Sierra Club knocks DNC over dropped fossil fuel subsidies language

The Sierra Club, one of the country’s most prominent environmental groups, is pushing back against the Democratic National Committee for dropping language from its platform that would have called for eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. 

“We demand that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) immediately reinstate the language … calling for the end of tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuel companies,” the green group’s president and vice president said in a letter to DNC Chair Tom Perez.

“Instead of reassuring the American people that the Democratic Party is committed to putting public health over corporate polluters, the DNC has quietly endorsed [President] Trump’s recklessness,” they added. 

HuffPost had reported this week that party officials added an amendment to the platform in July saying that “Democrats support eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels, and will fight to defend and extend tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy.” 

However, that language does not appear in the final version of the party’s platform. 

A DNC spokesperson told The Hill that the amendment was incorrectly included in a group of provisions during the platform’s development.

The Biden and Sanders campaigns and the amendment’s submitters agreed to withdraw it, the spokesperson said. 

However, the amendment’s sponsor, John Laesch, pushed back on that assertion, telling Politico that he gave “no consent” to remove the approved language. 

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said he wants to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, and his campaign’s policy director, Stef Feldman, this week reaffirmed that support amid news that the party had nixed it from the platform.

.@JoeBiden continues to be committed to ending U.S. fossil fuel subsidies & then rallying the rest of the world to do the same—as was outlined in his climate plan last year. Here at home, he’ll use those dollars to instead invest in a clean energy future and create union jobs.

— Stef Feldman (@StefFeldman) August 19, 2020