January, 28 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Vote Climate U.S. PAC's Updated 2020 Presidential Voter's Guide
Voters must choose highest climate calculation.
WASHINGTON
With less than one week to go before the Iowa Caucuses in the monumental 2020 elections, and unprecedented action needed to slow climate change, Vote Climate U.S. PAC is releasing our updated, national, 2020 Presidential Voter's Guide
Vote Climate U.S. PAC's Voter's Guide is a tool to help voters make climate change a top, priority. As Americans head to the voting booth in the presidential primaries, the Center for Climate Change Communication's poll says that 71% of Americans want the federal government to do more to address climate change.
Karyn Strickler, President of Vote Climate U.S. PAC said, "Climate change is an existential threat to humanity and our way of life. The first step to slow climate change is to elect the candidate who has the most ambitious plan to get off fossil fuels and put a fee on carbon. It's up to voters to choose the candidate with the highest climate calculation in 2020, perhaps one of our last chances to prioritize climate change in the voting booth. Our Voter's Guide makes it easy for every American to vote climate."
Our unique Voter's Guide assesses every Democrat and Republican running for president. It goes well beyond a normal score card to include not only position, but also leadership, putting a fee on carbon and candidate's climate plan (endorses the Green New Deal, supports carbon dioxide removal, advocates 100% renewable energy by 2030, and keeps fossil fuels in the ground.) Our climate calculations show separation between frontrunners in the Democratic primary.
"The difference between Democratic frontrunners for president on climate change in our Voter's Guide is significant. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer are tied for the highest score, each with an overall climate calculation of 93.75. By contrast Joe Biden's climate calculation is 81.25. With our timeline so short and the climate emergency we face, the difference between a 93.75 and an 81.25 could be the difference between a livable planet and not, when you're electing a U.S. President. Those scores compare to Republican incumbent Donald Trump who is a climate zero," said Karyn Strickler, President of Vote Climate U.S. PAC.
The higher climate calculations for Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders comes partially from Joe Biden's failure to advocate for action on climate change as a top priority issue and to advocate for 100% renewable energy by 2030. In his climate plan Biden calls for a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by no later than 2050. Senators Sanders and Warren have both committed to 100% renewable energy by 2030.
Vote Climate U.S. PAC's voters guide is accessible and simple to use. Go to our Voter's Guide page, where you can find our climate calculations. Take them into the voting booth and choose the candidate with the highest score. Click the green + button for more details on each candidate. Our Voter's Guide scoring criteria explains how our climate calculations were developed.
Vote Climate U.S. PAC is doing the research now and will rate all U.S. House and U.S. Senate incumbents and challengers, giving climate calculations to each, as we did in 2018. We will also add a "Climate Rankings" page, where we look at the big picture of American politics and climate change, by analyzing our research data for party and regional differences. It will include a national, best-to-worst listing and climate heroes and zeroes.
Slowing climate change will depend upon what we do. We encourage voters to join us in making 2020 a climate-action election.
Vote Climate U.S. PAC works to elect candidates to get off fossil fuels, transition to clean, renewable, energy and reduce carbon pollution by putting a fee on carbon, in order to slow climate change and related weather extremes.
LATEST NEWS
'This Is Piracy': Israel Condemned for Seizure of Gaza-Bound Flotilla Near Greece
"How on Earth," asked the UN's top Palestine expert, "is possible that Israel is allowed to assault and seize vessels in international waters just off Greece/Europe?"
Apr 30, 2026
Palestine defenders on Thursday condemned Israeli forces' raidb of the latest Global Sumud Flotilla—which was sailing off the Greek coast while attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza—and the arrest of more than 200 of its participants, with some prominent critics calling the seizure an act of piracy.
Greenpeace International—whose MY Arctic Sunrise is the flotilla's most prominent ship—said that the maritime convoy's 58 vessels were "boarded and harassed by Israeli forces in international waters 45 nautical miles west of the Greek island Kythira and 600 nautical miles from Gaza."
Flotilla organizers said on X: “Our boats were approached by military speedboats, self-identified as ‘Israel’, pointing lasers and semi-automatic weapons ordering participants to the front of the boats and to get on their hands and knees. The boat communications are being jammed and an SOS was issued."
The organizers said 211 flotilla participants were seized by Israeli forces. Flotilla activist Yasmine Scola said members were "kidnapped."
Global Sumud France spokesperson Helene Coron said that 10 French nationals, including communist Paris City Council Member Raphaelle Primet, were seized.
"We don't have the information for the other nationalities, but the boats were mixed in terms of nationality, so there were crew members from all 48 delegations," Coron added.
Israel's Foreign Ministry said that "approximately 175 activists from more than 20 boats... are now making their way peacefully to Israel."
Responding to Israel's interception, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said on social media that his country's government "is either complicit or incapable of defending our seas from Israel."
"So much for freedom of navigation and international law," he added.
Independent British Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn said of the flotilla members: "They were not intercepted. They were abducted in international waters. This is piracy—and is a flagrant violation of international law."
