JOHN H. CUSHMAN JR. reports for Inside Climate News

Anyone who views the climate crisis as a compelling issue can only be frustrated by how it has been handled in presidential debates over the years—neglected, mostly. And as the first round of debates for the 2020 election arrives, the frustration may be repeated, if for different reasons this time around.

It’s not that the issue won’t come up. It will, driven by climate events in the real world, by the extraordinary record of reversal and denial in Washington, by the emphatic alarms of scientists, and by the loud insistence of activists that candidates and the media alike do their share in focusing the spotlight on the urgency of action. Even if the interrogators don’t emphasize it, some candidates will.

To prepare for the debates, we explored the candidates’ evolution on climate change and early progress in bringing the issue to the forefront in 2020. In the following series of profiles, we focus on the most prominent candidates and those with the most detailed climate proposals, with an eye toward showing the spectrum of policy choices.

[ Read and share the candidate profiles ]

On Wednesday and Thursday this week, 20 candidates face questioning from a panel of journalists in two rounds, with 10 candidates each evening. With so many candidates and so much ground to cover, there may be only slight attention to climate change. It may be hard to distinguish the candidates’ climate policy positions from one another, let alone to discern the complex details in depth, or to decide which answers are the more coherent, practical or politically appealing.

One goal in these profiles: to help you prepare to watch the debates, perhaps forming in your own mind what climate question you would pose to candidates beyond the most simplistic.

Instead of being asked “do you believe in global warming?” or “would you stay in the Paris treaty?”—every Democratic candidate does and would—we think they should face questions like these:

• “How much would you demand that U.S. emissions decline in your first term, in order to put your targets within reach by the end of your second term?”
   
• “Many people say we have only 12 years to act. Can you explain where that number comes from and whether you believe it?”
   
• “Should fossil fuel producers be held liable for the damages being inflicted now because of emissions from our previous use of their products?”
   
• “Do you think American youth have a constitutional right to a safe climate that could be enforced by the courts?”
   
• “Should any of the revenues from a carbon tax be spent on research and development of clean technologies, or should it all be returned to households as a tax rebate or dividend?”
   
• “How much expansion of our natural gas production would be consistent with reaching zero net emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050?”
   
• “Would you rely heavily on any of these technologies: a new class of nuclear reactors? Capturing the carbon from smokestacks or the atmosphere for storage underground? Geo-engineering to reflect sunlight or seed the oceans as a carbon sink?”

Of course, you can’t count on such probing questions being asked or answered. But keeping careful, probing questions in mind may help you to sort out which candidates are truly informing the public. We, too, will parse the answers afterwards.

Following are profiles of a dozen candidates, listed alphabetically. They were drawn from those who are leading in the polls, have detailed climate platforms, or represent diverse policies.

“What’s the point of being a progressive if we can’t make progress?” 
—Michael Bennet, November 2017

Been There

Sen. Michael Bennet frequently talks about the twin problems of drought and wildfire that have plagued Colorado for years, problems that scientists say will only worsen with global warming—longer wildfire seasons, shorter ski seasons, scorching drought. In an Iowa campaign speech, he said: “I spent the whole summer meeting with farmers and ranchers in places where I’ll never get 30 percent of the vote in Colorado, who are deeply worried about being able to pass their farms or ranches along to their children or grandchildren because they have no water because of the droughts.”

Done That

Bennet, a scion of a political family with insider Democratic credentials, was initially appointed to the Senate to fill a vacancy. He’s since navigated through the minefields of climate and fossil fuel policy. Notably, he repeatedly broke with most Senate Democrats to vote for the Keystone XL pipeline, an act that climate activists might not swallow easily. He bemoaned the fight over Keystone as “one of those idiotic Washington political games that bounces back and forth and doesn’t actually accomplish anything,” as he said to the Wall Street Journal.

Getting Specific

• Bennet has published an extensive climate platform that promises zero emissions by 2050 “in line with the most aggressive targets set by the world’s scientists.”  But he hasn’t embraced the Green New Deal: “I’m not going to pass judgment one way or another on the Green New Deal,” Bennet said during an Iowa speech in February. “I’m all for anyone expressing themselves about the climate any way they want.”
   
• His climate platform boosts ideas like these: Giving everyone the right to choose clean electricity at a reasonable price from their utility, and doing more to help them choose clean electric cars. Setting up a Climate Bank to catalyze $10 trillion in private innovation and infrastructure, and creating a jobs plan with 10 million green jobs, especially where fossil industries are declining. Setting aside 30 percent of the nation’s land in conservation, emphasizing carbon capture in forests and soils, and promoting a climate role for farmers and ranchers.
   
• The problem he faces is squaring that with an ambivalent record on fossil fuels. His support for Keystone was not an anomaly: Bennet has been supportive of fossil fuel development generally, especially natural gas, as in his support for the Jordan Cove pipeline and natural gas export terminal project in Oregon. In a 2017 op-ed in USA Today, Bennet wrote that “saying no to responsible production of natural gas—which emits half the carbon of the dirtiest coal and is the cleanest fossil fuel—surrenders progress for purity.”
   
• On the other hand, he favors protection for Alaskan wilderness from drilling.
   
• According to his campaign, Bennet “does not accept money from any corporate PACs or lobbyists.” But Bennet has not signed the No Fossil Fuel Funding pledge.
   
• Bennet’s climate plan doesn’t outline specific carbon pricing goals, but he recently released a carbon pollution transparency plan to recognize the full climate costs of carbon pollution when assessing the benefits of environmental protections.
   
• In 2017, Bennet co-introduced a bill to allow businesses to use private activity bonds issued by local or state governments to finance carbon capture projects.
   
• And he has proposed legislation to expand economic opportunities in declining coal communities.

Our Take

Bennet is a climate-aware politician from an energy-rich but environment-friendly swing state who doesn’t aggressively challenge the fossil fuel industry’s drilling, pipeline and export priorities. His platform covers the basics of emissions control, plays a strong federal hand and includes protections for public lands. But his support for the Keystone XL and other fossil development and his sidestepping of issues like carbon pricing shy away from some of the climate actions that progressives hope to push forward.

—By Nina Pullano

“The willing suspension of disbelief can only be sustained for so long.” 
—Joe Biden on climate denial, March 2015

Been There

Among the current candidates, only former Vice President Joseph Biden has debated a Republican opponent during a past contest for the White House—when he was Barack Obama’s running mate and took on Sarah Palin in 2008. It’s a moment that might come back to haunt him, because in a brief discussion of climate change—a chance to trounce her on the question of science denial or fossil fuel favoritism—he instead slipped intoa discussion of what he called “clean coal,” which he said he had favored for 25 years. He explained it away as a reference to exporting American energy technology. But his loose language, taken in today’s context, sounds archaic.

Done That

Biden likes to say he was among the first to introduce a climate change bill in the Senate, and fact checkers generally agree. It was the Global 

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