Climate change was on the tip of the tongues of many of the Democratic presidential candidates during their first debate Tuesday night.
Four of the five candidates on the stage Tuesday mentioned climate change as a major campaign issue unprompted, with only former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb declining to do so. Webb later gave his support for an “all of the above” energy strategy that involves fossil fuels and renewable energy.
Some candidates attacked the issue harder than others, particularly Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.
When asked who or what is the country’s biggest national security threat, other candidates mentioned a nuclear Iran, cybersecurity or destabilization in the Middle East. Sanders said the environment is the biggest issue.
“If we do not address the global crisis of climate change and transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to sustainable energy, the planet we’re going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren may not be habitable,” he said. “That is a very big crisis.”
Many scientists blame the burning of fossil fuels for increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which they say is causing global warming.
Sanders’ positions were echoes of President Obama’s comments in his State of the Union address that climate change is the biggest threat facing future generations.
“No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” Obama said in January.
O’Malley made the most mentions of climate change during the debate and also mentioned it as one of the greatest threats facing the country.
Climate change is one of O’Malley’s main campaign talking points, and he emphasized several times that it is his top priority.
O’Malley called for clean energy as a part of the United States’ political revolution. He detailed his plan for attacking climate change, which is the most detailed plan that has been released by any of the Democratic candidates so far.
“We need to move America to a 100 percent clean energy grid by 2050 and create 5 million more jobs,” he said. “That’s the revolution we need.”
Former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee said the coal industry has been his favorite enemy that he’s made during his time in politics.
“I’ve worked hard on climate change,” he said.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed her time at the 2009 United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, as proof of her actions on climate change.
Clinton said she and Obama “literally” hunted down the Chinese representatives at the conference to pin them down on an agreement. The Copenhagen conference did not result in an agreement to decrease the causes of climate change, but Clinton hailed it as proof that she’s willing to work with governments around the world to solve the issue.
“There will be no effective efforts against climate change unless China and India act on climate change,” she said.
Clinton also mentioned her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline during an exchange about her flip-flopping on issues.
As secretary of state, Clinton reviewed the Keystone XL pipeline and used that as an excuse to delay taking a position on the project. She came out against it late last month.
“I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone,” she said.
Webb and Clinton were mostly on the same page when it came to working with other countries.
The former Virginia senator has previously been in favor of burning coal, the Keystone XL pipeline and in favor of offshore drilling.
Webb said the United States could pass all the laws and enforce all the regulations it wanted on climate change, but it wouldn’t make a difference unless the world’s biggest countries got on board.
“We are not going to solve climate change simply with the laws here,” he said.
“We need to solve this in a global way, it’s a global problem.”
