Until late Sept. 2020, no one had asked a candidate at a presidential debate about climate change for 12 years.
Fox News journalist Chris Wallace ended the streak last week with surprise climate questions during the first debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. But the often-ignored topic returned in the vice-presidential debate, too. On Wednesday night, USA Today journalist Susan Page allotted some 10 minutes to a topic that, year after year, is growing in salience as the planet continually warms.
Yet the questions were rudimentary or unproductive, having not progressed much beyond assessing repeatedly proven, evidence-based science. They didn’t lead to substantive solutions for slashing heat-trapping carbon emissions. Instead, the queries still belabored why climate change is happening and if Vice President Mike Pence believes climate change is impacting extreme events like wildfires and hurricanes. (It is.) Read more…
More about Climate Change, Mike Pence, Kamala Harris, Election 2020, and Science
