Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

Even a Republican Debate Has to Cover Climate Change in 2023

A small victory for the planet.

An elephant being asked a question.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

They actually talked about climate change Wednesday night at the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle.

It was a quick conversation — about six minutes total. The non-Donald Trump candidates spent more time sniping at each other (and President Joe Biden) than they did talking about the warming planet. And it was hard to come away from that moment with a belief that anybody on stage had a plan, or even much interest, for addressing the climate.

But they did talk about it.

Better yet, the conversation came early: In the first segment before the commercial break, just 23 minutes into the debate, when the Americans who had tuned in were still actually tuned in. The question came from a younger Republican, naturally, who pointed out that climate change is a big issue for young voters.

What, he asked, could the candidates on stage say to those voters to "calm their fears that Republicans don't care about this?"

Not much as it turned out.

Given a chance to raise their hands if they believed in human-made global warming, none of the eight candidates did so. Instead, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attacked Biden’s response to the deadly Maui wildfire. And anti-woke entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy quickly jumped in to pronounce that “the climate change agenda is a hoax.”

Get one great climate story in your inbox every day:

* indicates required
  • This was just a few moments after Ramaswamy had answered another question by urging America to “burn coal.” So it wasn’t surprising that given another stab at the topic, he doubled down. "The anti-carbon agenda is a wet blanket on our economy," Ramaswamy said. More people are dying from climate policies, he said, than from climate change itself.

    That’s unlikely. Climate change is deadly and only going to get deadlier, particularly for the world’s poorest people. But Ramaswamy left no doubt where he stood.

    Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at least acknowledged the reality of climate change. “Is climate change real? Yes it is,” she acknowledged. But subsidies for green energy from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, she said, aren’t helping Americans. “All that does is help China,” she said. (That might surprise residents of all those red states benefiting from the law’s investments in their districts.)

    And her fellow South Carolinian, Sen. Tim Scott, vowed to solve the problem by bringing jobs back to the United States. Besides, he said, the United States isn’t the only contributor — just look at Africa, India, and China. “Why would we put ourselves at a disadvantage” to those countries, he asked? (The United States, of course, has far and away been the world’s biggest emitter of carbon.)

    After that, it was time for a commercial.

    It wasn’t much, and it couldn’t have possibly satisfied the fears of all those young voters mentioned in the question. But it was remarkable that the question was given such prominence at all.

    The “drag their heels” caucus has prominent members of both parties, of course. But Republicans and their conservative allies have long been ideologically committed to the notion that climate change isn’t real, or if it’s real it’s not human-made, or if it’s human-made it’s still not worse than giving up all those carbon that has produced so much energy — and thus so much wealth — for this country. That’s pretty much how they governed, too.

    Maybe that’s no longer tenable, or at least not entirely. The lower 48 states are sweltering under a record-setting heat dome. They’re still searching for bodies in the ashes of Maui. Wildfires are sparking evacuations in Washington state. That’s just the stuff that’s happened this week.

    For millions of Americans, climate change is no longer theoretical or some future problem to be dealt with later. They’re living it in their real lives, right this very moment.

    Still, old habits die hard. Just a third of Republicans (and GOP-leaning independents) say that climate change has anything to do with the searing temperatures. And while young voters might be concerned about the climate, GOP voters — the folks who will be voting in the primary elections — have other things at the top of their mind.

    Take the victories where you can find them. The existence of a climate change discussion during Wednesday night’s debate was at least a small concession to reality. Possibly there was no other choice. But still. They talked about climate change at the GOP presidential debate. It’s a start.

    Read more about the Republican primary:

    Where the Republican Candidates Stand on Climate Change

    You’re out of free articles.

    Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
    To continue reading
    Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
    or
    Please enter an email address
    By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
    Politics

    AM Briefing: Trump’s Big Speech

    On boasts and brags, clean power installations, and dirty air

    What Trump Said During His Speech to Congress
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: Strong winds helped spark dozens of fires across parched Texas • India’s Himalayan state of Uttarakhand experienced a 600% rise in precipitation over 24 hours, which triggered a deadly avalanche • The world’s biggest iceberg, which has been drifting across the Southern Ocean for 5 years, has run aground.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. What Trump said during his speech to Congress

    President Trump addressed Congress last night in a wide-ranging speech boasting about the actions taken during his first five weeks in office. There were some familiar themes: He claimed to have “ended all of [former President] Biden’s environmental restrictions” (false) and the “insane electric vehicle mandate” (also false — no such thing has ever existed), and bragged about withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement (true). He also doubled down on his plan to boost U.S. fossil fuel production while spouting false statements about the Biden administration’s energy policies, and suggested that Japan and South Korea want to team up with the U.S. to build a “gigantic” natural gas pipeline in Alaska.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Yellow
    Climate

    Why the South Is America’s Newest Tinderbox

    A conversation with Resources for the Future’s David Wear on the fires in the Carolinas and how the political environment could affect the future of forecasting.

    Firefighters.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    The Wikipedia article for “wildfire” has 22 photographs, including those of incidents in Arizona, Utah, Washington, and California. But there is not a single picture of a fire in the American Southeast, despite researchers warning that the lower righthand quadrant of the country will face a “perfect storm” of fire conditions over the next 50 years.

    In what is perhaps a grim premonition of what is to come, several major fires are burning across the Southeast now — including the nearly 600-acre Melrose Fire in Polk County, North Carolina, a little over 80 miles to the west of Charlotte, and the more than 2,000-acre Carolina Forest fire in Horry County, South Carolina. The region is also battling hundreds of smaller brush fires, the smoke from which David Wear — the land use, forestry, and agriculture program director at Resources for the Future — could see out his Raleigh-area window.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Green
    Podcast

    Why Solar Might Be Better Off Than You Think

    Rob and Jesse visit Intersolar and Energy Storage North America.

    Solar panels.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Longtime listeners of Shift Key will recognize the name Intersolar and Energy Storage North America, one of the country’s premier solar industry conferences. Shift Key was live at this year’s event, hosting a panel on the present and future of the solar industry featuring a pair of marquee panelists: Tom Starrs, currently the vice president for government and public affairs at EDP Renewables, North America, who has more than 30 years of experience in the renewables industry; and Maria Robinson, until recently the director of the Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office and now the president and CEO of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. (Robinson is also a repeat Shift Key guest.)

    On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with the panelists about the momentum propelling solar energy forward in the U.S. and whether the uncertainty created by the Trump administration could put a damper on that. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Green