Why talk of fighting climate change is muted in the U.S. presidential campaign

Both candidates were asked the same question in this week's U.S. presidential debate: "What would you do to fight climate change?"

Only one answered.

"The former president had said that climate change is a hoax, and what we know is that it is very real," said Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the White House.

Donald Trump the former president and Republican contender didn't answer the question at all, pivoting to Mexican auto plants and the "crooked" Biden administration.

As Americans struggle through another year of record-defying heat, extreme rainfall and raging wildfires, climate change has not captured significant focus on the campaign trail, with voters citing the economy and immigration among their top concerns.

Climate advocates call it a missed opportunity, but acknowledge some of it is political strategy.

"We definitely do want to push Harris to do better," to be more forceful advocating for climate change issues on the campaign trail, said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a climate action group.

'Walking that line'

But with less than two months to go before the election, "I cannot overstate how much of a disaster Donald Trump would be for the planet," Shiney-Ajay said.

"We do want to make sure to keep him out of office, so we're walking that line of being able to do both those things."

Put another way, avoid scaring off a thin band of undecided voters and get Harris into the White House, then lean on her to champion climate issues.

But the Sunrise Movement criticized her performance in Tuesday's debate, accusing Harris of spending more time promoting fracking than laying out a bold vision for an energy future.

"I think [Harris] has got a complicated challenge," said Neil Chatterjee, who Trump appointed in 2017 to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the U.S.'s energy regulator.

"She wants to energize the progressive base, which really cares about decarbonization and climate issues. But she needs to win some of those industrial midwestern swing states in order to get elected president," he said.

"Particularly in a state like Pennsylvania, some of [her] more assertive approaches on decarbonization may not play well in a state that benefits so greatly from the natural gas industry," Chatterjee said, referencing that state's outsized influence in this election, with the potential for its 19 electoral college votes to decide the result.

Touting her record

Political analysts have been noting Harris's avoidance of addressing climate head on since her nomination. Many say she is banking on her resume to win over climate-focused voters, rather than words that could be polarizing in key battlegrounds.

During the debate Tuesday night, Harris touted her record on both renewable energies and natural gas.

"I am proud that as vice-president, over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy, while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels," she said.

WATCH | Key moments from the debate between Trump and Harris:

Key moments from the Trump-Harris debate

10 days ago

Duration 3:11

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sparred over abortion, the state of U.S. democracy and the 2020 election during the ABC News Presidential Debate on Tuesday in Philadelphia. Here are some of the major moments including one where moderator David Muir fact-checked one of Trumps assertions.

Harris is seen in Democrat circles as a climate champion. She's on record supporting renewable energy, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, calling for more incentives for electric vehicles and backing the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act, the largest clean energy and climate investment bill in U.S. history.

But she's dogged by promises she made in 2019, running against Joe Biden to be the Democratic presidential nominee. Harris said she supported a ban on fracking, a method of extracting gas or oil deep underground using a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals. She's still trying to answer for her flip-flop now.

"I made that clear in 2020, [when she joined the Biden ticket] I will not ban fracking. I did not ban fracking as the vice-president," Harris said in Tuesday's debate.

Casting his doubts

But Trump kept coming casting doubt and suspicions that "Comrade" Harris will change her mind again.

"If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on Day 1," Trump said, launching into his view of energy policy under Harris.

"Oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead, we'll go back to windmills and we'll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out 400-500 acres," said Trump,adding mid-sentence "by the way, I'm a big fan of solar."

Solar is undeniablygrowing. The U.S. Energy Information Administration is forecasting a 37 per cent increase in American solar power in 2024, mirroring rapid growth in solar capacity globally.

Chatterjee predicts that should Trump be elected again, "clean energy and decarbonization will continue to thrive. Nothing is going to stop the trajectory of the clean energy transition. It's here. It's happening. And I think it's time for conservatives to start embracing it."

Many have beencalling on Trump to maintain parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, with some Republican members of Congress saying major investments in new U.S. energy infrastructureand tax credits have "spurred innovation, incentivized investmentand created good jobs."

The difference between Trump and Harris, Chatterjee said, is Trump will never say any of his policies are remotely related to combatting climate change.

At his rallies and in his speeches, Trump says the Democrats are wasting money with "crazy" climate initiatives, when the country has "liquid gold" under its feet. At the Republican convention in July, he promised to slash energy costs in manufacturing and household goods.

His campaign says EV mandates threaten American autoworkers and force consumers to buy expensive electric cars.

WATCH |J.D. Vance's hometown benefits from Biden's climate plan:

J.D. Vances hometown benefits from what he calls Bidens climate scam

1 month ago

Duration 3:12

Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is targeting Joe Bidens climate plan as a wedge issue for Novembers election, despite his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, standing to gain half a billion dollars from it.

In an interview last week, Trump mocked the "fools" and "lunatics" who are talking about global warming.

"They don't call it that anymore. They call it climate change because some parts of the world are cooling, some are warming; so that didn't work," he said, "these lunatics who are warning the oceans will rise an eighth of an inch [0.3 centimetres] in 355 years."

In fact, sea level rise has topped 15 to 20 centimetresin the southern United States over the past 15 years, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite data and data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Silent on climate goals

Trump's campaign has so far been silent on climate goals and bringing down carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.

He's promised to "terminate the socialist Green New Deal," referring to the Inflation Reduction Act, and make the country "energy dominant" in part by increasing energy production and ending"market-distorting" restrictions on oil, natural gas and coal, summarized in his rallying cry: "We're going to drill, baby, drill."

Shiney-Ajay, with the Sunrise Movement, said Trump and his supporters have "villainized a lot of climate positions," with the consequence in this election "of creating this bogeyman," where "you can't go left on climate" and win the election.

She counters that even though climate is not at the top of most voters' list of priorities this year, a majority of Americans want more federal action to combat what they experience daily from extreme storms and soaring temperatures to raging wildfires.

Over the next eight weeks, political analysts forecast Harris will continue to frame clean energy and natural gas as two paths to the future, while Trump invokes "drill, baby, drill."