Where Is Climate Change in the Trump v Clinton Presidential Debates?

By Oliver Milman, Guardian UK

19 October 16

 

While we rake over Clinton’s emails and Trump’s late-night tweets, climate has been the elephant in the room, leaving scientists and campaigners asking why there hasn’t been a single direct question about the crisis

limate change has been the elephant in the room during the past two US presidential debates. Ignoring this issue would be more understandable if this metaphorical pachyderm weren’t about to rampage through the lives of Americans, causing upheaval on a scale not seen since the start of human civilization.

“I’ve been shocked at the lack of questions on climate change. It really is fiddling while the world burns,” said Kerry Emanuel, a leading climate scientist. “This is the great issue of our time and we are skirting around it. I’m just baffled by it.”

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have yet to face a moderator question on climate change during two debates in which time was found to grill Clinton repeatedly over her use of emails and to ask Trump about a series of late-night tweets he sent about a former Miss Universe’s sex tape. Lester Holt, the moderator of the first debate, was reportedly set to ask a climate question but ran out of time.

Wednesday’s final debate is set to retread the same ground, with the debate referee, Chris Wallace of Fox News, planning to prod the candidates on immigration, the economy and “fitness to be president”.

Wallace has also decided to ask about “foreign hot spots”, but it appears unlikely that it will segue into talking about the diabolical heat suffered in Kuwait and India this year.

“It’s like a sort of collective cowardice,” said Emanuel of the omission. Michael Mann, another prominent climate scientist, added: “One has to wonder if television networks are compromised by the millions of advertising dollars they take from fossil fuel interests.”

Should the final debate also neglect climate, the only question related to the issue across four-and-a-half hours of TV will have come from Ken Bone, he of red sweater and short-lived internet fame, who asked about coal mining policy as the credits were preparing to roll on last week’s debate. Climate campaigners have been unable to contain their exasperation.

“Let’s be clear: a last minute question about energy doesn’t do justice to the threat of the climate crisis,” said May Boeve, executive director of climate group 350 Action, shortly after the debate.

“This crisis threatens our communities, our economy, and the future for our children – we saw that threat with Hurricane Matthew just this week – yet climate change doesn’t get a single direct question in the debate.”

Hurricane Matthew, which resulted in more than 20 deaths, is just the latest example of the type of extreme event, from flooding in Louisiana to a historic drought in California, that will become more common as the world warms.

This year hasn’t exactly been short of climate conversation topics – 2016 is on track to be the warmest on record, beating a mark set just in 2015. The Paris climate accord has been ratified by countries around the world while the Obama administration has attempted to implement its Clean Power Plan in the teeth of fierce opposition from 27 states. Alaska barely had a winter this year while some American communities are already having to relocate due to rising seas.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say that climate change is at least somewhat important to them personally, according to the Yale Program on Climate Communication, although few people talk about the issue with family or friends.

Americans are broadly in favor of developing clean sources of energy but there’s a clear political divide about how to approach climate change. Polling by the Pew Research Center shows half of Clinton’s supporters care about climate change a great deal, compared with 15% of Trump supporters.

This division is most starkly demonstrated by the candidates themselves. Clinton has talked about installing half a billion solar panels, halting oil drilling in the Arctic and, in sobering evidence of this election’s debasement, proudly told the Democratic national convention: “I believe in science.”

While some liberal Democrats are suspicious of Clinton’s climate credentials – fears were exacerbated by recent leaked emails that show she said those who wanted to shut down fossil fuels should “get a life” – the former secretary of state’s plan cannot be compared meaningfully with Trump’s.

The Republican nominee has called climate change a Chinese hoax and “bullshit”. He has promised to withdraw the US from the Paris climate deal, revive the coal industry while also expanding oil and gas drilling. He has darkly hinted at scrapping the Environmental Protection Agency and resurrecting the controversial Keystone oil pipeline.

“I wish there was a proper battle of ideas that we could judge accordingly,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. Green groups have supported Clinton almost as a default position because she’s the only major party candidate who accepts climate science.

While Clinton and Trump differ on issues such as police shootings, immigration and the economy, both candidates at least accept that these things actually exist. It’s tricky to have a debate on a topic that a participant doesn’t think is real.

Trump’s denial is shared by many members of Congress, who have been lavished with $29.6m in contributions from fossil fuel companies in the 2016 election cycle, according to figures compiled by ClimateTruth.org Action.

Regardless, here are three germane, and pressing, climate change questions that Wallace could ask:

An overwhelming majority of climate scientists say that climate change is real, caused by humans and a growing threat to our way of life. What would you do as president to tackle this clear and present danger?

All of the top 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1998, the year when many climate skeptics claim that global warming somehow stopped. The world’s top scientific institutions are unequivocal that the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of this warming, with recent research showing this brings punishing drought, extreme weather events, poverty and economic stagnation.

al security risk due to the destruction caused by rising seas and displacement of people. What would you do to prepare the US for this?

Millions of people are set to become climate refugees as crops fail and drinking water supplies are sullied by seawater, potentially putting the current refugee crisis in the shade. The Pentagon has warned of the potential for conflict and the need for humanitarian mobilization but the two main presidential candidates have yet to talk about this.

