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The Key Moments From the Vice Presidential Debate

by KarmaG62lyzhfxl Posted on October 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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In a debate that was expected to have none of the fireworks of last week’s presidential face-off, the two vice presidential nominees embraced their attack-dog roles Tuesday in a sparring match that was less about the men on stage than about Donald Trump.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia used the debate in his home state to slam Trump repeatedly over his refusal to release his tax returns and his surprising comments about nuclear proliferation. Republican Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, in turn, tried to dodge most of the attacks Kaine lobbed his way and used them to accuse Kaine of running an “insult-driven” campaign. Pence was also able to get in a few swipes at Hillary Clinton.

It was a messy, chaotic affair for two vice presidential hopefuls, both thought to be more mellow than their running mates. The two candidates often talked over each other often during the debate—and over the moderator, CBS News’ Elaine Quijano, who had a hard time holding Kaine and Pence to the allotted time and subject matter for each question.

Here are the best moments from the combative debate:

Pence defends Trump on not paying taxes. Following a New York Times report suggesting that Trump might not have paid any federal income taxes for nearly two decades by claiming $913 million in losses on his tax returns in 1995, Pence defended his running mate. “Donald Trump is a businessman, not a career politician,” Pence said. “He actually built a business. He faced some pretty tough times 20 years ago. His tax returns—that showed he went through a very difficult time but he used the tax code just the way it’s supposed to be used and he did it brilliantly.”

Kaine goes after Trump’s missing tax returns. Kaine went hard after Trump for not releasing his tax returns. He recalled that Trump promised back in 2014 that he would release his returns if he ran for president, and he said that Trump broke that promise. Just as Pence shared his tax returns with Trump as part of the vetting process to be his running mate, Kaine said, Trump should share his returns with the American people as he runs for the job of president.

Pence accuses Kaine of running an “insult-driven campaign.” Throughout the debate, Pence accused Kaine and Clinton of running an “insult-driven campaign.” “I have to tell you, I was listening to the avalanche of insults coming out of Sen. Kaine,” Pence said early in the debate. What had Kaine said that had so offended Pence? The Democratic candidate has just ticked off a litany of statements that Trump had made over the course of the campaign. Pence used this to bring up Clinton’s comment that half of Trump’s supporters are in a “basket of deplorables.”

Kaine ridicules Trump’s inability to apologize. When Pence noted Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comments, Kaine said that she had apologized for how she phrased that comment. (She apologized for exaggerating and saying the “deplorables” made up “half” of Trump’s supporters.) He went on to name a long list of insults that Trump has spewed since starting his campaign but not apologized for and said, “You will look in vain to see Donald Trump ever taking responsibility for anybody and apologizing.”

Kaine goes after Trump’s penchant for praising dictators. Midway through the debate, Kaine rattled off a list of Trump’s most controversial foreign policy ideas, from his questioning of the NATO treaty to his suggestions that the United States would be better off if more countries had nuclear weapons. But the best zinger came when Kaine listed the figures who would be carved into Trump’s “personal Mount Rushmore”: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Muammar Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein.

Kaine suggests Pence revisit his fifth-grade civics lessons. Kaine criticized Trump for his connections to Russian oligarchs and took on Pence for praising Putin as a “stronger leader” than President Barack Obama. For this, Kaine suggested, Pence might need to retake fifth-grade civics.

Pence defends the Trump Foundation. Pence declined many opportunities to defend Trump’s record against Kaine’s onslaught of attacks throughout the night, but he finally backed his running mate up when it came to Trump’s charitable foundation. The Trump Foundation, Pence claimed, “gives almost every cent to charitable causes”—a statement that has been proved false time and again through dogged reporting from the Washington Post. Trump has used his foundation to send an illegal political contribution to the attorney general of Florida, to pay off legal fees incurred by his businesses, and to purchase portraits of himself. The foundation is currently being investigated by the New York attorney general.

