Climate change went ignored in all three presidential debates between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, frustrating environmentalists.
Hillary Clinton briefly mentioned climate change during Wednesday’s final debate in Las Vegas, but neither candidate ever expounded upon the issue. Trump and Clinton didn’t face a single question devoted to climate change during any of the debates and it never made headlines aside from Clinton confronting Trump during the first debate about his past statements on climate change being a hoax.
Michel Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, called it a tragedy.
“It is a tragic failure that a question about the most pressing crisis we face on this planet was never asked,” he said.
However, Brune and other environmentalists praised Clinton for bringing up climate change during her statements over the three debates. Brune said it shows her commitment to the issue.
“The fact that Hillary Clinton proactively recognized the climate crisis and the need to grow the clean energy economy in each and every debate underlines exactly how clear the choice is this election,” he said. “Only Hillary Clinton has a plan to tackle the climate crisis and only Hillary Clinton will defend and strengthen our clean air, clean water and climate safeguards.”
Seth Stein, national press secretary for the League of Conservation Voters, had similar thoughts about Clinton’s climate change statements that, while infrequent, were the only mentions of climate during the three debates.
“Over the course of three presidential debates, there was only one person who talked about the need to fight climate change and build a clean energy economy— and it wasn’t the moderators, and it certainly wasn’t Donald Trump,” Stein said.
Environmentalists had mostly resigned themselves to accepting that climate change would not be asked about during the debate in the hours leading up to Wednesday’s event. Still, that didn’t stop them from sending messages to moderator Chris Wallace, host of “Fox News Sunday,” practically begging for him to ask about the issue.
Many environmentalists believed this was the election cycle that climate change would become a major topic among presidential candidates. The Obama administration’s maneuvers to cement the president’s climate legacy have made waves among both Democrats and Republicans in recent years, and both Clinton and Democratic rival Sen. Bernie Sanders made climate change a central plank of their presidential primary campaigns.
Almost all of the Democratic primary debates and several Republican primary debates included some question about climate change or environmental regulations. However, the general election debates did not.
Wednesday’s debate focused on guns, abortion, immigration, the Supreme Court, fitness to be president, national security, entitlements and the economy.
Clinton was praised by environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer for being the only person connected to the debates, candidate or moderator, to bring up climate change during the three debates.
“Hillary Clinton showed young voters — and all Americans — that she’s standing squarely in their corner. Clinton will transition to a clean energy economy, which will not only create a million jobs but will also address the most critical issue of our generation — climate change,” he said.
Emails illegally obtained by WikiLeaks show that Clinton supports the use of natural gas, a fossil fuel that releases fewer greenhouse gas emissions than crude oil or coal, to power the country. She often has called it a “transition fuel” to renewable sources down the line. Many scientists blame greenhouse gases for driving manmade climate change.
Other environmentalists focused on the big news of the night: Trump’s comments that he would keep the country in “suspense” about whether he would accept the outcome of the Nov. 8 vote.
“What is there to say? We just saw a candidate for president say that he wouldn’t respect the outcome of the election,” said May Boeve, executive director of 350 Action.
“Any progress we’re going to see on climate change depends on protecting our democracy from demagogues like Donald Trump. Trump would be a disaster for everything our movement values: climate justice, social justice, justice period. It’s absurd that we even have to say this, but taking eight years to deal with an authoritarian is time we don’t have given the climate crisis.”
