Climate change: Where the 2016 presidential candidates stand on our global future
Michael Walsh
Reporter
Yahoo Politics
August 17, 2015
(Yahoo News photo illustration/AP)
The effects of human-induced climate change that scientists have predicted in the past are now observable: powerful heat waves, lost sea ice and higher sea levels.
These same experts say worldwide temperatures will continue to increase over the next few decades as a result of greenhouse-gas production — with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Most leading scientific organizations have issued public statements saying climate-warming trends have been the result of human activity: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and many others.
Studies in numerous peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent of active climate scientists endorse this position.
In an attempt to be objective, some journalists and pundits have at times given equal weight to arguments on both sides of the “debate” — creating the logical fallacy of false equivalence. Just because the public is divided over an issue does not mean the experts are.
Meanwhile, the 2016 presidential candidates’ positions on climate change fall across a wide spectrum. Some laugh off man-made climate change as a hoax, while others accept the scientific consensus, though they disagree on the best course of action.
This is where the contenders for the White House stand on the issue:
The Democrats
All of the Democratic candidates say that anthropogenic, or human-action driven, climate change is a reality, though their commitment to fighting it varies.
Hillary Clinton, former secretary of stateAnthropogenic climate change: real
Hillary Clinton is widely considered the Democratic frontrunner. (Photo: International Business Times)
“It’s hard to believe that there are people running for president who still refuse to accept the settled science of climate change, who would rather remind us they are not scientists than listen to those who are,” she said in a campaign video last month.
Clinton says she would set two ambitious national goals on her first day as president: (1) having more than half a billion solar panels installed by the end of her first term and (2) generating enough power with renewable energy to power every home in the U.S. within 10 years.
But her actions have not always backed up her rhetoric.
As a senator, Clinton voted in favor of offshore oil drilling. As secretary of state, she supported hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for shale gas domestically and abroad.
“Now, I know that in some places is controversial. But natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel available for power generation today, and a number of countries in the Americas may have shale gas resources,” she said in a speech to the Inter-American Development Bank in April 2010.
The Clinton Foundation has accepted millions of dollars from multinational oil companies, such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. Clinton refuses to give her opinion on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which environmentalists say would increase carbon pollution dramatically.
On the other hand, she strongly supports the Environmental Protection Agency’s CO2-reducing Clean Power Plan, which was finalized this month, and said it must be “protected at all cost.”
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Climate change: Where the 2016 presidential candidates stand on our global future
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