The Council’s Achievements and Wins

National Listening Tour and Town Halls

The Council’s ongoing listening tour and roundtables include over 50 physical and virtual events, reaching out to and engaging with Democratic environmental justice and climate activists and leaders from across the United States and abroad. With over 300,000 participants to date, we are building the environmental vote and amplifying the voices and concerns of climate voters.

State-Level Environmental Caucuses

The Council is working to ensure that all 57 states and territories have a Democratic Party Environmental Caucus, and to link those organizations in order to ensure the Democratic Party takes bold action on climate and the environment. With over 2 dozen caucuses already established, we are celebrating new democratic environmental organizations in Iowa, DC, and the High School Democrats of America.

Policy Agenda

The Council developed a comprehensive policy agenda to address climate change, and then advocated across the climate activist and NGO community and within the DNC for the inclusion of that policy agenda into the 2020 Democratic Party Platform.

Over 180 organizations and more than 30,000 individuals endorsed the Council’s bold and transformative policy agenda.

Outreach and Engagement

The Council’s packed, informative newsletters, briefing memos, and vibrant social media presence share the historic environmental achievements of the Biden-Harris Administration, celebrate Democratic climate wins, share our calls to action and events, and underscore the importance of climate voters. 

The following changes, approved by the Democratic Party Platform Committee, were among those advocated for by the Climate Council: 

  • The U.S will do its “fair share” of greenhouse gas reductions to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

    • This significant amendment improves on the 2016 platform and the original 2020 Platform Draft in two ways: it firmly commits to 1.5 degrees C; and as important, it commits the U.S. to reduce its greenhouse gas pollution to fair share levels, taking into account both our capability to reduce and our responsibility for past and present emissions relative to other countries. 

  • Enable renters to participate in the Green Economy and reduce their energy costs by incentivizing landlords to make energy efficiency and clean energy upgrades.

  • Fight climate and science denialism through supporting environmental and climate literacy and reverse Trump’s roll-back on funding for the National Environmental Education Act. 

  • Require public companies to disclose climate risks and greenhouse gas emissions in their operations and supply chains, which would improve the nation’s financial stability and environmental resiliency. 

  • Invest in reducing pesticide and chemical fertilizer use, and ban the use of chlorpyrifos, a potent neurotoxin especially impacting children and agricultural workers. 

  • Commit Democrats to create pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship opportunities as a pathway to family-sustaining manufacturing jobs without requiring college attendance, which is important for equitable access to the new Green Economy jobs.

  • Uphold the importance of climate change as one of America’s main challenges by naming it as such in the Platform Preamble.

  • Ban new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters, and increase royalties for existing leases to account for climate costs. 

  • Invest in research and development to support Green Agriculture: climate-resilient, sustainable, low-carbon and organic farming.  

  • Note: An amendment to eliminate tax breaks and subsidies for the fossil fuel industry—a policy we feel is crucial, which is in our policy recommendations, and was in the platform as approved by the DNC Platform Committee—was omitted from the final platform version.