On Monday, Senator Marco Rubio (R--FL) officially entered the 2016 presidential race joining a number of other climate change deniers campaigning to run our country with their heads stuck in the tar sand.
Recently Rubio stated, "I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it... and I do not believe that the laws that they propose to pass will do anything about it."
However, back in 2007, when Rubio was the fresh-faced Speaker in the Florida House of Representatives, he acknowledged global warming as a reason to pursue "bold energy policies" so that Florida becomes an "international model for energy efficiency." But he has reversed course in the past eight years even as reports name Florida as one of the states most vulnerable to damage from rising sea levels.
Other presidential hopefuls like Jeb Bush and Senator Ted Cruz have thrown out coal-fired lies like Cruz's comment on Late Night with Seth Meyers just last month, when he said he saw snow in New Hampshire, therefore, the Earth is doing fine. And Bush has said global warming is "not a certainty" when in fact there exists scientific consensus around man-made climate change.
All these truth-softening candidates only further remind the American people that politicians are willing to do and say anything if the price is right.
The Koch brothers, who plan on spending about $900 million on next year's campaign, have given nearly $80 million to climate change denial groups since 1997 -- and Politico reported back in January that Rubio was the favorite choice at the Koch-run donor conference accessing presidential candidates. You can guess why. The big question is: How can we take any candidate seriously when it appears that they put the interests of their donors ahead of voters?
Ever since the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling five years ago, which allowed special interest groups to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence federal elections, billionaires and large corporations have been doling out millions of dollars to do so. The influx of big money in politics has distorted Washington's ability to represent the people's interests over corporate interests.
The only way to set the record straight is to stamp big money out of politics -- and that's what we're doing at Stamp Stampede. We are legally rubber-stamping messages like "Not to be Used for Buying Elections" onto dollar bills and creating a mass visual protest to stop moneyed influences in politics, literally on money -- the very item that is at the root of all this corruption. I call it monetary jiu-jitsu.
Over 30,000 stampers and millions of activists all over this country are fighting to change how political campaigns are funded in this country. Until our representatives are free from the grips of big money, our government will not adequately address the climate crisis. We will continue to have dirty energy companies propping up climate deniers in Congress and the White House, who relentlessly support climate in-action while lining their pockets with profits from big oil.