Progressive Veterans Running For Congress Using Lots Of Fossil Fuels To Say Fossil Fuels Are Bad

If you go to the doctor and he/she tells you to quit smoking and lose some weight, and the doc smells like smoke and could clearly lose a few pounds, do you plan on listening?

Progressive veterans frame climate change as national security issue

Self-described “ass-kicking, motorcycle-riding, Texas Democrat” MJ Hegar, a candidate for Texas’ deep-red 31st District, has a novel approach to environmental politics: she doesn’t care if her supporters believe in man-made climate change, but says it’s hard to deny the corrupting effects of petroleum dependence on American foreign policy.

“Our dependence on foreign oil is just so damaging to our country on so many levels,” Hegar told ABC News in a June interview. “I respect other people’s freedom to be discerning and to make their own decisions. But they can’t deny that the U.S. military pays the price for our dependence on foreign oil – that our diplomacy and foreign policy is complicated by our dependence.”

Hegar is one of a number of progressive veterans running for Congress who have made climate change action a key part of their platforms.

“I don’t think another country, or another entity, like OPEC, should be able to have such an impact on our economy,” she said.

OK, so, then let us drill on our own soil, person who uses lots of fossil fuels for her motorcycle, and lots traveling around campaigning. Anyhow, she cares so much that there’s nothing on her issues page at her campaign website (which needs to reduce the number of scripts used).

Maura Sullivan, a former U.S. Marine officer in the Iraq War and Department of Veterans Affairs official in the Obama administration, is the Democratic candidate for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District. Sullivan describes her growing worry over numerous environmental threats to national security, from displaced refugees in developing countries, to rising sea levels that could damage billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment.

“We face the potential for water shortage and famine — something we’ve seen the United States military respond to around the globe,” she told ABC News. “Our ability to respond to these crises is also significantly impaired by the threat of climate change itself. We’ve got billions of dollars of coastal assets, bases, that rising sea levels threaten.”

We saw this happen all the way back in the 1930’s. Did fossil fuels cause that? She does have a short blurb on ‘climate change’ and makes the unscientific link between clean air and water to ‘climate change.’ She also wants to institute Single Payer and make it much more difficult for law abiding gun owners.

Like Hegar, Sullivan saw the devastating effects of oil dependency firsthand during her time in the military — in particular, while serving as an operations and logistics officer in Iraq. She pointed out that over 3,000 American service members were killed in fuel supply convoys between 2003 and 2007 in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“A part of that is just purely caused by a dependence on oil. And, if we had a stored a replenishable energy source … there would simply be need for fewer convoys, and that saves thousands of American lives,” Sullivan said.

I don’t think tanks, Humvees, Bradleys, etc and so on will run on sunlight and unicorn farts. Or, is she claiming that these were wars for oil?

In Wisconsin, Randy “Ironstache” Bryce is the candidate vying for House Speaker Paul Ryan’s old seat in the 1st Congressional District. If he wins, he would flip the southeastern district blue after two decades of conservative control. He faces Bryan Steil, an attorney and former staffer for Ryan, whose website does not include any mention of climate change.

Bryce is among the most vocal candidates in 2018 on the urgency of climate action — he has built his campaign around a “Green New Deal” plan for environmentally sustainable jobs that pay a living wage. An army veteran, he told ABC News his time in the military convinced him that the threat of climate change extends beyond extreme weather and rising temperatures.

“As a result of being dependent on fossil fuels … we send troops to protect resources like oil,” Bryce said, citing the Iraq war as an example of why the U.S. must invest in independent, renewable energy sources.

Where were his complaints when Obama instigated military action to make sure the oil kept flowing from Libya to France and Britain?

Interestingly, none of these candidates mention that they’ve given up their own use of fossil fuels. Weird, that.