Pence defends Trump’s record on abortion. Pence and Kaine went toe-to-toe on the issue of abortion. Kaine said Trump and Pence want to see Roe v. Wade repealed, resulting in laws that punish women for seeking abortions. Kaine also seized on a comment Trump made early in the campaign when he said women who seek an abortion should be punished. (Trump’s campaign later walked back that comment.) Pence responded that he and Trump would not condone punishing women for abortion and defended Trump’s past comments by noting that Trump isn’t a “polished politician” like Clinton and Kaine.

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The Key Moments From the Vice Presidential Debate

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The Republicans Just Declared Mike Pence the Winner—Over an Hour Before the Debate

by ijgmyne6n Posted on October 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Well, this is funny. The Republican National Committee published a blog post Tuesday night declaring that their very own Gov. Mike Pence had won the vice presidential debate.

The only problem? The debate hadn’t started yet.

“The consensus was clear after the dust settled, Mike Pence was the clear winner of the debate,” the post read.

The post—obviously—was taken down pretty quickly, but not before being spotted, and mocked mercilessly, on Twitter:

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The Republicans Just Declared Mike Pence the Winner—Over an Hour Before the Debate

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A top climate scientist isn’t impressed with the world’s half-assed effort to save itself.

by LinaSpence01 Posted on October 4, 2016

According to a paper released Tuesday by former NASA director James Hansen, the landmark Paris Agreement is solid C-minus work — but when it comes to climate commitments, mediocrity is basically criminal. Slacker countries making only modest emissions reductions will lock future generations into dangerous levels of climate change.

The average global temperature is already 1 to 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels, according to Hansen’s group. That’s on par with the Earth’s climate of 115,000 years ago, when the seas were 20 feet higher than they are today.

Unless we phase out fossil fuels entirely in the next few years, Hansen told reporters on Monday, future generations will have to achieve “negative emissions” by actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. Seeing as we don’t even know if that’s possible, that’d be a helluva task for our progeny.

Hansen and his coauthors’ work, which is undergoing peer review, supports a lawsuit brought by 21 young people against the U.S. government. It charges our lawmakers with not fairly protecting the “life, liberty, and property” of future citizens by allowing fossil fuel interests to keep polluting.

But a solution is possible, Hansen explained, if we commit to a fee on carbon pollution and more investment in renewable energy.

Source – 

A top climate scientist isn’t impressed with the world’s half-assed effort to save itself.

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Barcelona is kicking cars off many of its streets.

by Veola28Njffo Posted on October 4, 2016

According to a paper released Tuesday by former NASA director James Hansen, the landmark Paris Agreement is solid C-minus work — but when it comes to climate commitments, mediocrity is basically criminal. Slacker countries making only modest emissions reductions will lock future generations into dangerous levels of climate change.

The average global temperature is already 1 to 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels, according to Hansen’s group. That’s on par with the Earth’s climate of 115,000 years ago, when the seas were 20 feet higher than they are today.

Unless we phase out fossil fuels entirely in the next few years, Hansen told reporters on Monday, future generations will have to achieve “negative emissions” by actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. Seeing as we don’t even know if that’s possible, that’d be a helluva task for our progeny.

Hansen and his coauthors’ work, which is undergoing peer review, supports a lawsuit brought by 21 young people against the U.S. government. It charges our lawmakers with not fairly protecting the “life, liberty, and property” of future citizens by allowing fossil fuel interests to keep polluting.

But a solution is possible, Hansen explained, if we commit to a fee on carbon pollution and more investment in renewable energy.

Originally posted here:

Barcelona is kicking cars off many of its streets.

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Where the veep candidates stand on climate and energy

by JacelynUmberger Posted on October 3, 2016

The Tuesday vice presidential debate may not get as much attention as the main show, but the rivals are nearly as polarized on the issues — especially when it comes to climate and energy.

On the left, we’ve got former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine — whose pitch to voters on the campaign trail includes, “Do you believe in climate science or don’t you?”

