Today, Explained - CNN's climate marathon in 20 minutes

Episode Date: September 5, 2019

We watched seven straight hours of Democrats discussing climate policy so you wouldn't have to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yesterday was an unprecedented day for United States presidential politics and the environment. We had many lines going directly, many models, each line being a model, and they were going directly through, and in all cases, Alabama was hit. If not lightly, in some cases pretty hard. Georgia, Alabama was a different route. They actually gave that a 95% chance. On one side, you had President Trump hold up a map of Hurricane Dorian's path that looks to have been altered with a sharpie to include Alabama,

even though the National Weather Service has made it clear over and over again that the hurricane will not hit Alabama. But I think Georgia is going to be in great shape. Everyone's going to be in great shape because we're going to take care of it regardless. That's never really happened before. Good evening and welcome to the CNN Democratic presidential town hall on the climate crisis. On the other side, you had 10 of the leading Democratic candidates for president stop by one by one at CNN to talk about climate change. Tonight, Democratic and independent voters will be asking the questions live here in our audience and also by video. It was in-depth. It was unprecedented. It was seven hours long.

Umair Irfan watched it from beginning to end for Vox. Because I have sinned and God hates me. Was there a reason this thing needed to be seven hours? Well, it was a constraint from the format. The backdrop of this is that the Democratic National Committee, which manages the presidential debate format during the primary, has in its rules that you cannot have an outside debate, that candidates cannot participate in something that isn't sponsored by the DNC lest they'll be barred from the main stage. And they also voted down holding an official climate change debate. That said, in their rules, they do allow forums and town hall format type events. And this is the loophole that CNN decided to exploit. But what that means is that you couldn't get the

candidates all on stage at the same time. So the result was back to back to back to back interviews. Do you remember the order it went in? I believe it started with the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and then a whole bunch of blank space. I'm going to say Castro

not Klobuchar someone else. No it was Castro Yang Klobuchar? No she was after the break. Klobuchar? No, she was after the break. Klobuchar, Yang. Oh, wait. Kamala?

Castro? Yang. Castro, Yang. Kamala. Kamala Harris. Klobuchar? Yes. Yes.

Klobuchar. Biden? Biden. Bernie? Warren. Warren. Biden. Bernie. Warren. Warren. Buttigieg.

Buttigieg. Beto. And Booker. We did it, Umair. Did we? Doesn't feel like we did it. So each of these candidates comes out, does 40 minutes, cut to commercial, cut to Hurricane Dorian, go to the next candidate. How did the candidates do in this long form?

It was the polar opposite of the debates where it's like, Beto, one minute, Biden, one minute, 20 seconds to respond. This was take as much time as you need, go to town, sit down on this chair. The candidates did pretty well with this format, and some embraced it far more than others. Senator Elizabeth Warren really looked like she was in her element. She had some coffee. She had some coffee. She was animated. She was engaging with all the audience members. Lots of jokes.

Lots of jokes. Let's bring in Diana Krantz from Philadelphia. She's retired. She's working on her second novel. Diana, what's your question? Wow, Diana. What was the first one? I'm not going to say. Oh, okay. This was your big one? I'm not going to say. Oh, okay. This was your big chance. It's not related to the climate.

I'm trying to help here, Diana. Okay. A lot of them got to flex their muscle and humor and also their policy chops and also direct the conversation towards what they think are their strongest suits in this issue in terms of fighting climate change. Part of the problem with the format seemed like a lot of these candidates agree on a lot of stuff. There was a lot of repetition, yeah? That's right. And it was also a programming decision by CNN to sort of ask some similar questions, which makes sense because if you want to compare and contrast the candidates on where they stand, you do have to kind of have some standard issues that you ask them to weigh in on. And they did on things like fracking, on nuclear power,

on whether or not they would have a carbon tax. And so those particulars were pretty standard across the board, but they also pressed them on some of the particular issues that the candidates considered their strong suits, like former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro was asked about housing policy. I want to make sure that people are protected, and that's why we would make an investment in the National Flight Insurance Program, not only to make sure that it's around, but to strengthen it and improve it for everyday Americans who need it.

