Scientists overwhelmingly agree that as humans continue burning fossil fuels, our collective emissions of greenhouse gases are unnaturally warming the planet. If this trend is not quickly stopped (and, if possible, reversed), humans will face existential threats including deadly heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods and extreme storms.
During Tuesday's presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, only Harris acknowledged these scientific facts. But critics say she didn't exactly lay out a sound strategy for addressing it, either.
Dr. Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who emphasized his opinions are his own, told Salon that he found the debates "disheartening."
"The presidential discourse on climate amounts to 'yes it exists, but we're going to expand fracking and fossil fuel production' on one side, to literally incoherent babbling with the word 'China' occasionally inserted on the other," Kalmus told Salon.
"There was so much bluster and falsities from Trump that those who are not informed may think are they are valid," Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who has published more than 600 articles on climatology, told Salon. He added that Harris did not rebuke Trump's misinformation as effectively as she could have, instead seeming to focus on scoring with her own talking points.
"I have been in 'debates' with deniers of climate change and it is impossible to win because they tell lies and you cannot bring up the evidence to show they are wrong," Trenberth said. "The listener is the loser. I stopped participating in such debates long ago. Now if the debate is about what to do about something, then maybe."
Kalmus said that this low quality conversation exists because our society has failed us on multiple levels.
"This is a tragic failure of our government, of powerful institutions in our nation, of extractive colonial capitalism itself which uses astronomical concentrations of wealth to pay off the media and politicians, allowing the public to blithely go on day after day without appropriate climate urgency," Kalmus said. "Biden could have used his bully pulpit over the last three-plus years to break through this money-created lack of public urgency, but it seems clear to me that in his heart, as a human being, he either does not understand the stakes or he doesn't care."
For the most part, the Harris-Trump debate focused less on solutions to climate change-related problems than on offering conflicting narratives about reality itself. This became evident on the number of occasions when the debate broached issues either directly or indirectly linked to climate change: Fracking, solar energy, Project 2025, and the Keystone Pipeline, for example.
University of Pennsylvania climatologist Dr. Michael E. Mann observed that there is at least an objective way in which Harris indisputably "won" those exchanges — her statements were based on facts, while Trump's were not.
Mann pointed out Harris spoke truthfully when saying she supports "demand-side measures such as those in the Inflation Reduction Act [that] will make renewable energy increasingly competitive and fossil fuel energy uncompetitive, without attempting to impose bans that might be overturned by the conservative courts."
Mann also noted Harris was correct when she said that Trump is directly tied to the far right policy agenda Project 2025, which among other things would defund renewable energy projects such as solar energy and purge scientists from government who refuse to tow Trump's line on climate change. When it comes to Biden's opposition to the Keystone Pipeline, Mann also felt Harris bested Trump by tying him directly to the controversial proposals.
To epitomize the debate's overall dynamics when it came to climate change discussion, Mann pointed to a moment near the end when Harris said, "The former president had said that climate change is a hoax. And what we know is that it is very real." From there, Harris explained how extreme weather has gotten worse due to climate change and how she proposes to address the human and economic toll.
"I think it’s very telling that when they were actually asked a question, late in the debate, about climate change, she provided a thoughtful, coherent answer, underscoring the damage that climate is already doing, the pain that Americans are suffering from its impacts, and the urgency of taking action, pointing out the progress made over the past four years in moving toward a clean energy economy, a path she intends to follow," Mann said. Trump, on the other hand, "had nothing to say at all about climate change. He didn’t even attempt to refute the point she made about Trump dismissing climate change as a hoax."
This does not mean environmental advocates universally applauded Harris' performance. Michael Greenberg, the founder of the climate change activist organization Climate Defiance, expressed disappointment in some of the vice president's answers.
"Neither candidate won the debate on fracking," Greenberg said. After characterizing Trump's answers on solar energy as "unhinged and nutty." At the same time, Greenberg argued that Harris did not present enough of a contrast with Trump.
"Kamala Harris needs to go big and go bold on climate change to highlight the difference between her and Trump," Greenberg said. "The country needs a climate leader, not a Trump-lite politician."
Stevie O'Hanlon, communications director for the climate change activist group Sunrise Movement, praised Harris for supporting federal subsidies for clean energy, opposing the Keystone Pipeline and connecting Trump to Project 2025. At the same time, she told Salon she feels "the American people lost on fracking last night. New fracking development is incompatible with averting catastrophic climate change, and it isn't actually popular in Pennsylvania or around the country because people don’t want more fossil fuel production that poisons our water and destroys the climate."
Dr. Richard Wolff expressed concern that Harris failed to explore any of the deeper systemic issues that caused climate change.
"Instead there was a deafening silence on them," Wolff told Salon. "And that suggests the decline represented by failure to address let alone solve those problem areas will likely continue no matter who wins in November."
"I'm glad that Kamala decisively won the debate — Trump, insanely, would clearly do his best to heat the planet as much as possible — but I'm saddened that it feels like we're destined to at best four more years of essential inaction," Kalmus said. "You can't have your fossil fuel expansion cake and eat your climate action, too. You just can't. Fossil fuels are literally the cause."
