A podcast host and former national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign on Wednesday said the withdrawal of Sarah Bloom Raskin from the Federal Reserve shows the U.S. needs to “look much more holistically at ways to combat” climate change.
Briahna Joy Gray told Hill.TV that Raskin’s nomination represented “one of the battles to actually force financial institutions to be more conscious” of lending practices.
“This is one place that battle could have been fought,” Gray said.
Raskin on Tuesday withdrew her nomination as the Federal Reserve vice chair of supervision after Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announced they were opposed to her nomination.
Oil and gas companies had raised concerns about Raskin’s nomination over fears she might raise financial risks, while GOP lawmakers claimed Raskin would defund the industry.
Gray said Raskin’s nomination came at a difficult time, when gas prices have soared across the U.S. But Americans, including those from Manchin’s state, still care about climate change, she added.
“Just because you have these financial, personal economic concerns, doesn’t mean that the people who are most affected by climate change and most affected by the environmental effects of dirty fuel aren’t the very people who are mining it,” she said.
“It’s deeply frustrating that you have someone like Joe Manchin who is singularly focusing on the one prong of it that perhaps benefits him personally but [doesn’t help] the well-being in the long-term of his constituents,” she continued.
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