On Team Trump, it’s more complicated. Veep candidate Mike Pence is an Indiana governor and former member of Congress who has previously said that creationism should be taught in schools, smoking won’t kill you, and global warming is a myth. Pence has also, however, recently reversed himself on global warming, splitting from Trump’s position: “Well, look,” he told CNN after the first presidential debate, “there’s no question that the activities that take place in this country and in countries around the world have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate.”

Here’s where the two stand:

Mike Pence

In his 2012 gubernatorial campaign, Pence received at least $850,000 from the energy sector, including $95,000 from coal magnate Robert Murray and $300,00 from David Koch. The friend of fossil fuels has also said that Trump will “end the war on coal,” and opposes President Obama’s signature environmental legislation, the Clean Power Plan. Indiana, the nation’s eighth largest coal producer, is one of 29 states currently fighting the legislation in court.

In 2014, Pence overturned an energy efficiency program enacted by his Republican predecessor, despite that fact that the Indiana Public Utility Commission estimated the program would create more than 18,600 jobs. That same year, Indiana ranked second among all states for industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

While in Congress, Pence also voted to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, and voted in favor of opening the Atlantic to offshore oil drilling. In fact, he voted against nearly every piece of environmental legislation during his 12 years in Congress, earning a lifetime score of 4 percent by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV).

Tim Kaine

Kaine supports the Clean Power Plan and introduced a budget amendment to help the Department of Defense prepare for climate change. The avid outdoorsman and conservationist has a lifetime score for 91 percent by the LCV.

He was an early opponent of the Keystone XL Pipeline, coming out against it in 2013.

During his tenure as governor, however, Kaine’s administration approved plans for a 668-megawatt coal plant in southwest Virginia. He’s also been in favor of offshore drilling in the Atlantic (although that changed after he joined the Clinton ticket).

Kaine says he views natural gas a “bridge fuel,” and — despite his opposition to Keystone — penned an an op-ed referring to himself as a “pro-pipeline senator.” According to ClimateWire’s Emily Holden, he supported fracking in national forests as governor, and he voted to fast-track natural gas export terminals.

Yet he’s endorsed the goal of transitioning the U.S. to 25 percent renewable energy by 2025, and Kaine protected 400,000 acres of land from development and worked to help coastal communities prepare for climate change.

If history is any indication, climate change won’t get much attention in Tuesday’s debate — in all presidential and vice presidential debates in the past five election seasons, climate change had a grand total of 37 minutes and 6 seconds.

If it were up to us, we’d want to hear a lot more about Pence’s recent comments on human-made climate change. Hearing from Pence and Kaine for a few minutes on climate would hardly be the most shocking turn of this election. After all, we’ve been surprised before.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this election

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Where the veep candidates stand on climate and energy

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Donald Trump Says Global Warming Is a Chinese Hoax. China Disagrees.

by JennyKTPAedeh Posted on September 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Two years after President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that their countries would work together to combat climate change, Republicans and conservatives in the United States continue to cite China’s rising carbon emissions as a reason not to bother cutting our own.

Earlier this month, Donald Trump’s economic adviser Stephen Moore claimed that limiting our carbon pollution is pointless because of China’s supposedly growing coal dependency. “Every time we shut down a coal plant in the US, China builds 10,” Moore told E&E News. “So how does that reduce global warming?”

Not only is Moore’s statement simply untrue, but the broader conservative theory behind it is badly outdated. China’s coal use and carbon emissions have dropped for the last two years. In 2015, China cut its coal use 3.7 percent and its emissions declined an estimated 1 to 2 percent, following similar decreases in 2014.

If China continues to cut its emissions, or even just keeps them at current levels, the country will be way ahead of its goal of peaking emissions by around 2030, which it laid out in 2014 and recommitted to during the Paris climate talks last December.

