In the past, climate change has barely rated more than a passing mention from candidates of either party. He called on Bernie Sanders to prove he was “tougher” on climate than Hillary Clinton.
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When asked about foreign threats, Sen. For Lincoln Chafee, the former governor of Rhode Island, climate change represents “a real threat to our planet”. While his answer focused on the Middle East, O’Malley noted that climate change “makes cascading threats even worse”. “That is a major crisis”, he said.
That conference was a contentious near total failure, salvaged in the final hours when world leaders agreed on the goal of limiting warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.
Hillary Clinton flexed her climate credentials by recalling roaming the hallways at Copenhagen’s COP15 Climate Summit with President Barack Obama to shake the lapels of Chinese leadership so they would commit to a Carbon dioxide cutting deal. Once they found them, she said, “We marched up, broke in, and said, ‘We’ve been looking all over for you”.
“[Obama] has shown a willingness to provide incentives for the key technology to drastically cut Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., namely Carbon dioxide capture and storage”, she said. “Let’s sit down and talk about what we need to do”.
Sanders, whom Bettis met at a recent Tucson appearance, was applauded by the crowd as he claimed the Republicans have a vested interest in keeping the status quo as it relates to clean energy and carbon emission regulations. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley released the most ambitious and comprehensive climate plan of all the candidates.
In Pakistan, the French Embassy has been working proactively in close collaboration with the Pakistani government and the civil society throughout the year to create a COP21 momentum and raise awareness about climate change, she added.
“I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen”, Obama told PBS’s Jim Lehrer in 2009, “What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn’t too much backsliding from where we were”.
Clinton also deployed the “o”-word”. Later that month he took a trip to Alaska to highlight the dramatic impact of climate change on the Arctic. Among his top policy priorities came an adamant plea to change the nation’s energy future: “We have a moral responsibility to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy and leave this planet a habitable planet for our children and our grandchildren”.
But as for how each of them will actually do it, the debate offered few new revelations. Later in the debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the moderator for the evening, asked the candidates to identify what they viewed as the greatest threat to national security.
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“I have been on the forefront of fighting climate change, starting in 2009, when President Obama and I crashed a meeting on the Chinese and got them to sign up for the first global agreement to combat climate change that they’d ever joined”, she said. “As a presidential candidate, what will you do to address climate change?”
