Michael Bloomberg Gave In to the Eco-Left

February 28, 2020

Entering the Democratic presidential primary, Michael Bloomberg believed that climate change would be one of his greatest strengths on the campaign trail. Bloomberg entered the race touting the millions of dollars he spent to help close hundreds of coal-fired power plants, and put thousands of Americans out of work, in an effort to transition to natural gas. But, for the eco-left, even that is not enough. As the New York Times reports:

But that transition, once considered a bragging right in the environmental world, has become a liability to his campaign at a moment when the only acceptable fossil fuel is no fossil fuel.

For the Democrat party, there is no reasoning or middle ground on this issue. Josh Fox, a filmmaker who won acclaim from the environmental left for his film Gasland in 2010, called out Bloomberg for not being radical enough. Fox tweeted, “You are not a climate fighter. Your embrace of gas makes to you a #climateDenier and a hypocrite.” Bloomberg gave in.

In a CNN town hall forum on Wednesday, Mr. Bloomberg somewhat walked back his comments, calling natural gas “not all that much better, but somewhat better” than coal. Climate activists said they remained unimpressed.

Bloomberg, recognizing once again that he was not being extreme enough for his party, has moved his policy even farther out to the left. Most recently, his spokesperson said that he “has already started working to move America completely off fossil fuels.”

Bloomberg’s submission to the eco-left regarding an issue he had worked on for decades proves that, for activists and the Democratic presidential candidates, this is all about politics. As Daniel Turner, executive director of Power The Future, recently wrote in a report regarding the Green New Deal, “…it is difficult to read as a set of genuine policy proposals; it is perhaps better described as a far-reaching, aspirational set of guideposts for a resurgent progressive force in American politics.”