And, you know, Andrew Yang was asked about some of his technology-oriented approaches to combating global warming. Because you want to invest in these new technologies. I do. Like space mirrors, and as you point out, cloud seeding, which is actually spraying sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Why divert federal money, which is obviously scarce,

to these unproven and potentially risky ideas when there are known solutions out there that we all know, solar power, wind, stuff like that, that we know already works? We, wind, stuff like that, that we know already works. We're here, Wolf, together because we know this is a crisis. And in a crisis, all solutions have to be on the table. And so if you are attacking on one side, you also should be researching various alternatives on the other. And that to me is just responsible management and responsible leadership. There's also a lot of talk about meat. You could say it was a very meaty discussion.

Nice. Yes, it came up a lot in the context of what kind of sacrifices or what kind of demands are you going to have for the American people? Like, should Americans stop eating burgers? That's one of the talking points and one of the critics of the Green New Deal and other environmental proposals have come up with, that fighting climate change is going to require all of us to go vegetarian or give up a lot of the things that we enjoy at the restaurant or at home. And I reject any notion that we have to radically or fundamentally change

how we eat or what we eat. I think we just have to be more responsible in the way that we do it. And the best way to do that is to allow the market to respond by setting a price on carbon in every single part of our economy, every facet of American life. Many of the candidates had pretty similar answers that mainly focusing on the fact that climate change requires collective and institutional action, not necessarily things that you do as individuals. And many of them were distancing themselves from asking people to change their diets or driving. But many of them also noted that we will have to rethink some of the aspects of our lifestyle

that contribute to this. Except Cory Booker, who's already a vegan. So Cory Booker, yes, was also asked about this and he himself is a vegan, but was also adamant that he wasn't going to change anybody's diet. Let's go right at this because I hear about it all the time.

Booker wants to take away your hamburger. Well, that is the kind of lies and fear mongering that they spread out there that somehow the Democrats want to get rid of hamburgers. But he did lean into the sacrifice aspect, saying that, you know, as a president, I'm going to ask more of the American people than any other president in their lifetime. And his point was that I want people to think about what they're doing in terms of the environment, that they cannot recklessly consume or drive or live in a way that will contribute to the demise of the planet's climate, that we have to give a lot more forethought into the things that we do. A lot of the candidates did have the right idea that fighting climate change requires big picture actions.

We need big bites of the apple, not these piecemeal things that we do like bringing reusable bags to the grocery store. They're not bad. Let's not discourage people from doing these kinds of things. But they aren't going to move the needle in the big picture and that's what a president would have to do. Where did they really disagree? I think we saw a lot of disagreements on some of those fundamental questions of like whether or not they would have nuclear power and their vision for the future or hydraulic fracturing. There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking. And starting with what we can do on day one around public lands, right? I see natural gas as a transitional fuel. It is better than oil, but it's not nearly as good as wind and solar.

Some disagreement on how much money they wanted to spend and some disagreement on some of the political tactics they would use, specifically getting rid of the filibuster. What was the most surprising thing you heard all night? I mean, across seven hours, there's not much left that can surprise you. But it was kind of just surprising that every candidate had some in-depth answers to this. This is something that all of them had given some thought to. Before the debate started, almost all of them had put out comprehensive climate plans, things that laid out how they wanted to invest government money, what their priorities would be, how they would bring the rest of the world on board. That in itself is surprising given how

little thought it was given in previous election cycles. It almost did not come up at all in the 2016 campaign for president, both in the primary and the general election. Yeah. Obviously, the candidates weren't able to push back on each other. Did you get the sense that CNN was trying to sort of do it for them? Yeah, there was some element of a vicarious debate. I mean, Bernie Sanders came up a lot of times when he wasn't on stage. And that's by virtue of the fact that his proposal to combat climate change has the biggest outlay, $16.3 trillion. That sounds like that's way above where you have to ask him about this. I only know how I'm going to get the funding. And I think you got to be honest with people about how you're going to get the money and what you're going to

spend it on. So it ended up being the benchmark against which everybody else's climate strategy was being compared. Another point of pressure came from the audience themselves. Members of the audience were also asking questions. And what was interesting is you heard a lot of personal stories about how they were directly affected by some of the consequences of climate change or how they would be. We heard from a mother who lost her daughter to Hurricane Sandy. We heard from homeowners who are worried that flood risk is going to price them out of their homes. We heard from workers that are worried that in the transition toward cleaner energy, they're going to lose their jobs.

