Presidential Candidate Lawrence Lessig on Climate Change and Campaign Finance

Lawrence Lessig announced his bid to run for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party on September 9. He has one goal, to get money out of politics. This is a laudable ambition because as long as fossil fuel industry is able to buy Republican politicians, Congress will not act on climate change.

Lessig is a Harvard Law School professor who taught international law at the University of Chicago before focusing his attentions on cyberlaw and, more recently campaign finance.


Lessig’s core message is that politics in America today is broken and in desperate need of reform. He says that the power of money in politics precludes sensible policy fixes on important issues like climate change and energy.

Lessig argues that you cannot fix America’s broken political system unless you deal with campaign finance.

“Everybody knows the system is broken,” he told CNNMoney. “Until we solve this problem, we won’t be able to address any of those other problems.”

When it comes to campaign finance, too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few people. As he explains, 400 American families have given half of the 2016 political donations so far.

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See the climate positions of the other Democratic presidential candidates: Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton,  Lincoln Chaffee and Jim Webb.