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The primary, and maybe solely, debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump occurs Tuesday at 6 pm (ET). Brian Cahn/ZUMA Press Wire/Kyle Mazza/SOPA Photographs through ZUMA Press Wire
This story was initially revealed by Inside Local weather Information and is reproduced right here as a part of the Local weather Desk collaboration.
As Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump put together for his or her debate on Tuesday night time, those that care about US motion on local weather change are bracing themselves for disappointment.
They know that at candidate boards and interviews—for presidential and down-ballot candidates alike—local weather usually doesn’t come up in any respect. Even worse, the few questions that do get requested are caught on an issue that science resolved way back—is local weather change actual? Consequently, debates present little enlightenment on the troublesome selections political leaders face as the prices of extreme climate, warmth and wildfire mount, and the clear vitality future develops in a US economic system caught up in a fossil gasoline surge.
Since his first run for president in 2016, Trump has simply deflected the comfortable local weather questions tossed his means. He declares himself an avid environmentalist—”I consider very strongly in very, very crystal clear clear water and clear air,” he as soon as mentioned—whereas minimizing the severity of local weather change. Just about all scrutiny of Harris’ local weather coverage has targeted on her once-stated assist for a fracking ban, although there isn’t a authorized authority for a US president to enact such a prohibition, and Harris deserted the stand when she grew to become President Joe Biden’s working mate in 2020.
Forward of the controversy, the Inside Local weather Information employees got here up with questions that problem the candidates’ previous statements on vitality coverage and extra precisely mirror the onerous selections the following president will face because the world’s main oil and fuel producer confronts its position in each aiding and addressing a planetary disaster.
Questions for Trump
1. Personal corporations have introduced greater than 300 main new clear vitality tasks and electrical automobile vegetation throughout the nation based mostly on the assist they’re getting underneath the Inflation Discount Act. This non-public funding is predicted to create greater than 100,000 jobs; Michigan, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina every have 20 tasks or extra underway. You’ve mentioned you’ll finish the IRA subsidies. What would you do concerning the tasks in these states that may be put in danger?
Context: The nonprofit group Environmental Entrepreneurs has tracked 334 new clear vitality and autos venture bulletins in 40 states since passage of the Inflation Discount Act, totaling $125 billion in funding, anticipated to create 109,000 jobs.
2. You are taking credit score for making the US vitality unbiased throughout your presidency. However underneath the Biden/Harris administration, we’re much more vitality unbiased by any measure—our vitality imports are decrease now and our exports are greater; our vitality consumption is decrease now and manufacturing is greater. Aren’t you simply promising extra of the identical? Would you elevate the ban on oil imports from Russia, which rose dramatically throughout your presidency?
Context:
3. You could have usually mentioned that wind vitality is damaging to land, wildlife, and even human well being, whereas making vitality dearer. However wind electrical energy now offers 10 % of US electrical energy, with Texas far and away the main state for wind farms. What’s your plan for wind energy as president and would you act to close down the wind farms now working?
Context: Wind vitality can have impacts on wildlife and the setting, in keeping with the Division of Power, and federal authorities require builders of tasks on federal land and water to investigate potential impacts and reduce them. Oil, fuel, and coal growth even have wildlife and environmental impacts, with one 2012 research exhibiting that fossil fuel-generated electrical energy kills almost 20 instances extra birds per gigawatt-hour than electrical energy generated by wind.
4. You could have mentioned rising sea ranges would create extra oceanfront property. However the modifications already underway have meant flooding, erosion and injury to houses and companies each on the coast and inland. With losses mounting and the federal flood insurance coverage program greater than $20 billion in debt to taxpayers, ought to the U.S. authorities proceed to insure the properties most in danger? And if not, what do you assume the federal authorities ought to do about houses and companies that may’t get non-public flood insurance coverage, particularly in your dwelling state of Florida?
Context: In his August 12 interview with Elon Musk, Trump asserted that sea stage is predicted to rise one inch each 400 years, however a complete 2022 research by the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that sea ranges on the US coast are on monitor to rise 10 inches within the subsequent 30 years. NOAA tasks the incidence of flooding within the US will improve tenfold because of this.
5. Once you first ran for president, you promised to carry again coal jobs. However eight coal corporations went bankrupt throughout your presidency and the US misplaced 12,700 coal jobs—a decline of 25 %. What’s your plan to assist coal employees?
Context: The coal business has been weakening steadily over greater than a decade as a result of what most economists see as a sectoral decline within the business as a result of competitors from cheaper pure fuel and renewable vitality. Eight US coal corporations went bankrupt between October 2018 and October 2019. Below the 2022 Inflation Discount Act—the principle automobile for President Joe Biden’s local weather coverage—coal states like Wyoming and West Virginia have been given a aggressive benefit in attracting clear vitality growth tasks and related federal funding with a view to handle displaced employees.