Rising sea levels are already causing Americans to be uprooted and whole cities to be put at long-term risk. What national plan will you put in place to ensure that areas such as New York, Virginia and Florida aren’t inundated?

Incidents of nuisance flooding have more than trebled along US coasts since the 1960s, with most coastal areas set to be inundated 30 days or more a year by 2050. Miami Beach is spending $400m on a system of pumps to ward off the sea for just a few decades, according to its mayor. Climate change is far from an abstract concept for people in towns in Louisiana and Alaska who are being relocated due to the rising seas.

Trump Didn't Invent the 'Rigged Election' Myth. Republicans Did.

By Elizabeth Warren, The Washington Post

19 October 16

 

Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, represents Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate.

ratering in the polls, besieged by sexual assault allegations and drowning in his own disgusting rhetoric, Donald Trump has been reduced to hollering that November’s election is “rigged” against him. His proof? It looks like he’s going to lose.

Senior Republican leaders are scrambling to distance themselves from this dangerous claim. But Trump’s argument didn’t spring from nowhere. It’s just one more symptom of a long-running effort by Republicans to delegitimize Democratic voters, appointees and leaders. For years, this disease has infected our politics. It cannot be cured until Republican leaders rethink their approach to modern politics.

Anyone with children knows that whining about imaginary cheating is the last refuge of the sore loser. But GOP leaders have served up such a steady diet of stories about imaginary cheating that an Economist-YouGov poll shows that 45?percent of Republican voters believe voter fraud is a “very serious problem,” and 46 percent have little or no confidence that ballots will be counted accurately. They hold these views even though there is literally no evidence — none, zero, zip — that widespread voter fraud is a factor in modern American elections. A recent study looked at around a billion ballots cast in the United States from 2000 through 2014 and found only 31 instances of impersonation fraud at the polls.

Republican leaders — and even Trump’s running mate — have tried to tiptoe out of the room when Trump makes ever-wilder claims of a rigged election. But as much as these Republicans would like everyone to believe that this is a Trump-only problem, it’s not.

For years, Republican leaders have pushed the lie that voter fraud is a huge issue. In such states as Kansas and North Carolina , and across the airwaves of right-wing talk radio and Fox News, Republican voters have been fed exaggerated and imagined stories about fraud. Interestingly, all that fraud seems to plague only urban neighborhoods, minority communities, college campuses and other places where large numbers of people might vote for Democrats. The purpose of this manufactured hysteria is obvious: to delegitimize Democratic voters and justify Republican efforts to suppress their votes.

The voting-fraud lie has been used to justify the passage of dozens of voter ID laws, typically rammed through state legislatures by Republican partisans. A study by political scientists at the University of California at San Diego recently concluded that strict photo-identification requirements disproportionately suppress turnout by Democratic voters — especially blacks and Latinos. Meanwhile, after a key provision in the Voting Rights Act protecting minority voters from discrimination was unceremoniously declared defective by a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court in 2013, those same Republican leaders who seem so concerned about threats to the integrity of our elections have largely remained on the sidelines.

Trump also didn’t invent ominous appeals for partisans to patrol “certain areas” and “go and watch these polling places” where citizens often vote for Democrats. More than three decades ago, the Republican National Committee was caught orchestrating expansive efforts to intimidate individuals at polling places in minority neighborhoods. Federal courts have barred the RNC from engaging in poll-watching activities relating to “ballot integrity, ballot security or other efforts to prevent or remedy vote fraud” in minority areas ever since.

It’s not just voters, either. Trump’s effort to delegitimize federal officials and political opponents also shares a long-standing Republican pedigree.

After Trump was sued for fraud over Trump University, he attacked the legitimacy of the federal judge with Mexican heritage presiding over the case, claiming that Trump’s own bigotry undermined the judge’s neutrality. Paul Ryan tsk-tsked, but Trump was simply joining a long line of Republicans in Congress who have spent years assaulting the federal courts. For years, the Republicans have blocked scores of nonpolitical lower-court nominees who haven’t pledged their allegiance to the financial interests of the rich and powerful. These attacks culminated in a national campaign of slime against the president’s highly respected choice to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat. It’s no surprise Trump would conclude that federal judges are fair game.

Similarly, some Republicans pretended to be shocked when Trump asserted that he would follow two-bit tyrants such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and imprison his political rival after the election. But for years, congressional Republicans have focused most of their resources on finding some way to brand Hillary Clinton a criminal. A party that wastes millions of taxpayer dollars on eight separate Benghazi investigations — and shouts itself hoarse attacking an FBI director who served as a senior political appointee in a Republican administration when he concludes that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges against Clinton over her emails — shouldn’t feign astonishment when its presidential nominee echoes their efforts to criminalize American politics.

Democrats and Republicans disagree about a lot of issues. We both fight hard to win elections. But winning isn’t everything. Al Gore understood that when he stood down after the 2000 election. Now Republican leaders seem increasingly concerned that when Trump loses, he won’t follow that example. But Trump’s words and deeds are merely the latest — and loudest — examples in a long line of Republican tactics that are poisoning our political system.