Sanders: ‘The future of our planet is at stake' in 2020 election

Former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders urged his supporters Monday to vote for nominee Joe Biden, imploring that the "future of our planet is at stake" and that the "price of failure" for not electing Biden would be "just too great to imagine."

"The future of our democracy is at stake. The future of our economy is at stake. The future of our planet is at stake," Sanders said on opening night of the Democratic National Convention. "We must come together, defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our next president and vice president. My friends, the price of failure is just too great to imagine."

Sanders called the 2020 election the most important in the modern history of the U.S.

"We need an unprecedented response, a movement, like never before of people who are prepared to stand up and fight for democracy and decency," said Sanders, a democratic-socialist who finished second in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. 

"Our campaign ended several months ago but our movement continues and is getting stronger every day. Many of the ideas we fought for, that just a few years ago were considered radical are now mainstream but let us be clear, if Donald Trump is re-elected, all the progress we have made will be in jeopardy," he also.

Sanders named areas where Biden has moved the progressive agenda forward, such as raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, making it easier for workers to join unions," creating 12 weeks of paid family leave and funding universal pre-K for 3 and 4-year olds.

"Joe will rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and fight the threat of climate change by transitioning us to 100 percent clean electricity over the next 15 years. These initiatives will create millions of good paying jobs all across the country," Sanders said.

"We are the only industrialized nation not to guarantee health care for all people. While Joe and I disagree on the best path to get to universal coverage, he has a plan that will greatly expand health care and cut the cost of prescription drugs. Further, he will lower the eligibility age of Medicare from 65 to 60," added Sanders, who worked with Biden on his final campaign platform.

Sanders also said Biden would "help reform our broken criminal justice system" and that "Joe will end private prisons and detention centers, cash bail, and the school to prison pipeline."