Republican Donald Trump doesn’t believe in climate change, Democrat Hillary Clinton does, and by Wednesday one of them will be the president-elect of the United States.
In a chaotic election season, the candidate’s climate change positions took a backseat to allegations of fraud, impropriety, abuse, and dishonesty. Those watching for it, however, got a heap of fodder for the climate change movement.
None of the moderators in the three formal presidential debates of the general election asked the candidates about climate change, though Clinton did raise the topic a handful of times. That indicates the candidate was more interested than the media in making climate change an issue in the election, according to Jason Kowalski, U.S. policy director for 350.org. “For whatever reason it’s very telling of the media coverage of climate change that the debate moderators didn’t ask any questions about it,” he said. “Hillary Clinton has brought up climate change almost every chance she can get. She brought it up in the first few minutes of a few debates because she knows that it’s necessary to invigorate the base voters.”
Perhaps the most memorable mention of climate occurred early in the first presidential debate. Clinton claimed Trump had called climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, to which he responded: “I did not. I did not. I do not say that. I do not say that.”
Trump did say that. In a tweet on Nov. 6, 2012, the date President Barack Obama won re-election: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
He also referred to global warming as a hoax in a series of January 2014 tweets: “NBC News just called it the great freeze – coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?”; “Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!”; and, “Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air – not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense.”
Throughout the campaign, Trump has decried the current administration’s climate policies, such as U.S. participation in in the international Paris Agreement on climate change, which he said he would “cancel” if elected. The agreement entered into force Friday and includes language barring any member party from leaving for four years after that milestone, taking that option off Trump’s menu.
Trump’s energy plan focuses on deregulating the power industry. He has stated support for clean coal technologies and has committed to reopening coal mines. The real estate mogul would also make it easier to harvest fossil fuels on federal lands.
Trump latched on to a comment made by Clinton in early March and ran with it for the length of his campaign. During a campaign stop in Ohio, the former senator and secretary of state suggested her energy policy, which is focused on a massive expansion of the nation’s renewable energy sector, would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
Trump and others who have lashed Clinton’s statement have generally ignored the rest of her message: “We’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.”
The Trump campaign failed to respond to many requests for comment throughout the campaign.
ClearPath, a Republican organization launched to support a conservative clean energy agenda, declined to comment on the Trump campaign and has remained mostly silent on the presidential election.
Clinton recognizes Trump’s climate denial as a weak spot and has played it to her advantage throughout the campaign, Kowalski said. “Belief in science is a very popular position. Most Americans want a president who listens to science, who believes in the scientific method,” he said. “Pointing out that Donald Trump doesn’t believe in climate science, doesn’t trust climate scientists, thinks climate science is a conspiracy made up by the Chinese, that doesn’t play well with voters who might be on the fence or consider themselves political moderates.”
While Clinton’s belief in climate change gives her a definitive edge over Trump with the 64 percent of Americans who said in a March Gallup poll they worry about climate change, she is not the ideal candidate on the issue, Kowalski said, noting her former support of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Clinton’s main rival in the Democratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), holds a more progressive position on climate issues. He helped move the party to the left on the subject, as illustrated by the party platform adopted in July.
This election’s Democratic platform is unique as the platform committee was not selected solely by the party’s nominee, because at the time the 15 panel members were appointed in May there was no clear pick. Therefore, instead of the platform essentially being built on Clinton’s campaign promises, committee members appointed by Sanders had some say in the final document. Sanders named five drafting committee members, Clinton named six, and the rest were appointed by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), then the chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Notably, Sander’s delegates were able to get mention of carbon pricing into the platform. “Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and help meet our climate goals,” the platform says.
“I don’t think he changed her mind on anything, but I think he forced her to reckon with the base of the Democratic Party that didn’t agree with the positions she was taking,” Kowalski said. “In the Democratic platform conversation, part of winning Bernie’s endorsement meant agreeing to a lot of the climate policies that he championed in the Democratic Party platform. That’s what she’s campaigning on right now thanks to pressure from Bernie Sanders and the climate movement.”
The difficulty for the environmental movement now is to hold Clinton accountable if she is elected president. “I think that the real test is after we succeed in electing Hillary Clinton, will she tell us to get a life again or will she continue to be swayed by the power of [our] organizing?” said Kowalski, who added he has faith in the movement’s “ability to organize and pressure her into adopting our positions.”
The Republican primary had its own drama as Trump emerged from a massive field of 16 candidates. While many candidates in the primary had expressed doubts about climate change, it was not an undisputed position. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, for example, came down in favor of climate change as being real and fueled by human activities. “I do believe we contribute to climate change, but I don’t think it has to be either you’re for some environmentally stringent rules, or you’re not going to have any jobs. The fact is, you can have both,” he said during a March 13 primary debate.
Had Kasich become the Republican nominee, it wouldn’t have changed the race much on the issue of climate, Kowalski said. “The top priority for the climate movement is electing candidates who support keeping fossil fuels in the ground. If you care about climate change, that is the top test of climate leadership not whether or not you claim to say yes to climate science or even yes to using clean energy,” he said.