On Sunday Democratic Party chair Tom Perez brushed off the idea of a debate focused on the climate crisis as “just not practical,” showing just how beholden the party is to the suicide-cult factions of both labor and capital.

The Youth Climate Strike and other environmental groups — along with Washington State governor and Democratic presidential primary contender Jay Inslee — have been pushing for a climate debate, and numerous Democratic candidates have agreed to participate. But last week the Democratic National Committee not only refused to organize one, but in an extraordinary bit of authoritarianism, decreed that any candidates who participated in one would be barred from the official DNC debates.

Contra Perez, what’s wildly impractical is ignoring a problem that could determine whether hundreds of millions of people and our civilizations live or die. Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf has called the Democrats “soft climate denialists,” distinguishing them from the Republicans, who deny the science, while the Democrats acknowledge the science but deny the need to solve the problem. Wolf’s is a useful formulation. But perhaps he doesn’t go far enough. While the Republicans might be more like Jonestown — a 1970s cult, 909 of whose members committed suicide in a single day — the establishment Democrats more closely resemble Heaven’s Gate, a 1990s suicide cult whose members are believed to have perished in three groups over the course of three days.