And it was just kind of interesting that they were framing the questions this way in a deep and personal way. And when looking straight at the candidates, making eye contact with them, they made the questions really impossible to dodge. And for viewers at home, I think it kind of made the case that climate change is something that has tangible stakes for many parts of the countries, if not every part of the country. One of the ones – I mean if we decide to pull the clip that I was just stunned by was this guy. So I have a spinal cord injury and part of having a spinal cord injury means that I experienced something called thermo dysregulation, or in other words, I can't regulate my body temperature. I can't sweat. July of 2019 was our earth's hottest month on record.

And I had my health put at risk seriously more than once. Yeah. And so this was just somebody who is vividly facing the risks of climate change and wants to know that people with disabilities are going to be disproportionately vulnerable to climate change. It's not going to be an equal opportunity threat. Some are going to be worse off than others. How will you deal with this? You had an example that you could really tee off of in order to discuss policy. Umair, this thing was long. Did the candidates in your eyes manage to miss anything? Were there any glaring oversights? None to my knowledge. I think this was a pretty comprehensive discussion. And given the format and the amount of time devoted to it, just about the full spectrum of climate policy was addressed from housing to dealing with the environment to just the social changes that will come with a transition

towards cleaner energy and retreating from the coastlines. The top Democratic presidential candidates are all with us tonight on the heels of the deadly Hurricane Dorian, which is leaving neighborhoods underwater in the Bahamas utter devastation. It now heads north along the United States coast. For the latest on Dorian, let. It now heads north along the United States coast. For the latest on Dorian, let's go now to the CNN Weather Center. One thing that certainly made this debate longer was that it felt like it was sort of sponsored by Hurricane Dorian. It was the backdrop of the debate. CNN kept taking these long breaks to update viewers on its path and severity. Obviously, one severe hurricane is not climate change, but you couldn't help but

constantly make that connection of this is our impending reality if something isn't done here, right? That's right. It was not just the background. It was brought into the foreground. There was some extensive discussion and the candidates brought it up themselves. These hurricanes are happening more frequently and they're happening with greater intensity. It seems like these floods that they call 500-year floods are happening every other year now. The concern is that, you know, while Hurricane Dorian is now the largest tropical storm of the year, it was teetering on the brink of Category 3 strength off the coast of the Carolinas during the debate. So there was a lot of imminent concern for people on the coasts. This was something that was clear and present. In terms of climate change, though, I mean,

there's not a real trend in terms of the frequency of hurricanes. But we do know that the ingredients that make hurricanes more dangerous are being worsened by climate change, specifically things like sea level rise. We know that since the Industrial Revolution, warming has caused the oceans to rise by a certain amount. When the oceans rise by that much amount, that causes that much more storm surge and inland flooding. Similarly, we know that warming air temperatures have led to more torrential rainfall. And so it's leading these tropical storms to dispatch more and more rain over a smaller area, and that contributes to flooding. Another trend that we're starting to

get a sense of is that these hurricanes are starting to move slower or that they tend to park in a certain area for a long time. We saw Hurricane Dorian park over the Bahamas and, you know, just wallop the islands there for several hours, much longer than it would have if the storm kept moving. So these are some of the trends that were exacerbated and we expect to see more of in the future. The constant referencing of Hurricane Dorian was a reminder that this is an international issue, obviously. But so much of the town hall was focused on what the U.S. can do to slow or stop climate change. How much is the U.S. responsible for global climate change and what role should it be playing in slowing it down? Several of the candidates pointed out that the United States has only 15% of global emissions.

