Presidential Debate Contrasts Biden\u2019s Energy Policy with Trump\u2019s Climate Falsehoods<\/p>\n
During the first presidential debate, Biden alluded to the Inflation Reduction Act while Trump went on an incoherent rant about \u201cH2<\/sub>O\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n By Joseph Winters<\/a> & Grist<\/a><\/p>\n President Joe Biden and former president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump participate in the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections at CNN\u2019s studios in Atlanta on June 27.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Andrew Caballero-Reynolds\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Over more than an hour and a half of back-and-forth, climate change got just a couple minutes of airtime during a CNN-hosted debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump on Thursday.<\/p>\n It was the first time the men had faced each other on the debate stage since October 2020. Both candidates were reportedly eager for the confrontation<\/a>, with Biden\u2019s team seeking to warn voters about the increased radicalism that Trump is promising to bring to a second term, and Trump keen on digging into his rival\u2019s alleged cognitive decline.<\/p>\n Most of the discourse focused on hot-button issues like immigration and the economy. Biden spoke with a raspy voice and at times tripped over his words, while Trump took many wild discursions and uttered several falsehoods that moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper did little to rein in.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing<\/a>. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n A little over halfway in, however, Bash asked whether the candidates would do anything as president to address the climate crisis. Neither candidate directly answered the question, but Biden pointed to policies his administration has implemented to encourage the development of clean energy technologies. Trump gave an incoherent nonanswer.<\/p>\n \u201cI want absolutely immaculate clean water and absolutely clean air,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAnd we had it. We had H2O, we had the best numbers ever, and we were using all forms of energy, everything.\u201d He said his presidency saw \u201cthe best environmental numbers ever,\u201d a statistic he said his advisers had given him moments before he walked onto the stage. In truth, Trump rolled back more than 200 environmental policies<\/a> during his four years in office.<\/p>\n Trump also took credit for pulling the country out of the Paris Agreement<\/a> \u2014 a \u201cripoff\u201d for the U.S., as he described it. He otherwise used his allotted climate time to talk about his support among police groups and Biden\u2019s border policies, among other unrelated topics.<\/p>\n Biden, for his part, said he enacted \u201cthe most extensive climate change legislation in history,\u201d a reference to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act<\/a>, which contained $369 billion in clean energy tax credits and funding for climate and energy programs. He also mentioned his administration\u2019s creation of the American Climate Corps<\/a> \u2014 a federal program to put young people to work on landscape restoration, renewable energy deployment, and other green projects \u2014 and reiterated the importance of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n In combination with preexisting policies, the Inflation Reduction Act is expected to cut the country\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 42 percent by 2030<\/a>, almost within reach of the country\u2019s commitment under the Paris Agreement to halve emissions compared to 2005 values by the end of the decade.<\/p>\n This is in marked contrast to projections about what could happen to the climate under a second Trump term. According to an analysis published in March by Carbon Brief<\/a>, another Trump administration could add some 4 billion metric tons to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared to a second Biden term. This increase could cause $900 billion in additional climate damages globally. The analysis predicted that, if Trump rolled back all of Biden\u2019s key climate policies, the U.S. would be \u201call but guaranteed\u201d to miss its 2030 climate target.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the scale of U.S. emissions and its influence on the world, this makes the election crucial to hopes of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,\u201d Carbon Brief said.<\/p>\n Beyond the one question from Bash, the only other climate-related mentions during the debate came from Trump, who blamed the U.S.\u2019s federal deficit on a failure to extract \u201cthe liquid gold right under our feet\u201d \u2014 oil and gas \u2014 and referred to Biden\u2019s climate policies as the \u201cgreen new scam.\u201d He also used the term \u201cenergy independent\u201d to describe the nation on January 6, 2021, the day he told his supporters to launch an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.<\/p>\n This is in line with some of the former president\u2019s previous messaging about climate change, although it\u2019s hard to parse what he actually believes from his history of erratic, conflicting statements. Sometimes he\u2019s said climate change is a \u201choax<\/a>\u201d orchestrated by China; other times he\u2019s acknowledged its existence but questioned its connection to human activity.<\/p>\n More recently, Trump has downplayed the seriousness of the climate crisis. At a campaign rally in January, he called a youth climate protester \u201cimmature<\/a>\u201d and told her to \u201cgo home to mommy.\u201d If elected, he has promised to \u201cdrill, baby, drill,\u201d and reverse Biden administration climate policies like the Inflation Reduction Act.<\/p>\n Although expectations have never been particularly high about the prominence of climate change during a presidential debate, climate experts expressed disappointment in the brevity and shallowness of Thursday\u2019s climate discussions. \u201cMore time discussing golf than climate. What a world we are living in,\u201d tweeted Jeff Goodell,<\/a> the author of The Heat Will Kill You First<\/i><\/a>, referring to a bizarre exchange between the two candidates in which Biden challenged Trump to a round of golf.<\/p>\n Other observers shared deeper concerns about Biden\u2019s performance, which included mistakes that his opponent was quick to point out.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope he reviews his debate performance Thursday evening and withdraws from the race, throwing the choice of a Democratic nominee to the convention in August,\u201d wrote the New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof<\/a>.<\/p>\n This story was originally published by <\/i>Grist<\/i><\/a>, a nonprofit media organization covering climate, justice, and solutions.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Trump](\"https:\/\/static.scientificamerican.com\/dam\/m\/7f035695306d8cdc\/original\/GettyImages-2158941016.jpg?w=600\")
On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n