SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
abc news
Will Helene Force Vance to Face Climate Crisis on the Debate Stage?
In a time when we face unprecedented disaster, we need our media institutions to be a source of truth and honesty and to be ready to hold those in power accountable.
Oct 01, 2024
Tonight is the vice presidential debate and it’s likely the final debate of the election and the last opportunity for voters to see both tickets side-by-side. The backdrop will be the once-in-a-generation devastation of Hurricane Helene.
When Walz and Vance take the stage, tens of thousands of people won’t know if their loved ones are alive or if they have a home to go back to. Many more will just be beginning a recovery effort that will take years and cost an estimated $90 billion or more. And Helene is just one sign of the catastrophic destruction that climate change could bring.
We deserve some answers from these men who are running to be second in line to the presidency. CBS debate moderator Norah O'Donnell must ask both JD Vance and Tim Walz what their administrations would do to stop disasters like Helene from becoming the new normal. And, in particular, she needs to be ready to hold JD Vance accountable to actually delivering a response.
With the backdrop of Helene, O'Donnell has an opportunity to show a different path tonight. She can ask strong questions and be ready with facts to hold Vance accountable.
The reality is that our politicians are not confronting the climate crisis at the scale and speed that science and justice demand. Our Vice President is boasting about record oil and gas production in a time when scientists have warned we must be decarbonizing as fast as possible. And her opponent, Donald Trump, is a climate denier who has promised oil and gas billionaires to do their bidding in exchange for a billion dollars. When the candidates were asked about climate change in the last debate, Trump entirely dodged the question, instead pivoting to an irrelevant tangent about auto-plants and tariffs, despite the fact that Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act actually created manufacturing jobs. ABC news moderators didn’t follow up or press the question.
In the year 2024 that doesn’t cut it. Scientists say we have just a handful of years left to stop catastrophic climate change. Helene’s apocalyptic nature is only a sign of the years to come. That makes the next four years of American politics an absolutely critical time for bold climate policy. We could be investing in resilient renewable electricity grids, updating our bridges and our roads, and making sure our homes and infrastructure are ready for disaster. We could be restoring wetlands, mangroves, and forests; expanding FEMA; and building a workforce that is ready to respond to disasters. And above all, we need to decarbonize our economy as fast as humanly possible.
But looking at media coverage, you’d hardly know the urgency of the climate crisis. The vast majority of media coverage of disasters like Helene doesn’t identify climate change as a factor. Even when broadcast news does talk about climate change, only 12% of the time do they mention burning fossil fuels as the problem. And in a bizarre attempt at neutrality, climate deniers in the Republican Party are regularly platformed without being fact-checked or held accountable for their lies.
With the backdrop of Helene, O'Donnell has an opportunity to show a different path tonight. She can ask strong questions and be ready with facts to hold Vance accountable. She should have on hand statements from JD Vance outlining his denial of human-caused climate change—a sharp reversal from his status as a green tech investor just a few years ago. She should be ready to cite opposition to the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark green energy bill that invests $12 billion in Ohio’s green energy economy and has created good, union jobs.
In a time when we face unprecedented disaster, we need our media institutions to be a source of truth and honesty and to be ready to hold those in power accountable. The tens of thousands of people who have lost their homes to Helene, the people who have had to evacuate from wildfires, the elderly and young people who have died from heat waves, the young people who are scared for their future—we are owed answers.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Harris Urged to 'Absolutely Go After Trump for Being in the Pocket of Big Oil'
"Trump cozying up with the industry is wildly unpopular," asserted climate campaigner Jamie Henn.
Sep 10, 2024
Noting former U.S. President Donald Trump's coziness with the fossil fuel industry and the fact that an overwhelming majority of voters want politicians to tackle its greed, one prominent climate campaigner urged Vice President Kamala Harris—the Democratic nominee—to highlight her Republican opponent's Big Oil ties during Tuesday night's debate.
"Harris should absolutely go after Trump for being in the pocket of Big Oil," Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn said on social media, adding that "89% of Americans want politicians to crack down on Big Oil price gouging."
In a
separate post, Henn urged ABC News, which is hosting the first—and likely only—2024 presidential debate, to ask the candidates about the climate emergency.
"Ninety-nine percent of Americans have experienced some form of extreme weather this year," he wrote. "If ABC News doesn't ask about the climate crisis this evening, it's journalistic malpractice."
On Tuesday, a trio of Democratic U.S. lawmakers called on fossil fuel executives to comply with a request for "information regarding quid pro quo solicitations" from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who earlier this year promised to gut climate regulations if they donated $1 billion to his Republican presidential campaign.
Climate campaigners have been warning of the dangers of a second term for Trump, who during his previous administration rolled back regulations protecting the climate, environment, and biodiversity, resulting in increased pollution and
premature deaths and fueling catastrophic planetary heating.
"If a Trump administration was merely going to be a four-year interregnum, it would be annoying. But in fact it comes at precisely the moment when we need, desperately,
acceleration," 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote in a Guardian opinion article last week.
"The world's climate scientists have done their best to set out a timetable: Cut emissions in half by 2030 or see the possibilities of anything like the Paris pathway, holding temperature increases to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, disappear," he continued. "That cut is on the bleeding edge of the technically possible, but only if everyone is acting in good faith. And the next presidential term will end in January of 2029, which is 11 months before 2030."
"If we elect Donald Trump, we may feel the effects not for years, and not for a generation," McKibben added. "We may read our mistake in the geological record a million years hence. This one really counts."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Dodges ABC and Demands Fox Debate With Harris
"Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to," said the Democrat's campaign.
Aug 03, 2024
After nearly two weeks of refusing to commit to debating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC, former Republican President Donald Trump said late Friday that he wouldn't join the September 10 face-off and had agreed to a Fox News-hosted event instead.
Trump had agreed to appear on ABC when President Joe Biden was seeking reelection, but since a disastrous debate performance on CNN in June led the 81-year-old Democrat to pass the touch to Harris—who on Friday secured enough delegates for the Democratic nomination—the 78-year-old Republican nominee has been noncommittal.
"I have agreed with Fox News to debate Kamala Harris on Wednesday, September 4th," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "The debate was previously scheduled against Sleepy Joe Biden on ABC, but has been terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant, and I am in litigation against ABC Network and George Slopadopoulos, thereby creating a conflict of interest."
Trump is suingABC and George Stephanopoulos for defamation over the anchor's characterization of a civil jury last year finding the ex-president civilly liable for sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in 1996.
The Fox event, which Harris has not yet agreed to, will be held in the swing state of Pennsylvania and moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, according to Trump's late-night post. He said that "the rules will be similar to the rules of my debate with Sleepy Joe, who has been treated horribly by his party—BUT WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!"
Since embracing Biden's endorsement last month, Harris has taken aim at Trump for suggesting he would back out of the ABC debate. During a Tuesday campaign rally in Georgia, said: "Well Donald, I do hope you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. Because as the saying goes, 'If you've got something to say, say it to my face.'"
After the Republican's Friday post, Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement that "Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out."
"He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on September 10," Tyler continued. "The vice president will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime-time national audience."
"We're happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to," he added. "Mr. Anytime, anywhere, anyplace should have no problem with that unless he's too scared to show up on the 10th."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular