Climate change on Wednesday got its biggest moment of the Democratic National Convention thus far with passionate speeches delivered by actress Sigourney Weaver and California Gov. Jerry Brown. “Climate change is unlike any other threat we humans face. It’s overarching, it affects the entire Earth and all living things, it’s slow, it’s relentless, it is subject to irreversible tipping points and vast unknowns. Combating climate change, the existential threat of our time, will take heroic effort on the part of many people and many nations,” Brown said.
Weaver and Brown took several shots at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has in the past said he believes climate change is a hoax developed by the Chinese. “Make no mistake, climate change is real. The vast majority of world leaders and climate scientists, like those at NASA and the Department of Defense, indeed almost anyone who chooses to think, believes in the science and climate change and sees the moral imperative to take action. But you wouldn’t know it by listening to Donald Trump,” Brown said.
Earlier in the evening, former Maryland governor and Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley also subjected Trump to harsh criticism. “I’ll tell you what, if the Chinese were really capable of designing some kind of diabolical farce to hurt America, they wouldn’t invent global warming, they’d invent Donald Trump,” he said.
Introducing a video highlighting the effects of climate change on Americans, such as drought, rising sea levels, and more intense weather events, Weaver called into question Trump’s beliefs. “Can Donald Trump look these people in the eye and tell them climate change is a hoax and that there’s nothing we can do? That he doesn’t care about their pain?” she said.
In contrast, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is committed to addressing the threat, according to Weaver and Brown. “Hillary Clinton couldn’t be more different,” Brown said. “While Trump talks, and talks, and talks. Hillary does stuff. She fights for us on the big issues.”
Brown mentioned Clinton’s involvement in international climate change negotiations. As secretary of state, Clinton participated in the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark. The negotiations have generally been accepted to have failed: COP15 did not result in the adoption of the hoped-for international climate change agreement but instead concluded with a non-binding accord that lacked enough support to be adopted.
However, throughout her campaign Clinton has said COP15 laid the groundwork for the successful adoption of the Paris Agreement, the first global climate change accord, in December 2015.
Surprisingly, climate change didn’t get much mention in President Barack Obama’s speech at the end of the evening. The president instead focused on lauding Clinton’s accomplishments and trying to unite the party, which has been in turmoil following a heated primary campaign between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Obama said that to address climate change, all Americans must be included in the conversation. “If you want to fight climate change, we’ve got to engage not only young people on college campuses, but reach out to the coal miner who’s worried about taking care of his family, the single mom worried about gas prices,” Obama said.
