By Ian Lenahan

Granite State News Collaborative

DURHAM — Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, lashed out Friday at President Donald Trump, saying his potential reelection would “be the equivalent of a death sentence for the planet.”

Speaking to University of New Hampshire students, Markey made the case for Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, stating he would be "the boldest climate fighter in the history of the White House.”

“He has made a commitment to a $2 trillion climate program that will employ wind, solar, all electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids and battery storage technologies at an unprecedentedly fast rate and it will create millions of jobs for our country,” he said.

Markey gathered with students outside Durham’s Freedom Cafe just days before the general election on Tuesday. 

“Donald Trump keeps calling climate change ‘a Chinese hoax,’” he said. “Joe Biden says it’s the greatest job creation opportunity.”

He added, “No. Climate change is not a hoax. Climate change is an existential threat to the planet.”

Liza Riehs, a junior environmental conservation and sustainability major at UNH, told those in attendance Friday that, as a high school senior, a former teacher provided his class with a wakeup call on the future of the Earth.

“I did not care until my eyes were forced open with the realities of what is happening every day and every second. My teacher spoke calmly about the terrifying reality of our changing climate and I sat there stunned,” she said.

Continuing, she said, “He told us that if drastic measures were not taken and not taken soon, we would all have a limited time to call this Earth our home.”

Markey, chair of the Senate Climate Change Task Force, has received widespread publicity for his introduction, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, of the Green New Deal, a legislative package proposal aiming to address climate change and create job growth for the nation’s economy.

However, Trump has criticized the Green New Deal proposal on numerous occasions throughout his presidency. In July 2019, in a speech at the White House, he said, “"It'll kill millions of jobs. It'll crush the dreams of the poorest Americans and disproportionately harm minority communities. I will not stand for it.”

On Friday, Markey said Trump’s appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to fill the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s vacated Supreme Court seat is a threat to overturning Roe v. Wade, as well as the Affordable Care Act.

“And I think that’s why women are responding so strongly in their organization and voting patterns over the last few weeks, and we just have to keep it going right up until the end because Donald Trump is the most anti-woman president we’ve ever had in the history of our country,” he said.

Markey said complacency cannot be tolerated in the days before the election, saying strong voter turnout is needed for Biden to prevail. 

“Only the paranoid survive. You have to work, you have to act, you have to take every single minute as your opportunity to match this historic moment,” he said.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.