Save the planet: Settle for Biden
Former Vice President Joe Biden is not an ideal climate candidate, but he beats another four years of Trump.
No one has asked a direct question about climate change in a United States presidential debate in 12 years.
But that changed Tuesday night, when climate change took up 11 minutes of the first 90-minute debate in the general election. It was a pleasant surprise — not only because it wasn’t on the list of debate topics — but because it shut up U.S. President Donald Trump for the first time in nearly 75 minutes.
“It was the part of the debate with fewest interruptions,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, in an interview with WIRED. “I don’t know — maybe that’s because Trump just hadn’t prepared for it at all and didn’t really know what to say.”
World leaders shouldn’t stay in power if, amid a climate crisis, they don’t prepare to answer honestly for it. Former Vice President Joe Biden is not an ideal climate candidate, but he beats another four years of Trump, who denies and misrepresents climate science.
During Tuesday’s debate, Trump made over 20 false or misleading claims, and nearly a quarter of those were about climate change.
When moderator and Fox News anchor, Chris Wallace, asked Trump about the science behind climate change, the president said he wants “crystal clean water and air.” But this statement directly contradicts his actions: As president, Trump has rolled back 19 restrictions on air pollution and four clean water protections.
His environmental deregulation (100 rollbacks and counting) will likely add another 220 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere annually by 2025. And he’s not done. In early September, EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler outlined the agency’s plans for a second Trump term: more deregulation and fewer environmental protections.
Trump also said, during the debate, that California wouldn’t be on fire with better forest management, without acknowledging the unprecedented heat waves or that the federal government manages 60% of California’s forests, 25% of Oregon’s, 44% of Washington’s.
But Joe Biden speaks in direct contrast to Trump.
“With every bout with nature’s fury, caused by our own inaction on climate change, more Americans see and feel the devastation in big cities, small towns, on coastlines and farmlands,” Biden said a few weeks ago at a campaign event. “It’s not a partisan phenomenon. It’s science.”
Toward the end of the 11 minutes on climate change, Biden spoke about the $2 trillion climate plan he released this summer. He accurately pointed out that switching to renewables will create millions of good paying jobs and that the cost of action now is much lower than what we’ll pay with inaction.
But the former vice president needs to work on his delivery. Biden faltered when Trump suggested his plan would actually cost $100 trillion, a conservative think tank’s much-refuted estimate on the cost of the Green New Deal. Neither did Biden emphasize his plan’s more progressive qualities: the focus on environmental justice and collaboration with Senator Bernie Sanders.
Biden has one of the most progressive climate plans on a major party ticket ever. And though it stops short of the Green New Deal — no Medicare for all or fracking bans — at least he has a plan. And putting him in office will avoid another four years of environmental deregulation.
If anything, Tuesday’s debate highlights how important it is for third-party challengers to step down, especially in swing states. In 2016, non-major party candidates got roughly 5% of the popular vote and likely swayed the election in Trump’s favor.
That is a very real possibility this year, too.
We’re all unhappy with our options, but this is not the time to fight the two-party system: We need immediate climate action, and Biden is our best shot.