Another British lawmaker, Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, wrote on X that "last night, Israel's navy committed an act of armed piracy in international waters, threatening unarmed civilians aboard."
"Our government must condemn this attack, extend diplomatic protection to British participants, and work to ensure safe passage," she added.
The migrant search and rescue group SOS Mediterranee France said on X that "attacking or threatening" Global Sumud Flotilla vessels "in international waters constitutes a violation of maritime law."
"Furthermore, the Geneva Conventions are clear: Any person engaged in a humanitarian mission must be protected. Solidarity is not a crime, Preventing aid, however, is," the group added.
In the United States, Council on American-Islamic Relations executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement that “Congress must demand that the Israeli apartheid government immediately release the American citizens and other humanitarian activists it kidnapped in international waters in a blatant violation of international law."
"Our nation would not tolerate, much less fund, the kidnapping of American citizens in international waters off the coast of Greece by any other state," Awad added. "It is long past time for the out-of-control Netanyahu regime to face consequences of its crimes, including American citizens.”
The United States supports Israel with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid, and diplomatic cover including repeated vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions for Gaza.
Last year, dozens of boats carrying hundreds of activists from over 40 nations took part in the last Global Sumud Flotilla—sumud means “perseverance” in Arabic—as it attempted to break Israel’s naval blockade and deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid including food, medicines, and baby formula to starving Gazans amid a growing famine.
Israeli forces intercepted and seized the flotilla vessels in international waters in early October, arresting all aboard the boats and temporarily jailing them in Israel.
In 2010, Israeli forces raided one of the first convoys carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea. The attackers killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
Members of past Gaza flotillas have reported abuse at the hands of their Israeli captors, although they have urged the world to focus not on them, but rather the people of Gaza, who have endured nearly 31 months of genocidal war and siege.
More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, including thousands who are still missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Most victims are civilians. Around 2 million other Gazans have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Israel—whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—is facing an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The Israeli government continues to blockade Gaza by land and sea, strictly limiting the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged coastal strip.
“We renew our call on world leaders to take concrete and immediate action in the face of the genocide being inflicted by Israel on the people of Gaza," Pujarini Sen, project lead aboard the Arctic Sunrise, said Thursday. "The international community’s ongoing failure to enforce international law leaves it culpable for Israel’s actions."
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'Only the Beginning': Santa Marta Summit Heralded as New Dawn in Fight to End Fossil Fuel Era
“Amid a tense geopolitical context and worsening climate extremes, Santa Marta helped spark a feeling of renewed energy, but delegates must now follow through to deliver action, not just words," said a senior climate adviser at Greenpeace.
Apr 30, 2026
Environmental activists are hopeful after a six-day climate summit in Colombia resulted in a coalition of more than 50 countries agreeing to start developing plans to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels. But they say action must now follow talk.
In marked contrast to the annual United Nations climate summits, which have been routinely overrun by oil and gas industry lobbyists and concluded with agreements that largely ignore the imperative to divest from fossil fuels, Shiva Gounden, the head of Greenpeace's delegation this week in Santa Marta, said the conference that concluded Wednesday "was a breath of fresh air, a real sign that the wind is finally shifting."
The 59 nations that attended the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels did not ultimately end with a binding agreement to transition away from fossil fuels within a specific timeframe, which activists say is urgently necessary as global heating rapidly approaches 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
Many of the world's biggest polluters—including the United States, China, and India, as well as petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—were also absent.
However, the summit did end with attendees, nearly half of whom are fossil fuel producers and who represent more than half of global gross domestic product, agreeing to form tangible "frameworks" for how they plan to transition away from a fossil-fueled model of capitalism that Colombian President Gustavo Petro decried as "suicidal."
Perhaps the single biggest breakthrough at the conference was France's unveiling of a national roadmap to phase out fossil fuels in the coming decades. It became the first developed nation to lay out such a plan, with the goals of removing coal from its national grid by 2027, phasing out oil by 2045, and fossil gas by 2050.
The French climate envoy, Benoit Faraco, described it not only as an obligation but an opportunity: “This process has made us realise we want to be an electro-superpower,” he said, according to The Guardian. “We want to be the electricity Saudi Arabia of Europe, selling green electrons to the UK, Ireland, Germany, and other countries.”
Many attendees also agreed that any collective movement away from fossil fuels would require addressing the debt crisis in the Global South, which many countries—especially those in Africa, where national debts have doubled in the past five years—have found themselves cranking up fossil fuel production to cope with.
While the conference concluded without any binding plan for debt forgiveness, which many delegates from developing countries had proposed, the participants agreed that poorer countries would need support to move out of debt and finance a green transition.
"Fossil fuel dependency deepens economic instability, fuels conflict, and traps countries in cycles of debt," said Bronwen Tucker, public finance lead for Oil Change International. "As long as Global South countries remain locked in this system, while Global North governments write the financial rules, public resources will continue to flow away from people and toward the systems driving crisis."