In part, China’s emissions are dropping because the country is undergoing a dramatic shift in the nature of its economy. For years, China had been rapidly industrializing and growing at a breakneck pace. Growth often causes emissions to rise, all the more so when a country has an expanding manufacturing sector and is building out its basic infrastructure such as highways and rail lines. Heavy industrial activity—especially making cement and steel, which are needed for things like buildings, roads, and rail tracks—can be extremely energy intensive and have a massive carbon footprint. But now, as China is becoming more fully industrialized, its growth is slower and driven more by service industries, like technology, that are much less carbon intensive.

And the Chinese government is spurring this shift to a lower-carbon economy by reducing its indirect subsidies, such as favorable lending from state-controlled banks, for coal and other carbon-heavy industries. “This is actually a correction for the economy because China is adopting a more market approach,” says Ranping Song, an expert on Chinese climate policy at the World Resources Institute, an international environmental research organization. “That will have an impact on emissions.”

We can’t know whether Chinese emissions will continue dropping every year, but China is committed to improving the energy efficiency of its economy and the cleanliness of its energy sources, and it’s already off to a strong start. “There is a set of things happening in China that will continue to change the trajectory of its emissions,” says Jake Schmidt, director of the international program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Here are seven things China is doing to curb its climate-warming emissions:

Limiting coal use. Just a week after that 2014 announcement with Obama, China released an energy strategy that called for capping coal consumption by 2020. China also put a three-year moratorium on new coal mines, starting this year, and it’s been shutting down existing coal mines. Cutting back on coal not only reduces carbon emissions; it combats poor air quality, which has been causing serious health problems in notoriously polluted Chinese cities such as Beijing and Wuhan.

Carbon trading. Next year, China will launch a nationwide carbon market, the world’s largest. It will cover six of the biggest carbon-emitting sectors, starting with coal-fired electricity generation. This cap-and-trade program will build on programs China has already created in two provinces and five cities.

Cleaning up cars and trucks. China is the largest car market in the world. Cutting pollution from automobiles, like cutting pollution from coal plants, is essential not just to reducing CO2 emissions but to clearing the air in cities: The government estimates that roughly one-third of Beijing’s epic smog is from automobiles. China is pulling old, inefficient cars off the road, providing incentives for buying hybrids and electric cars, and enforcing stricter fuel-efficiency standards for new cars.

Making buildings more energy efficient. Two years ago, China started issuing requirements for buildings to be given energy-efficiency upgrades. The energy savings are just beginning to be felt, but given that buildings can last for decades or even centuries, there could be a long payoff period.

Building renewable capacity. China knows it needs alternative sources of energy to replace coal, so the government is investing heavily in developing wind and solar energy. “China has emerged as a leader in renewable energy,” reported Song and one of his colleagues in a blog post in April. “Investment soared from $39 billion to $111 billion in just five years, while electric capacity for solar power grew 168-fold and wind power quadrupled.” In Paris, China promised that at least 20 percent of its energy portfolio will come from non–fossil fuel sources by 2030.

Building nuclear reactors. Whatever you think of nuclear energy, it is one of the lowest-carbon forms of electricity out there. Earlier this month, China announced it will build at least 60 new nuclear power plants within a decade.

Building high-speed rail. A wealthier citizenry in a more industrialized country will be traveling a lot more. To limit transportation emissions, China is rapidly building high-speed rail. It already has more than 11,800 miles of high-speed rail that carry 2.7 million riders daily, and expansion plans are on the drawing board.

China will surely encounter hurdles and hiccups as it continues trying to rein in its emissions. The nation’s economy has recently been slowing down for cyclical reasons, as well as the structural ones mentioned above. After years of debt-fueled corporate investment and growth, Chinese companies are paying down their debts at the same time that the government is reining in industrial overcapacity and winding down the stimulus spending that got it through the Great Recession. China’s economy will eventually pick up again, and when it does, citizens will likely buy more cars, air conditioners, and electronic goods, leading to more electricity and gasoline use and perhaps greater carbon emissions.