Questions for Harris
1. As California legal professional basic, you took authorized motion in opposition to oil corporations over oil spills and different air pollution, and as a presidential candidate in 2019, you talked concerning the federal and state litigation in opposition to tobacco corporations as a mannequin of the best way to handle fossil gasoline corporations’ position within the local weather disaster. Do you consider the Justice Division ought to be part of with states taking motion in opposition to oil corporations over local weather damages?
Context: In 1998, 52 state and territorial attorneys basic signed a large $200 billion settlement with the nation’s 4 largest tobacco corporations to settle dozens of lawsuits they delivered to get better their smoking-related well being care prices. The following 12 months, the Justice Division additionally filed go well with in opposition to Huge Tobacco and after years of authorized wrangling and a nine-month trial, a federal choose in 2006 dominated that the producers had violated the federal organized crime regulation, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That litigation is ongoing 25 years later, because the business continues to problem treatments imposed by the court docket, that are designed to ban it from making false or misleading claims about tobacco merchandise.
2. Regardless of the progress made on clear vitality throughout the Biden administration, the US isn’t on monitor to hit the Paris local weather settlement targets for greenhouse fuel reductions. This not solely endangers lives and property, it undermines US credibility in persuading different nations, particularly China, to cut back their local weather air pollution. What would you do to vary that?
Context: The Local weather Motion Tracker, a nonprofit worldwide analysis group, tasks that US greenhouse fuel emissions are on monitor to be about one-third under 2005 ranges by 2030, falling wanting the Biden administration’s pledge to minimize them in half. One other analysis group, the Rhodium Group, reached an identical conclusion, calculating that to satisfy its Paris goal, the US must obtain a 6.9 % emissions discount yearly from 2024 by way of 2030, greater than triple the 1.9 % drop seen in 2023.
3. In 2019, you mentioned that we “need to acknowledge the residual impression of fracking is big by way of the well being and security of communities.” As president, what would you do to guard the well being and security of communities who’re uncovered to air air pollution and water contamination attributable to the fracking course of?
Context: Virtually 2,500 scientific papers have documented adverse well being impacts from fracking, in keeping with the Physicians for Social Accountability and Involved Well being Professionals of New York. They embrace a 2022 Yale research exhibiting Pennsylvania kids who grew up inside a mile of a pure fuel effectively have been twice as possible as different kids to develop the most typical type of juvenile leukemia, and a 2023 College of Pittsburgh research exhibiting they have been seven instances as possible to endure from lymphoma. The oil and fuel business has maintained high-pressure water fracturing for oil and fuel manufacturing from underground shale formations is protected, however the business has needed to pay to present new water provide for residents with contaminated wells. The problem is particularly divisive in Pennsylvania, which grew to become the nation’s second-largest pure fuel producing state (after Texas) as a result of fracking, and is a key state within the presidential race.
4. Did you assist President Biden’s transfer to pause additional allowing of liquefied pure fuel export services whereas the federal government assesses the potential local weather impression? Now {that a} federal choose has ordered the administration to renew allowing, would you go ahead with new LNG tasks or search to overturn the choose’s order?
Conext: Biden’s LNG allowing pause in January put into query the way forward for no less than 17 terminals at present being thought of alongside US coastlines to export pure fuel abroad. The transfer was challenged by a coalition of Republican-led states and in July, a Trump-appointed federal choose ordered the administration to renew allowing LNG terminals. Though the Biden administration is interesting that order, on September 3, it authorized a short-term growth of 1 current terminal’s allow to export from the Gulf of Mexico.
5. Farm work is among the many nation’s most harmful occupations and has grow to be even deadlier as a result of extra intense and frequent warmth waves pushed by local weather change. Almost half of farmworkers nationwide are undocumented and face even higher dangers as a result of they’re afraid to complain about unsafe working situations. Will you give these employees some type of authorized standing and implement a federal warmth customary that ensures the well being and security of these uncovered to harmful warmth situations at work?
Context: Rising temperatures have prompted questions on whether or not employers ought to be required to supply shade, relaxation intervals, and funky water to employees who face well being dangers due to excessive warmth, notably those that should work open air, like farmworkers and building employees. After the heat-related loss of life of a 38-year-old farmworker in Oregon throughout the historic 2021 Pacific Northwest warmth wave, that state put new heat-protection guidelines in place. However Florida’s legislature and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis authorized laws early this 12 months banning localities from establishing such guidelines. The Biden administration proposed the primary federal employee warmth safety requirements in July, three years after the president first promised them. Will probably be as much as the following president to determine whether or not to finalize that plan or abandon it within the face of sure authorized challenges from enterprise teams and their political allies.
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