global warming and climate change we now experience.
The 2023 Climate Action Summit calls upon the world to commit to doubling energy efficiency with clean energy for all by 2030. Fossil fuels must be phased out to achieve the overall goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, which is to keep the increase over pre-industrial levels in the global average temperature well below 2 degrees centigrade. However, efforts should be made to limit that increase to below 1.5 degrees centigrade. To meet that goal, the world will need a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
“Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty,” Gaylord Nelson said as he promoted his idea for that first day dedicated to Earth. “The objective is an environment of decency, quality, and mutual respect for all other human beings and all living creatures.”
On Earth Day 2024, as we consider the existential threat posed by plastic waste and global warming, we might also consider the environmental disaster and unimaginable suffering faced by millions of people — including millions of children — who are being displaced in wartorn lands such as Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Gaza.
Now, 54 years later, we see how far away we are from realizing Nelson’s original Earth Day hope.
Americans should hardly rely on the two major parties to address campaign finance reform since they’re clearly successful at fundraising against one another
Alma Rutgers served in Greenwich town government for 30 years.