But the policies China is enacting are designed to ultimately create a higher standard of living without more emissions. Since China has enormous low-lying cities that will be largely underwater in a century if climate change continues spinning out of control, the country has plenty of reason to curb its emissions and has shown that it is serious about doing it. That’s true whether Republican politicians in Washington choose to believe it or not.

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Donald Trump Says Global Warming Is a Chinese Hoax. China Disagrees.

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Alabama’s Chief Justice Still Opposes Same-Sex Marriages. Now He’s Standing Trial.

by MadgeNew40940934 Posted on September 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore went to court Wednesday morning in Montgomery. But this time he was a defendant, charged with possible ethical violations for defying higher-court rulings with his anti-gay-marriage stance.

In January 2015, after a district court judge ruled that same-sex marriage was legal in Alabama, Moore sent a letter to Gov. Robert Bentley adamantly expressing his belief that the ruling was destructive, and urging the governor to defy the district court ruling and support judges who did not wish to comply.

“The Supreme Court of Alabama has likewise described marriage as ‘a divine institution,’ imposing upon parties ‘higher moral and religious obligations than those imposed by any mere human institution or government,'” he wrote. “The laws of this state have always recognized the Biblical admonition stated by our Lord.”

Moore went further and used his position as chief justice to instruct Alabama probate judges to refuse to issue licenses to same-sex couples via email. “No probate judge shall issue or recognize a marriage license that is inconsistent with Article 1, Section 36.03, of the Alabama Constitution or…30-1-19, Ala. Code 1975,” he wrote.

Moore’s actions led to a complaint filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which alerted the state-run Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission, which in turn launched an investigation. The commission suspended Moore in May. He is now facing six counts of judicial ethics violations.

Moore’s attorney for the proceedings is Mat Staver from the Liberty Counsel, which has been partly funded by one of the conservative billionaire Wilks brothers. He also represented Kim Davis, the Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Liberty Counsel takes on so-called “religious liberty” cases, and the law firm offered its services in the North Carolina fight over restricting the access of transgender people to public restrooms. Staver also represents David Daleiden, who produced heavily edited videos that purport to show Planned Parenthood officials involved in the sale of fetal tissue for profit. (There has been no evidence that Planned Parenthood is guilty of any wrongdoing.)

At the trial, Staver argued that Moore’s email to the probate judges wasn’t an order, but rather a “status update” on the conflict between the federal court ruling and state court rulings.

The Guardian recently speculated that Moore’s efforts are intended to improve his bid for the governorship in 2018. Moore attempted to run in 2006 but ultimately lost the bid for the Republican nomination to incumbent Bob Riley. He also tried to run in 2010 but lost the bid to current Gov. Robert Bentley.

This is not the first time Moore has dug his heels in over an issue he perceived to be in direct conflict with his faith. In 2003, he was suspended from the bench for installing a monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Supreme Court building without informing the eight associate justices and then, when faced with an order from a federal judge, refused to remove the monument. Moore’s fellow justices ultimately had the 2.6-ton monument removed in August 2003.

A decision in the trial is expected within 10 days. If Moore is found guilty, he could face censure or suspension without pay. The most severe outcome would be removal from the bench, which would require a unanimous vote from the nine members of the Court of Judiciary.

Continued – 

Alabama’s Chief Justice Still Opposes Same-Sex Marriages. Now He’s Standing Trial.

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What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

by PilarErtel48 Posted on September 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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People pause near a bus adorned with large photos of candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump before the first presidential debate. Mary Altaffer/AP

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Climate change is a grave threat to our future, but it probably won’t come up at Monday’s presidential debate. Topics for the event include “Securing America,” and although you’d think issues of national security might involve climate change (the military certainly does), if history is any indication, it likely won’t get mentioned at all.

But if it does get the attention it deserves, here’s where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand:

Dirty energy: Clinton supports some natural gas extraction on public lands, is against offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic, and has pledged $30 billion to provide suffering coal communities with health care, education, and job retraining as we move away from coal as a source of energy.

