Chethma De Mel, Jadetimes Staff
C. J. De Mel is a Jadetimes news reporter covering Entertainment News
At the end of the hottest summer on record, with wildfires burring across California and a hurricane churning toward Louisiana, the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump just weeks ago centered notably on climate change. But neither candidate took the opportunity to outline specific plans for confronting the mounting crisis. The debate, hosted by Linsey Davis of ABC News, demonstrated just how critical the issue was, especially to young voters, but disappointed climate activists in the end.
While not denying that climate change is a fact, Harris did nothing to outline a strategy for the country to be able to fight it effectively. Harris celebrated the economic dividends of the Biden administration's clean energy policies, citing how federal subsidies for wind and solar power have created jobs and spurred manufacturing. She also took a surprise turn in the other direction by touting record levels of gas production under this administration-the same fact the Biden team has been downplaying due to the detriments of fossil fuels on climate change.
We have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while simultaneously increasing domestic gas production to a historic high," Harris said. She said developing domestic oil and gas resources was relevant to national security to reduce dependency on foreign oil.
Trump kept clear of any substantive discussion on climate action. Instead, he repeatedly attacked Harris for having once supported a fracking ban and said that her victory would destroy fracking and take the fossil fuel industry with it. On climate change, he offered no clarity, deflecting the issue to the threats of "nuclear warming," a phrase Trump uses to emphasize nuclear war as a greater danger than global warming. He signed off with commitments to wider oil drilling and dismantling environmental regulations, promising once more to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement if elected.
Harris pushed back on the criticisms, pointing out that she played a crucial role in the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocated $370 billion toward clean energy projects but also opened up new leases to fracking. Her approach has frustrated climate activists like the Sunrise Movement. "We're disappointed that she's spent more time explaining fracking than she has articulating a full, ambitious vision for clean energy," the group wrote.
Environmental groups like the Sierra Club saw the debate as underscoring dramatic differences between candidates. He wasn't perfect, but Harris did have something in common with a vision toward a cleaner energy future, while Trump's message was an "incoherent jumble of conspiracy theories and contradictory statements about climate and energy".
With the U.S. the largest historical contributor to greenhouse gases in the world, this election result could have far-reaching implications for global climate efforts. Scientists say that the window to take action on climate change is rapidly closing, and many of the decisions made this election will determine whether-or of course, how-the U.S. addresses climate policy in upcoming years.
