If disgruntled followers of Senator Bernie Sanders truly share their candidate's environmental priorities, they should shift their vote to Hillary Clinton this November. Not to support her--as some of them have vowed to do--would be tantamount to the proverbial "Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face."
One assumes that most of Sanders' loyal backers subscribe to the senator's following statement of principle. "This election is about climate change, the greatest environmental crisis facing our planet and the need to leave the world in a way that is healthy and habitable for our kids and future generations."
Sanders' perspective is shared by presidential nominee Clinton, as witness to her declaration that "climate change is one of the defining threats of our time". Moreover, she has proposed to do something about it, principally through a mandated carbon emissions strategy and a crash program to expand the use of clean, renewable energy.
Clinton is one of the two presidential candidates with a realistic chance of winning the election. The other, Republican Donald Trump, rejects the validity of the existential environmental threat to our civilization. Indeed, Trump pledges to rescind government policies aimed at curbing the adverse effects of climate change. That includes withdrawal from the international climate accord that President Obama helped negotiate earlier this year in Paris.
In response to his critics, Trump insists he "is for clean air and clean water." (What politician isn't?) In the next breath, he dismisses climate change as a gigantic hoax.
The stark contrast between the two major candidates creates a moral imperative for Sanders' people to switch their support to Clinton.
That makes it all the more incomprehensible to hear some of Sanders' followers claim they will shift to Trump. No matter that they still may be smarting at their candidate's primary defeat. Their conversion to Trump is equivalent to selecting Jesse James for sheriff if one can't vote for Wyatt Earp.
The same cognitive dissonance applies to those Sanders' backers who say they will vote for Green Party leader Jill Stein as an alternative to Clinton. Stein displays the same sense of urgency about climate change as do her democratic rivals. Indeed, she advocates declaration of a national emergency to expedite mitigation of climate change, with a target of achieving 100 percent reliance on renewable energy by 2030. But she has no chance of winning. For her followers -whether disaffected Sanders' disciples or not--who share her environmental concern, defection to Clinton is the logical move. Consider that whatever votes Stein's progressive agenda would attract would otherwise most likely go to Clinton in what is expected to be a close election.
Bottom line: if you accept the scientific consensus that climate change poses a monumental long-term threat, patriotism and good conscience dictate a vote for Hillary.