Trump has promised to boost coal production, ease environmental regulations, open federal lands to oil and gas extraction, and increase permits for oil pipelines. He also is considering appointing an oil executive to head the Department of Interior and a fracking mogul to lead the Department of Energy.

Clean energy: Clinton has said she would install more than half a billion solar panels in the United States by the end of her first term, and that under her presidency, we will generate enough clean energy to power every home in America by 2027.

Trump has said wind power is a great killer of birds (it’s not) and that solar is too expensive to be a viable source of energy, despite the fact that the cost of solar has now reached record lows—and with proper government investment, it would get even cheaper. Trump also objects to Obama’s signature environmental legislation, the Clean Power Plan, as well as the Paris Climate Accord, which he says he would cancel.

Environmental justice: After a debate in Flint, Michigan, in April, Clinton said she would require federal agencies to devise plans to deal with lead poisoning and other environmental justice issues, and she pledged to clean up more than 450,000 polluted sites around the United States.

Trump, on the other hand, mocked the Democratic National Committee for including climate justice in the party’s platform, and has previously vowed to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency—or, as he calls it, “the Department of Environmental”—although he’s recently backtracked on that particular idea.

Fossil fuel donations: While Republican presidential candidates can usually count on generous support from the fossil fuel industry, this year is the exception. Between both individual and corporation donations, Clinton has taken nearly twice as much from Big Oil as Trump, and some oil execs may even vote for her. Looks like we can add this to the list of things the great race of 2016 has upended.

Third and fourth party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson won’t be at the debate Monday night, which is too bad, because they tend to have the most interesting answers on climate change…and everything else.

Continued here: 

What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

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How Not to Be Wrong – Jordan Ellenberg

by Myrna Posted on September 24, 2016

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

How Not to Be Wrong

The Power of Mathematical Thinking

Jordan Ellenberg

Genre: Mathematics

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: May 29, 2014

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Group (USA) Inc.


The Freakonomics of math—a math-world superstar unveils the hidden beauty and logic of the world and puts its power in our hands The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong , Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isn’t confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do—the whole world is shot through with it. Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. It’s a science of not being wrong, hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see through to the true meaning of information we take for granted: How early should you get to the airport? What does “public opinion” really represent? Why do tall parents have shorter children? Who really won Florida in 2000? And how likely are you, really, to develop cancer? How Not to Be Wrong presents the surprising revelations behind all of these questions and many more, using the mathematician’s method of analyzing life and exposing the hard-won insights of the academic community to the layman—minus the jargon. Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia’s views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can’t figure out about you, and the existence of God. Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the knowledge they need. Math, as Ellenberg says, is “an atomic-powered prosthesis that you attach to your common sense, vastly multiplying its reach and strength.” With the tools of mathematics in hand, you can understand the world in a deeper, more meaningful way. How Not to Be Wrong will show you how.

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How Not to Be Wrong – Jordan Ellenberg

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Debate moderators say climate questions don’t make good TV

by vezimeciurilive Posted on September 23, 2016

The Great Unmentionable

Debate moderators say climate questions don’t make good TV

By on Sep 23, 2016 2:02 pmShare

Four years ago, CNN’s Candy Crowley had the perfect opportunity to ask President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney what they would do about climate change. An audience question on gas prices sparked a heated debate about energy policy and oil drilling. But when neither candidate mentioned global warming, Crowley quickly moved on.

Climate hawks squawked with outrage. “Where is global warming in this debate?” tweeted former Vice President Al Gore. “Climate change is an urgent foreign policy issue.” The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert called climate “the debate’s great unmentionable.”

“I had that question for all of you climate change people,” Crowley would later respond to critics. But she skipped it, choosing to stick with the economy instead.

