J.D. Vance and Tim Walz on Tuesday avoided talking about the main cause of global warming that is causing some of the severe weather that hit the Southeast this week: burning fossil fuels.
Mr. Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, used rhetoric during his debate with Mr. Walz and questioned established science on climate change. “This idea that carbon emissions are causing all climate change, well, let's just say for the sake of argument that it's true,” he said. Vice presidential candidate Donald J. Trump has derided global warming as a “hoax.”
However, Democratic vice presidential candidate Walz said, “Climate change is real,'' and despite talking about the damage caused by extreme weather, the United States, the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide in history, is slowing carbon emissions. He avoided any suggestion that it should be stopped. Burn oil, gas, and coal.
He spoke about the economic benefits of investing in clean energy and the need for the country to adapt to climate change.
And he boasted that oil and gas production has reached record levels under the Biden administration, along with increases in solar, wind and other non-polluting energy sources. “We are producing more natural gas and oil than ever before,” Walz said. “We're also producing more clean energy.”
Walz's comments echoed a similar line Vice President Kamala Harris made during a debate with Trump last month. “We have invested $1 trillion in our clean energy economy while increasing domestic gas production to historic levels,” Harris said.
It's a subtle shift in messaging within the Democratic Party. Just a few months ago, the White House was trying to sidestep the fact that President Biden, who has campaigned for a transition away from fossil fuels, had actually overseen the largest oil and gas boom in U.S. history.
The situation began to change on August 31, when Biden tweeted on social media that “on my watch” the United States would “take steps to meet our immediate needs without delaying or postponing the transition to clean energy.” “We have increased oil production responsibly.”
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. energy production is currently at an all-time high.
“Democrats have made a political decision that talking about cutting fossil fuel production won't get them more votes,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. He said Harris and Walz's rhetoric implicitly includes a decline in coal, oil and gas because the expansion of wind and solar power they call for would reduce demand for fossil fuels. said.
But Mr Gerrard said the party was not feeling pressure from young voters interested in the environmental movement or climate change to make that point explicitly.
“They believe the environmental vote is already locked in, and what they're concerned about are swing voters, many of whom live in Pennsylvania, which is a fracking state,” he said. Ta.
Harris, a California senator and 2019 presidential candidate, has called for a ban on hydraulic fracturing, a technology that extracts oil and gas from deep underground, which has been linked to environmental and human health problems. I supported it.
She later reversed that position and promised no bans during a debate with Trump last month.
Still, Trump has maintained that a Harris administration would mean the end of fracking and, more broadly, the end of all oil and gas production. His energy policy is defined by his oft-repeated catchphrase: “Drill, baby, drill.” Mr. Trump was scheduled to travel to Midland, Texas, on Wednesday for a fundraiser with oil company executives, according to two people familiar with the event. At a similar event at the Mar-a-Lago resort in April, Trump suggested oil company executives should donate $1 billion to his presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. If elected, Trump would roll back environmental regulations that he said were holding back the oil industry. Attending.
Mr. Vance has also changed his position on energy. In 2020, he stated that “our society has a climate problem” and supported the development of clean energy.
During Tuesday's debate, Vance called clean energy a “slogan” and said that “if you believe” in climate change, the solution is to bring manufacturing back to the United States and “develop as much energy as possible in the United States.” said. Because America is the cleanest economy in the entire world. ”
Walz responded that the Anti-Inflation Act, which President Biden signed into law in 2022 to provide more than $370 billion for wind, solar, batteries and other clean energy production, does just that. “All those things are happening,” he told Vance.
The legislation also includes spending billions of dollars on carbon capture technology for nuclear energy, hydrogen and fossil fuel plants. The Department of Energy recently completed a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to help restart a shuttered nuclear power plant in Michigan. The company will also enter into new oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico as well as waters off the coast of Alaska.
Democrats passed the bill without a single Republican vote. As vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
Amanda Ebersole, executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil and gas industry, said her group “both candidates who took to the stage last night spoke about the importance of America being an energy superpower. I was encouraged by the consensus.” But she said, “There are a lot of unanswered questions about what exactly that means.”
Environmental groups were divided over Democrats' approach to promoting oil and gas development.
Colin Rees, campaign manager for Oil Change US, an environmental group that seeks to phase out fossil fuels, said Walz's position is “at odds with the urgent climate action we know is needed.” said.
For some, Democratic support for clean energy and clear recognition of the climate crisis were more important than agreeing on oil and gas production.
“J.D. Vance is spewing utter nonsense,” said Stevie O'Hanlon, a spokesperson for the environmental group Sunrise Movement. “The Trump-Vance administration doesn’t want to anger fossil fuel billionaire donors, so he has made it clear that he will do nothing to stop the climate crisis and prevent further disasters like Helen.”
Paul Bledsoe, a lecturer at American University's Center for Environmental Policy, said it is “tone-deaf” to refuse to discuss the root causes of climate change in the wake of disasters like Hurricane Helen. “They seem to be so focused on inflation and the economy that they are reluctant to talk about cutting emissions,” he said, adding: “They are overlooking the costs of climate impacts.”
A study published in the journal Nature earlier this year estimated that weather disasters caused by climate change will cost the global economy $38 trillion a year by 2049.
