What Trump and Biden should have said about climate change during the first presidential debate
Watching the first presidential debate, I was blown away by the amount of misinformation and bickering happening on stage. I had a brief second of hope though when the moderator, Chris Wallace, brought up the topic of climate change. I’ve worked in the field of climate science for years and as such was eager to hear what the candidates had to say. Unfortunately, what happened was this:
Not only were the answers short of any information about policy or the urgency of climate action, the conversation devolved into a series of name-calling and baseless claims. As such, I decided to write what the candidates should have said about climate change while keeping to their mannerisms. So here we go.
Chris Wallace: The forest fires in the West are raging now. They have burned millions of acres. They have displaced hundreds of thousands of people. When state officials there blamed the fires on climate change. Mr. President, you said, I don’t think the science knows. Over your four years, you have pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord. You have rolled back a number of Obama Environmental records, what do you believe about the science of climate change and what will you do in the next four years to confront it?
Trump: I want crystal clean water and air. I want beautiful clean air. We have now the lowest carbon… If you look at our numbers right now, we are doing phenomenally. But I haven’t destroyed our businesses. Our businesses aren’t put out of commission. If you look at the Paris Accord, it was a disaster from our standpoint. And people are actually very happy about what’s going on because our businesses are doing well. As far as the fires are concerned, you need forest management. In addition to everything else, the forest floors are loaded up with trees, dead trees that are years old and they’re like tinder and leaves and everything else. You drop a cigarette in there the whole forest burns down. You’ve got to have forest management.
Smart Trump: I want a climate that will support a booming economy. I want clean air and clean water and the lowest carbon emissions. If you look at the numbers, China is emitting twice as much carbon as us. They pollute our air and it hurts our businesses. Farmers, fishermen, insurance companies, tourism, they’re all being devastated by climate change right now. If you look at the Paris Accord, it was a disaster. There were no mandates, no enforcement, and look now all these countries aren’t meeting their goals. Our businesses need us to address climate change. Just look at California and these fires. Businesses are being burnt to a crisp. We can’t have that. It’s not just forest management. These forests are getting dryer and hotter because of climate change. Tinder everywhere. You drop a cigarette in there and the whole forest burns down. That didn’t happen before. You’ve got to have global action on climate change.
Chris Wallace: What do you believe about the science of climate change, sir?
Trump: I believe that we have to do everything we can to have immaculate air immaculate water and do whatever else we can that’s good. We’re planting a billion trees, the Billion Tree Project and it’s very exciting for a lot of people.
Smart Trump: Of course. The science is clear. Climate change is happening. If we want to have immaculate air and immaculate water, we need to address it. We need carbon sequestration. We need to plant trees. That’s why I reversed my decision to allow logging in the Tongass National Forest.
Chris Wallace: You believe that human pollution, gas, greenhouse gas emissions contributes to the global warming of this planet.
Trump: I think a lot of things do, but I think to an extent, yes. I think to an extent, yes, but I also think we have to do better management of our forest. Every year I get the call. California’s burning, California’s burning. If that was cleaned, if that were, if you had forest management, good forest management, you wouldn’t be getting those calls. In Europe, they live they’re forest cities. They call forest cities. They maintain their forest. They manage their forest. I was with the head of a major country, it’s a forest city. He said, ‘Sir, we have trees that are far more, they ignite much easier than California. There shouldn’t be that problem.’ I spoke with the Governor about it. I’m getting along very well with the governor. But I said, ‘At some point you can’t every year have hundreds of thousands of acres of land just burned to the ground.’ That’s burning down because of a lack of management.
Smart Trump: Yes. Humans are the dominant cause of climate change and our climate would be dramatically cooler without human emissions. It’s not forest management. It’s not a hoax. Every year I get the call. California is burning and it’s caused by climate change. If we reduced emissions to zero, I wouldn’t get those calls. Europe has the right idea. Their investing in reforestation.
Chris Wallace: But sir if you believe in the science of climate change, why have you rolled back the Obama Clean Power Plan which limited carbon emissions and power plants? Why have you relaxed…?
Trump: Because it was driving energy prices through the sky.
Smart Trump: I shouldn’t have. Those policies were crucial first steps to comprehensive climate policy.
Biden: Why have you relaxed fuel economy standards that are going to create more pollution from cars and trucks?
Trump: Well, not really because what’s happening is the car is much less expensive and it’s a much safer car and you talk it about a tiny difference. And then what would happen because of the cost of the car you would have at least double and triple the number of cars purchased. We have the old slugs out there that are 10, 12 years old. If you did that, the car would be safer. It would be much cheaper by $3,500.
Smart Trump: The car industry is booming. Just look at Tesla. Its stock has gone up nearly ten-fold this year. That’s because our administration has pushed for companies with sustainable solutions to the climate crisis. We don’t need restrictive policies, we need to encourage the growth of companies making electric cars so that the American people don’t have to drive gas guzzlers.
Chris Wallace: But in the case of California they have simply ignored that.
Trump: No, but you would take a lot of cars off the market because people would be able to afford a car. Now, by the way, we’re going to see how that turns out. But a lot of people agree with me, many people. The car has gotten so expensive because they have computers all over the place for an extra little bit of gasoline. And I’m okay with electric cars too. I think I’m all for electric cars. I’ve given big incentives for electric cars but what they’ve done in California is just crazy.
Smart Trump: I’m in favor of state rights. If California wants to have more restrictive emissions standards, they can. I’m a huge proponent of electric cars. I’ve given big incentives for electric car development and California is leading that charge. We need to radically change the type of cars on the road. I think that’s through promoting Green businesses whereas California think it’s best to do it through regulation. Both work.
Chris Wallace: All right, Vice president Biden. I’d like you to respond to the president’s climate change record but I also want to ask you about a concern. You propose $2 trillion in green jobs. You talk about new limits, not abolishing, but new limits on fracking. Ending the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity by 2035 and zero emission of greenhouse gases by 2050. The president says a lot of these things would tank the economy and cost millions of jobs.
Biden: He’s absolutely wrong, number one. Number two, if in fact, during our administration in the recovery act, I was in charge able to bring down the cost of renewable energy to cheaper than are as cheap as coal and gas and oil. Nobody’s going to build another coal fired plant in America. No one’s going to build another oil fire plant in America. They’re going to move to renewable energy. Number one, number two, we’re going to make sure that we are able to take the federal fleet and turn it into a fleet that’s run on their electric vehicles. Making sure that we can do that, we’re going to put 500,000 charging stations in all of the highways that we’re going to be building in the future. We’re going to build a economy that in fact is going to provide for the ability of us to take 4 million buildings and make sure that they in fact are weatherized in a way that in fact will they’ll emit significantly less gas and oil because the heat will not be going out. There’s so many things that we can do. Gas and oil because the heat will not be going out. There’s so many things that we can do now to create thousands and thousands of jobs. We can get to net zero, in terms of energy production, by 2035. Not only not costing people jobs, creating jobs, creating millions of good-paying jobs. Not 15 bucks an hour, but prevailing wage, by having a new infrastructure that in fact, is green. And the first thing I will do, I will rejoin the Paris Accord. I will join the Paris Accord because with us out of it, look what’s happening. It’s all falling apart. And talk about someone who has no relationship with foreign policy. The rain forests of Brazil are being torn down, are being ripped down. More carbon is absorbed in that rain forest than every bit of carbon that’s emitted in the United States. Instead of doing something about that, I would be gathering up and making sure we had the countries of the world coming up with $20 billion, and say, ‘Here’s $20 billion. Stop tearing down the forest. And If you don’t, then you’re going to have significant economic consequences.’
Smart Biden: Unchecked climate change is expected to cause the US 10.5% of our GDP by 2100. That’s 5 trillion dollars per year, $21,000 per taxpayer. Can you afford that? Can the people suffering with evictions and joblessness around the country afford that? No. Instead of waiting around for catastrophic hurricanes to hit and crops to fail, I say we invest in our economy. My plan invests $2 trillion over 4 years into green jobs and sustainable infrastructure. That means that there will be thousands of new jobs for solar panel workers or wind turbine manufacturers. We can’t keep building oil-fired power plants in America. It’s making people sick and it’s destroying our climate. We need to move to renewable energy. We need electric vehicles. We need charging stations on every highway. That’s what we’d be building towards during my administration. We’re going to build buildings that are energy efficient and save taxpayers money. We’re going to make sure that your house doesn’t get flooded or burned. There are so many things we can do to create thousands of thousands of good-paying jobs. Not 15 bucks an hour, but enough to build a family. We’ve got to act fast. We can get to net zero emissions by 2035 without costing people jobs and saving millions of lives from heat stroke, disease, and food insecurity. The first thing I’m going to do is rejoin the Paris Accord and demand that countries meet their agreed goals. In Brazil, we need to do everything we can to save the rainforest. That means paying Brazilians to not cut down trees since every tree that’s cut down is carbon storage that’s lost. We need to think about climate policy holistically and be stewards for the world.
Chris Wallace: What about the argument that President Trump basically says, that you have to balance environmental interests and economic interests? And he’s drawn his line.
Biden: Well, he hasn’t drawn a line. He wants to make sure that methane’s not a problem. You can now emit more methane without it being a problem. Methane. This is a guy who says that you don’t have to have mileage standards for automobiles that exist now. This is the guy who says that, the fact that-
Smart Biden: Saving the environment means saving the economy. The US can’t afford the trillions of dollars in damages that will come every year from hurricanes and wildfires and sea level rise. We can avoid these catastrophic losses. We don’t have to suffer through Texas being flooded every time there’s a storm. We don’t have to live with farmers losing their crops to endless droughts. We can save the environment and save the economy in the process. We can invest in green jobs and battery technology so that our manufacturing grows.
Trump: He’s talking about the Green New Deal. And it’s not 2 billion or 20 billion, as you said. It’s $100 trillion.
Chris Wallace: Let him go for a minute, and then you can go.
Trump: And rebuild the building.
Biden: No.
Trump: It’s the dumbest-
Biden: That is not-
Trump: … most ridiculous, where two car systems are out-
Biden: Not true-
Trump: … where they want to take out the cows too.
Biden: Not true.
Trump: That’s not true either, right?
Biden: Not true.
Trump: This is a 100 trillion-
Biden: Simply… Look-
Trump: That’s more money than our country could make in 100 years.
Biden: That is simply not the case-
Trump: [crosstalk]
Chris Wallace: Let him finish, sir.
Biden: He doesn’t know how to do that-
Trump: 100 million dollars.
Chris Wallace: All right. Let me, wait a minute, sir. I actually have studied your plan, and it includes upgrading 4 million buildings, weatherizing 2 million homes over four years, building one and a half million energy efficient homes. So the question becomes, the president is saying, I think some people who support the president would say, that sounds like it’s going to cost a lot of money and hurt the economy.
Biden: The fact is, it’s going to create millions of good paying jobs, and these tax incentives for people to weatherize, which he wants to get rid of. It’s going to make the economy much safer. Look how much we’re paying now to deal with the hurricanes, deal with… By the way, he has an answer for hurricanes. He said, maybe we should drop a nuclear weapon on them, and they may-
Smart Biden: What costs money and hurts the economy is climate change. Millions of homes are being destroyed by hurricanes and fires, crops are dying, towns are being flooded, heat waves and infectious diseases are filling our hospitals. This all has a dramatic price tag that can be avoided if we act on climate. My climate bill would cost $2 trillion dollars over 4 years. I’ve checked the math, that’s a whole lot less than the $5 trillion per year of damages if we do nothing. My plan would create millions of good paying jobs. His plan is to watch the world burn.
Trump: I never said that at all-
Biden: Yeah, he did say that-
Trump: They made it up.
Biden: And here’s the deal-
Trump: You make up a lot-
Biden: … we’re going to be in a position where we can create hard, hard, good jobs by making sure the environment is clean, and we all are in better shape. We spend billions of dollars now, billions of dollars, on floods, hurricanes, rising seas. We’re in real trouble. Look what’s happened just in the Midwest with these storms that come through and wipe out entire sections and counties in Iowa. They didn’t happen before. They’re because of global warming. We make up 15% of the world’s problem. But the rest of the world, we’ve got to get them to come along. That’s why we have to get back into the Paris Accord.
Smart Biden: The American people need to ask themselves if their willing to throw away trillions of dollars on floods, fires, and rising sea level instead of investing that money into creating good jobs that clean the environment. Storms are already devastating communities throughout the country. Just look at Iowa where rainfall rates are increasing faster than anywhere else in the country and people are dying from rampant heat waves. This is a serious problem and it didn’t happen before. It’s because of global warming. We need to get back into the Paris Accord and we need climate action now.
Trump: So why didn’t you get the world… China sends up real dirt into the air. Russia does. India does. They all do. We’re supposed to be good. And by the way, he made a couple of statements. The Green New Deal is a hundred trillion dollars.
Biden: That is not my plan. The Green New Deal is not my plan.
Smart Biden: I helped get the Paris Accord signed. That was an international plan for getting countries like China and Russia to reduce their emissions. We had momentum to solve climate change and you stomped on it. There was a time when the United States was a role model to the rest of the world, when we knew that if we took decisive action on climate, other countries would follow. Trump has made a mockery of our reputation and as such, China and Russia are emitting like crazy.
Trump: He made a statement about the military. He said I said something about the military. He and his friends made it up, and then they went with it. I never said it.
Chris Wallace: Okay. Mr. Vice President-
Trump: He called the military stupid bastards.
Biden: I did not say that-
Trump: He said it on tape.
Chris Wallace: Please, sir. Stop.
Trump: I would never say that.
Biden: Play it. Play it
Chris Wallace: Stop. Go ahead.
Trump: You’re on tape-
Chris Wallace: Mr. Vice President answered his final question.
Biden: The final question is, I can’t remember which of all his rantings.
Chris Wallace: I’m having a little trouble myself, but…
Biden: Yeah.
Chris Wallace: And about the economy and about this question of what it’s going to cost. The Green New Deal and the idea of what your environmental changes will do-
Biden: The Green New Deal will pay for itself as we move forward. We’re not going to build plants that, in fact, are great polluting plants-
Chris Wallace: So, do you support the Green New Deal?
Biden: No, I don’t support the Green New Deal.
Smart Biden: Yes, I do. The Green New Deal is the most comprehensive policy for a just transition to renewable energy.
Trump: Oh, you don’t? Oh, well, that’s a big statement. You just lost the radical left.
Biden: I support the Biden plan that I put forward. The Biden plan, which is different than what he calls the radical Green New Deal.
Smart Biden: Through my time in politics, I’ve listened to young people and scientists and have learned that taking a moderate position on climate change is dangerous and will cost Americans lives and untold financial loss. I’ve incorporated several key aspects of the Green New Deal into my climate policy to make sure we meet the goal of 50% renewable by the end of the decade as suggested by the IPCC. My policy ensures that we make this transition in the most equitable way possible, a way that supports all Americans, Republicans included.