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If you want to know why voters don’t consider climate change a priority, just look at how it was treated.
Advocates for televised presidential debates argue that they offer the best chance voters will have during the campaign to get an extended look at the candidates, beyond what they see in 30-second ads and 8-second sound bites. We can hear them defend their records as they critique their opponents, and answer tough questions from seasoned reporters about key issues. It’s a rare opportunity to delve deep into substance on important issues.
If only that were how televised debates actually turn out. The one exchange on climate change that occurred in Thursday’s meeting between Joe Biden and Donald Trump showed just how problematic a forum for voter education this is.
Perhaps we should be thankful that Biden and Trump were asked a single question about climate, since one is certainly more than zero. Unfortunately, to consider what ensued at all enlightening, you’d have to have a pretty low bar.
“Will you take any action as president to slow the climate crisis?” co-moderator Dana Bash asked Trump. “Let me just go back to what he said about the police,” Trump responded, then rambled for a while on a number of topics, none of which were climate change. So Bash tried again: “Thirty-eight seconds left, President Trump, will you take any action as president to slow the climate crisis?” Trump’s answer was characteristic gobbledygook:
“I want absolutely immaculate clean water. And I want absolutely clean air and we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever, and we did — we were using all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet, during my four years I had the best environmental numbers ever, and my top environmental people gave me that statistic just before I walked on the stage, actually.”
Though no viewer would have any idea what Trump was talking about with “the best environmental numbers ever,” I believe I know what he was referring to: Before the debate, Trump posted on Truth Social some suggested talking points he got from Andrew Wheeler, the coal lobbyist he appointed to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, including that Trump should mention that carbon emissions went down while he was president. It’s true that emissions dipped in 2020, when you may remember there was a pandemic that shut down much of the economy. That did not, however, answer the question of what actions he would take in a second term.
Perhaps marveling at Trump’s claim that “we had H2O” when he was president, Biden took a moment to respond. “I don’t know where the hell he’s been,” the president finally said. “I passed the most extensive climate change legislation in history.” It would have helped viewers unfamiliar with the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act if Biden had at least mentioned some of them, such as money for research into new sources of clean energy, incentives for domestic manufacturing of green technology, grants to help farmers cut emissions, and tax credits for electric vehicles and home electrification. After a digression into HBCUs, Biden returned to the issue: “He hadn’t done a damn thing for the environment. He pulled out of the Paris peace — Climate Accord. I immediately joined it, because if we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius at any one point there’s no way back. The only existential threat to humanity is climate change, and he didn’t do a damn thing about it. He wants to undo all that I’ve done.”
All of which is true, if probably too vague for most viewers to fully understand. But it did include a statement conveying the seriousness of the challenge (“The only existential threat to humanity is climate change”), and reference to some relevant facts. That led Trump to a criticism of the Paris agreement, that it’s “a rip-off of the United States.”
But any viewer not familiar with the details of the agreement would have had trouble following what Trump said; he seemed to be objecting to the fact that the agreement called on developed countries to help less developed countries adapt; he claimed that the agreement “was going to cost us a trillion dollars,” one of many fictitious numbers he tossed out. That left Biden to conclude that “we have made significant progress” under his administration, and tout his new Climate Corps.
In all, it wasn’t the least substantive exchange on climate one could imagine. A viewer who knew absolutely nothing about either of the candidates’ records would have learned that they disagree on the Paris agreement, and that Biden believes climate change is an existential threat. But as with the rest of this debate — and almost every televised debate — the best one can say from the standpoint of policy substance is, “That could have been worse.”
And now that there has been one climate question, chances are the moderators of the second debate will ignore the issue altogether. The prevailing view among political reporters is that, sure, climate is important, but the voters just don’t care about it all that much. Convinced by polls showing that other issues rank higher when voters are asked what their most important priorities are, they usually segregate climate coverage apart from the political stories that will dominate the news between now and November.
That creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: When news organizations run a thousand stories saying “Inflation dominates voter concerns” and then ask voters what their concerns are, most of them are going to talk about what seems to be on the political agenda. It’s not exactly a conspiracy to downplay climate as an issue in the presidential race, but it has much the same effect.