Laura Caicedo, the campaigns coordinator at Greenpeace Colombia, described the conference as "an important space to put the just energy transition on the agenda ahead of the Climate COP," which will take place in Turkey this coming November.
"There is willingness and a sense of fresh momentum that is worth celebrating," she said. "But this is only the beginning: more time is needed for this process to mature into a true platform for dialogue that can inform decision-making in this and other cooperation spaces on key energy issues."
The next conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels is set to occur early next year in Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation that is at risk of becoming uninhabitable within decades due to sea-level rise.
While climate activists were heartened by the progress made in Santa Marta, Gounden said countries need to come to Tuvalu with concrete plans.
“When we get to Tuvalu, the conversation has to change," she said. "We can’t just bring more ambition; we have to bring proof of implementation."
This week's conference took place against the backdrop of the US and Israel's war in Iran, where US President Donald Trump has suggested a key goal is to "take the oil" controlled by Iran. The obstruction of oil shipments has become a critical piece of strategic and economic leverage and simultaneously inflicted chaos upon the global economy, disrupting humanitarian aid for some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.
"Amid a tense geopolitical context and worsening climate extremes," said Rodrigo Estrada, Greenpeace International's senior climate adviser, "Santa Marta helped spark a feeling of renewed energy, but delegates must now follow through to deliver action, not just words."
While the war has sent energy companies' profits soaring, the climate advocacy group 350.org estimated this week that the continued blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could cost households and businesses an additional $600 billion to $1 trillion.
"It’s never been clearer that fossil fuel phase-out is imperative for stability and peace," Tucker said. "Every step away from fossil fuels weakens the outsized power and wealth that allows the US to wage illegal wars in the name of energy dominance."
At the next conference, she added, "The richest polluting countries must show they are serious. Canada, Norway, the UK, and the EU must make real plans to accelerate their fossil fuel phaseout at home and come to the table with real economic collaboration."
Mariana Paoli, the climate policy lead for Oxfam, said the lack of action by rich countries was "disappointing" and needed to change.
"Wealthy governments have still not stepped up to provide sufficient climate financing for poorer countries, which face the brunt of the impacts of the climate crisis," she said. "Rich countries hold the historical responsibility for the climate crisis, therefore they must not only move first and faster but also provide finance at scale for others to follow them."
"A just transition," she said, "must make rich polluters pay for the crisis they have caused."
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US Falls to Lowest-Ever Rank on Press Freedom Index as Trump Pours 'Gasoline on the Fire'
"Trump and his administration have carried out a coordinated war on press freedom since the day he took office, and we will live with the consequences for years to come."
Apr 30, 2026
Reporters Without Borders warned Thursday that the United States is facing a "press freedom crisis" as President Donald Trump and his subordinates wage an aggressive assault on the media that has included threats of treason charges and imprisonment against journalists.
The Trump administration's active disdain for press freedom has pushed the US to its lowest-ever rank on Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, which ranks countries based on numerous indicators including legal protections for journalists, reporter safety, and overall political hostility toward the press. The US landed at 64th out of 180 countries on the latest version of the index, falling seven spots compared to last year.
"The US has experienced a steady decline in the RSF Index over the past decade, but President Trump is pouring gasoline on the fire," said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF's North America section. "Trump and his administration have carried out a coordinated war on press freedom since the day he took office, and we will live with the consequences for years to come."
"The index shows that this decline is measurable and ongoing, but preventable," Weimers added. "Our message is clear: Protect legal rights, ensure accountability for attacks on media professionals, and support independent media to restore American press freedom."
RSF specifically cites Trump's efforts to dismantle public broadcasters, weaponization of government agencies to punish media outlets and figures critical of his administration, and lawsuits against "disfavored outlets" as factors contributing to the erosion of press freedom in the US.
The index also points to rising violence against journalists during Trump's second term in the White House. "According to the US Press Freedom Tracker," RSF notes, "there were more than 170 attacks on journalists in 2025, nearly double the previous year, driven by an increase in violence against journalists while covering protests and law enforcement activity."
The precipitous decline of press freedoms in the US comes in the context of growing attacks on and criminalization of journalism worldwide. For the first time in the 25-year history of RSF's index, more than half of the world's countries currently fall in the "difficult" or "very serious" categories for press freedoms.
The country that ranked last on the index for 2026 was Eritrea, a nation that is "sadly notorious for detaining journalists longer than any other country in the world," said RSF.
Norway ranked first on this year's index, with RSF praising the country's "robust" legal safeguards for press freedom, "vibrant" media market, and "extensive editorial independence" for publishing companies.
Anne Bocandé, RSF's editorial director, said that "current protection mechanisms" for journalism worldwide "are not strong enough" to withstand escalating attacks by "authoritarian states, complicit or incompetent political powers, predatory economic actors, and underregulated online platforms."
"How much longer will we tolerate the suffocation of journalism, the systematic obstruction of reporters and the continued erosion of press freedom?" Bocandé asked. "The ball is in the court of democracies and their citizens. It is up to them to stand in the way of those who seek to silence the press. The spread of authoritarianism isn’t inevitable."
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