The rest of the world makes up 80%, 85% of the problem. If we did everything perfectly, everything, and we must and should in order to get other countries to move, we still have to get the rest of the world to come along. And the fact of the matter is we have to up the ante considerably. That's true. But if you look at historical emissions, if you look at the cumulative emissions put out, the United States beats out the rest of the world by a long margin. It means that basically most of the CO2 that is in the air or that a large part of the warming that we've seen so far is due mainly to the United States. And so we have sort of a historical obligation to combat climate change,

if you look at it from that perspective. The other thing is that the United States has a high amount of per capita emissions, meaning that while China and India may start emitting more than the United States, they have a billion and a half people. They're dividing those emissions among into much smaller pieces per person. We have much fewer people and half people. They're dividing those emissions among – into much smaller pieces per person. We have much fewer people and our people in the United States have a much larger carbon footprint. We have a disproportionate share of the global contribution to climate change. Also, the United States is one of the largest and most powerful economies in the world, has an important leadership role on these environmental issues. Where we go, a lot of other countries will follow.

We set the international agenda on trade, on the environment, on defense. And so we can, through our actions, drive other countries to do the same. But of course, a fact that was not lost on these candidates last night is that we have current leadership doing absolutely nothing, if not actually contributing to this issue. How are they dealing with the political reality of climate change in the United States? I mean, yes, it was fun to dunk on Donald Trump and some of the things that he said about climate change. Just today, the Trump administration announced plans to overturn requirements on energy-saving light bulbs. It's obviously a move that could increase greenhouse gas emissions. Would you reinstate those requirements?

Do you think that the government should be in the business of telling you what kind of light bulb you can have? Oh, come on. Give me a break. But the bigger question, though, is what will they do with the political power they have once they're in the White House? And that's where the question about the Senate filibuster, you know, became really important. That, you know, if they don't have a strong majority in the Senate, what levers will they pull in order to drive their climate agenda? So some of the candidates talked about how they would work with states and cities and try to bypass the federal government. We are underway on a climate action plan. We were one of the cities that committed joining with cities around the world to live up to the Paris commitments, even if our national governments are failing to do it.

Some of them were talking about using their executive power, you know, writing executive orders. But then that also left the question of, you know, how do you ensure that the following president doesn't undo everything you did just the way Trump is doing with President Obama. So that was a difficult question for some of the candidates. And yeah, it's a really tough one to answer. How do you ensure you have a lasting legacy without the overwhelming political support that our political system demands? That we got a good sense of. I think some candidates have better answers for that than others. I was part of a committee hearing during which the underlying premise of the hearing was to debate whether science should be the basis of public policy. This on a matter that is about an existential threat to who we are as human beings. Senator Kamala Harris, for example, was pretty adamant that she wanted to get rid of the filibuster.

If they fail to act as president of the United States, I am prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal. Whereas, you know, Senator Bernie Sanders said that he wouldn't. But what I have said repeatedly is we need major filibuster reform. And second of all, just as Bush got through major tax breaks for the rich through the Budget Reconciliation Act, we can do that as well. was given at any point to the environment specifically. Watching it, I couldn't help but feel that this in some way came out of all of the momentum and enthusiasm behind the Green New Deal. Absolutely. This was a product of a nearly years-long organizing effort by environmental activist groups, in particular, the Sunrise Movement. This is the group that has made the

Green New Deal their calling card, and they have forced every candidate to weigh in on it. The Sunrise activists were the ones that were actually campaigning outside the headquarters of the DNC demanding a climate debate. We asked to go up and have a meeting with members of the DNC, and they refused. They locked the doors on us. And you can bet when the oil and gas lobbyists come here, they don't get the doors locked on them. And they got most of the candidates to actually agree that they wanted one as well. So they were able to build the core of support for hosting an event like this in the first place. And by holding up the Green New Deal as their essential platform, they were able to get the candidates to weigh in on it and talk about where they stood in online, where they disagreed, and then offer up their own more robust versions of

it. So they really set the agenda here. And what did they get now that we've had kind of sort of the first climate debate in the history of the country? What feels different today? Nothing. You're asking me in the morning after I was up till 2 a.m. last night. I'm sorry. You didn't sleep. It remains to be seen is the frustrating answer to this. We don't know how the ratings shook out. We don't know how it's going to be reflected in polling. But we do know that presidential campaigns are taking it seriously,

that this is now something that is front and center on the agenda for who is going to be the Democratic nominee to be president. And it will likely carry over into the main general election campaign against whoever will face Donald Trump. This is an issue that is now impossible to ignore. Umair Irfan needs a nap. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. Thank you.