Green activist urges Clinton to ‘get serious’ on climate

Star environmental activist Bill McKibben is telling presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that if she wants their support, she’ll have to confront environmentalists’ deep distrust of her.

“Mother Nature may not have a super PAC, but she has her own ways of focusing attention,” McKibben wrote Friday in an article published on Grist, in which he implored the Democrat to “get serious” about climate change in her campaign.

{mosads}McKibben, the founder of 350.org, said Clinton’s statements thus far on climate change have been “correct but eye-glazing” and make it look like she’s not committed to the issue.

Many greens are likely to support Clinton because she is the front-runner, but they won’t support her enthusiastically, he said.

McKibben’s criticisms of Clinton focus mainly on her time as secretary of State, but include what she has done since then.

He said she was “terrible” on Keystone XL because she said once the Obama administration was “inclined” to approve it, but she has been silent on it since then.

She has failed to make climate change a top issue, promoted hydraulic fracturing, participated in the failed 2009 Copenhagen climate pact talks and has taken speaking fees from unsavory groups and companies, he said.

But if she comes out against Keystone, fossil fuels and fracking while pushing for renewable energy and foreign climate aid, while criticizing predictions of economic harm from fighting climate change, McKibben said, Clinton could get much stronger support from environmentalists.

Many of McKibben’s points reflect what many in the environmental movement have said about Clinton, particularly her positions on Keystone and fracking.

McKibben himself publicly supports Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) bid for the Democratic nomination, having said he is “overjoyed” that Sanders is running.