Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer wants Fox News moderators to challenge the Republican presidential candidates participating in Thursday night’s debate to lay out their plans to confront global warming.
“Climate change is the defining challenge of our time, and Americans around the country — and across the aisle — are calling for action,” reads a memo from Steyer’s political action group, Nextgen Climate, to Fox News hosts Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace on Wednesday.
The news network is hosting the first Republican debate, featuring the 10 leading GOP hopefuls, based on current nationwide polls: Real estate developer Donald Trump, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; neurosurgeon Ben Carson; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Nextgen Climate believes the debate is the perfect place to frame the climate issue. The group describes itself as a political activist organization that acts in order to prevent a “climate disaster.”
“As the moderators for the first Republican debate, you are uniquely positioned to ask all Republican candidates for their plan to tackle this critical issue,” the memo says.
He wants Kelly, Wallace and Baier to specifically ask the candidates what their plans are to transition the country away from fossil fuels, to a country powered “with more than 50 percent clean energy by 2030 and put us on a path to a completely clean energy economy by 2050.”
Steyer says that transitioning to a “clean energy economy is an ambitious goal, but one that is necessary, achievable and politically popular.” He says a poll compiled for his group found that a majority of Republican voters, 54 percent, in battleground states “favor a goal of powering America with 50 percent clean energy by 2030.”
He says additional polling compiled for the League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council found that Republican primary voters in both New Hampshire and South Carolina would have a higher likelihood of voting for a presidential candidate who proposed a clean energy transition plan.
“Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are increasingly competitive with fossil fuels on cost, and installed capacity is growing rapidly as businesses and consumers lead the way forward,” the memo reads. “As a result, clean energy jobs are significantly outpacing fossil fuels jobs, with solar jobs growing 20 times faster than the broader economy.”
Steyer’s memo does not mention President Obama’s Clean Power Plan as an example of the types of policies that would pave the way to cleaner energy. He uses familiar phrases used by Obama, such as “climate change truly is the challenge of our generation,” but he does not mention the Environmental Protection Agency, climate regulations or coal plant closures.
Steyer supports the Clean Power Plan, which was finalized by the EPA on Monday. The rules would place states on the hook for reducing emissions from existing power plants 32 percent by 2030. But it appears that asking GOP front-runners if they support the Clean Power Plan is likely a nonstarter.
Many of the candidates have come out against the Clean Power Plan. But framing the debate as a matter of supporting more clean energy may get a more positive response, Steyer’s memo suggests. In an interview last week with Bloomberg BNA, Bush called the climate rules an example of “irresponsible” overreach that will harm the economy. But when asked if he supported clean energy development, Bush was much more positive, even going as far as to praise EPA’s renewable fuel standard program for driving a new market for renewable biofuels.