The 2012 cycle would turn out to be the first since 1988 in which climate went unmentioned in either a presidential or vice presidential debate — although to be honest, it’s hardly ever a popular topic with moderators. The advocacy group Media Matters for America analyzed the 1,477 questions asked during the first 20 debates of this year’s primary season and found that only 22, or 1.5 percent, covered climate.

“That is really malfeasance on the part of our fourth estate,” says Shawn Otto, a cofounder of ScienceDebate, which pushes for more discussion of scientific issues from candidates.

Because so few moderators have chosen to ask about climate over the years, Grist turned the tables and asked moderators to answer for themselves. Most declined, including Crowley, but those who spoke up said a good debate question includes two elements:

  1. It exposes differences for undecided voters.
  2. It makes for dramatic TV.

“The exercise was always trying to draw out differences,” says Scott Spradling, a former anchor of New Hampshire’s WMUR, who participated in four 2008 primary debates. “Allow there to be opportunities to clearly state positions by the candidates, but to also draw distinctions so voters can be educated on where they differ.”

Los Angeles Times columnist Doyle McManus, who moderated primary debates in 2000 and 2008, said: “The second big goal, to put it as crassly as possible, is to produce a good television show.” Climate, apparently, gets poor ratings — a conclusion you can also draw from the scant amount of coverage it receives on the nightly network news.

“It doesn’t grab viewers the same way other stuff does: bombing in New York, terror, immigration,” says Tom Fahey, a former New Hampshire Union Leader reporter who worked two presidential primary debates. “I’m just talking about Joe Sixpack.”

Despite that, Fahey asked one of the most straightforward questions on climate in recent debate history: “Is science wrong on global warming?” he queried GOP hopefuls in 2007. “And what, if any, steps would you take as president to address the issue of climate change?”

Environmentalists say the focus on other issues is an industry problem. “The media themselves think of climate change as an environmental issue, and they have niche reporters on it,” says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center. “They’re not the reporters who moderate debates. Their questions tend to go more to what’s in the news that week or some of the political attacks, some of the partisan stuff, some of the issues that they consider more immediate — and even silly things.”

Juliet Eilperin, the Washington Post’s White House bureau chief (and a former environmental reporter), says debate moderators rarely have environmental expertise. “While I think it’s most notable in terms of the moderators, you also see that on the trail itself. The candidates may not be asked about this as much because the people who are with them day in and day out have not been immersed in these issues.”

Will this year be different? Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will meet in New York on Monday night for their first debate, and climate change shows signs of becoming a more salient election issue. This year’s Paris Climate Accord, a string of temperature records, and Clinton primary challenger Bernie Sanders have made the issue increasingly central in 2016.

An August poll showed 65 percent of adults want the U.S. government to act on climate change domestically and abroad. And a July analysis from Yale and George Mason showed the highest percentage of Americans alarmed about climate change since 2008 — but also the deepest gulf between climate voters and deniers since that same year.

“Climate change began as an issue that was obscure and little known and poorly understood,” says McManus, the L.A. Times columnist. “It is now one of the signal issues that divides the two parties.”

With political pressure building for climate action, advocates are also pushing for more airtime on climate during the debates. Several environmental organizations, including 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), and Climate Truth, have created petitions, mobilized their hundreds of thousands of members, and lobbied via social media to challenge moderators on climate. For the upcoming debates, LCV, Media Matters, the NRDC Action Fund, and others have collaborated on a petition calling for climate questions, which now has over 100,000 signatures. An effort spearheaded by the same coalition has pushed out more than 90,000 emails to moderators of the September 26 debate.

Sometimes pressure works. During the Republican primary, Climate Truth worked with a group of 21 Florida mayors on letters to moderators that helped get airtime for two climate questions.

“Numbers matter,” says Spradling, the WMUR anchor. “The more people are asking that question, the more likely that question gets asked in higher-profile debates.”

McManus calls Trump’s claim that climate change is a hoax “catnip for a debate question.” In other words: good TV.

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Debate moderators say climate questions don’t make good TV

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