This week’s Democratic presidential debates will measure climate change’s rank on the party’s agenda, testing whether voters will embrace activist calls for aggressive government action.
Environmental groups and political observers say that climate change will be a dominant topic during the debates Wednesday and Thursday nights, even though the Democratic National Committee dealt a blow to environmental activists by rejecting a debate focused solely on climate change.
Climate change has matched or overtaken healthcare and jobs in some polls as a top issue for Democratic voters, while Americans of both parties increasingly worry that it is driving extreme weather events.
“Climate has been a low salience issue on the Right and Left,” said Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center, a free market think tank. “Today, that’s changing. You are starting to see the conversation on the Left bleeding into a greater willingness on the Right to think seriously on these matters.”
The location of the debates, Miami, provides a setting likely receptive to a conversation about climate change, given the coastal city’s vulnerability to sea level rise.
“Miami is ground zero for climate change,” said Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “It is already experiencing significant climate impacts. Having the debate in Miami, whether or not the DNC meant to, is going to put climate change top of mind for many people.”
But other Democrats say the structure of the debates, with 10 candidates competing each night for air time, could make it difficult for candidates to differentiate themselves.
“Climate is not an issue in which Democrats disagree,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder and senior vice president of public affairs at Third Way, a center-left think tank. “There are very small differences in their policy ideas. It’s very hard to put daylight between yourself and other candidates on issues where there is broad agreement. Those don’t make for very good debate fodder.”
Jay Inslee, the Washington governor, is poised to amplify his climate-centric debate message on Wednesday, the first debate night. Inslee, polling at less than 1%, toured Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood Tuesday, talking to business owners and social and environmental activists about the effects of climate change on the community.
Inslee, however, will be debating Wednesday alongside other candidates who have proposed comprehensive climate change plans like his, including Beto O’Rourke and Elizabeth Warren.
They and other Democratic candidates have plans to end the use of U.S. fossil fuels, spend trillions on renewable energy, and rejoin the Paris climate agreement, with the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to zero by midcentury.
Bennett suggested the unity on the issue could push climate further down the agenda for Democratic voters when it comes time to vote. He noted other policy proposals, such as free college and “Medicare for all,” are more divisive within the party, and likely to draw more attention.
Exit surveys of past elections have shown voters did not care enough about the long-term costs of climate change to prioritize it ahead of more tangible issues such as healthcare and jobs.
“Without much difference among the candidates, it’s hard to see how this becomes a central issue at the end,” Bennett said. “It’s almost like President Trump’s border wall. That won’t be a central issue because everyone thinks it’s idiotic.”
Taylor disagreed, arguing Democratic primary voters are hungry for any conversation about climate change, given how it was ignored in 2016 debates.
“There is virtually no downside for Democrats to talk about climate change, even if they do it in sort of general fashion,” Taylor said.
John Delaney, a presidential candidate competing in Wednesday night’s debate, says he has a plan to stand out.
“Everyone agrees climate change is a big issue,” Delaney, a centrist former congressman from Maryland, told the Washington Examiner. “Everyone has a plan. The real question is whose plan is workable, who has way to pay for it, and who can get it done? That’s where I am different.”
Delaney, polling at less than 1%, is promoting a carbon tax as the best solution to combat climate change. He hopes to draw attention to a bipartisan carbon tax bill he introduced in 2018 that would return the revenue to taxpayers, while contrasting his approach with more liberal plans like Inslee’s that seek to eliminate fossil fuel production.
“Some people have talked about getting off fossil fuels in 12 years, which is an impossible promise that will actually cause us to not do well in the election because when people see the consequences of that, they won’t want to vote on it,” he said.
Stokes argued the debates will show the tides have shifted among Democrats, who now view carbon pricing as necessary but insufficient to tackling climate change, and increasingly support the Green New Deal, a government-driven wholesale transformation of the economy.
“This isn’t a moving too far left thing,” Stokes said. “It’s not an extreme position that Inslee is staking out. His positions are aligned to with what the science says is necessary. We need to make difficult decisions on the domestic front that need debating.”
