Mayor Pete: 2020’s stealth climate candidate

for Pete’s sake Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, likes to imagine what America will look like in 2054, the year he’ll be 72, the same age as the current president.
His campaign is underpinned by the concern that young people today will likely be stuck with the problems created by older generations, especially climate change.
Midwestern sensibilities Two big floods hit South Bend in the past couple of years — floods that “should happen once in a lifetime, if that,” Buttigieg told me.
So when he thinks about climate change, he remembers a family on the porch of their flooded house in South Bend, the night before the first day of school.
So he prioritized “finding a cost-saving and environmentally-friendly solution to the stormwater problem,” said Therese Dorau, director of South Bend’s sustainability office.
He’s installed a couple of free electric vehicle chargers downtown and has spent millions on greener buildings, parks, trails.
“I think that anyone who uses the word ‘security’ in a 21st-century context had better be able to explain what they would be doing about climate change,” he said.
In previous presidential elections, Buttigieg might have had that issue all to himself.
“Unlike something like the Great Depression or World War II, this time we see it coming.
But the homegrown Indiana politician thinks that he can reach the Midwestern voters that coastal Democrats can’t.