The savvy observer might suggest that it doesn’t really matter, since we know where the two candidates stand on climate change and the contrast couldn’t be clearer. And those of us who pay a great deal of attention to both politics and the climate issue do understand the difference. But that describes only a small portion of the electorate, which was why this debate was another missed opportunity. Even if it could have been worse.
Paul Waldman
Paul Waldman is an MSNBC columnist, co-host of the Boundary Issues podcast, and author of The Cross Section, a newsletter about politics. His latest book is White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.
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Georgetown’s Lisa Heinzerling on the Supreme Court’s climate shell game.
It’s a sad day for the regulatory state. On Friday, the Supreme Court struck down a 40-year-old precedent that deferred to agencies’ interpretations of their own mandates where the statutory guidance was incomplete or ambiguous, otherwise known as Chevron deference, after the losing side in the original case. Not only has it been cited in more than 19,000 federal opinions, it’s the one congressional aides — the ones actually writing the laws — are most familiar with, as Lisa Heinzerling, a professor of environmental law at Georgetown Law, told me.
“So there’s a way in which Congress has been relying on Chevron for decades, right?” she said. “If Congress banked on Chevron, banked on the idea that if they didn’t make things clear the agency would take care of it, then that reliance is not being honored.”
This is not the first time the court has come for regulators. Two years ago, in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court held that the authority to resolve questions of interpretation involving high-stakes political and economic questions, a.k.a. “major questions,” rests with Congress, not the agencies, raising the threat of legal nightmares should regulators attempt to take any kind of big swings. This explicitly concerns only “extraordinary cases,” and yet regulators already appear to be reining in their own ambition to gird against potential challenges.
Friday’s decision comes the day after the court struck down a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act giving certain enforcement powers to the Securities and Exchange Commission and granted a stay on enforcement of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “good neighbor” rule, aimed at preventing harmful pollution from crossing state lines.
The two cases decided this week — Loper Bright Enterprises et al. v. Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, et al. and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce — turned on whether private commercial fishing companies could be compelled to pay for federal monitors to ride along and ensure they were complying with applicable fishing rules. Or at least they did initially. “The court decided to decide only the question whether to overrule Chevron, the case that establishes deference for agencies legal interpretations,” Heinzerling explained the day before the ruling came down. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Without Chevron, are we going to get completely bogged down in revising statutes? Are our courts going to be clogged up with nuisance suits from people who simply don’t want to have to follow the rules?
I think there will be a lot of efforts to undo other precedent that relied on Chevron — and especially paired with the Corner Post case, which has to do with the timing of challenges to agency action. You know, realistically, if that case comes down, accepting a longer period of time in which to sue people could go nuts, challenging all sorts of agency interpretations from the past. So that’s disruptive.
The Supreme Court is constantly saying, well, go and get a new statute. Well, okay, we saw what happens when Congress passes a new statute: The court holds it unconstitutional. The Dodd-Frank Act. Look what happened to the Affordable Care Act. These major pieces of legislation, major, major political stakes, and the court has not respected those. So I feel like we’re kind of in a shell game, something that’s not quite honest. That in all of these cases, actually, Congress did pass a law, but the court either rules it unconstitutional, says it’s not clear enough. And so I don’t think they’re respecting Congress’s handiwork as it exists now.
You mentioned Corner Post, could you talk about that case?
It came to the court kind of quietly. It’s got rich backers. It’s just a little truckstop, just like the commercial fisherman, that wants to challenge a rule on credit cards. They were incorporated after the rule went into effect, and they want to say, we weren’t injured when it first passed, so we should get the benefit of a longer period of time in which to sue. And amazingly, the justices seemed willing to accept that. That just adds to the stakes of overruling Chevron.
The Chevron deference is a big part of how agencies do their job. But after West Virginia, does it still matter? I’m not a lawyer, but I’m going to pretend I am one when I ask: Does the major questions doctrine effectively invalidate Chevron anyway?
No. They said that the major questions idea was for extraordinary cases, to see how it turns out over the years, but it’s not every case. Where Chevron applied, theoretically, in every case. At least it was a mix.
What recent regulatory decisions would be most vulnerable in a post-Chevron world?
It is complicated to know because it has to be a question about a statute, a question about a statute that a court finds ambiguous, right? That’s where Chevron would have helped. And I think it depends on what court you’re in. If you’re in the Fifth Circuit, there’s a good chance — I mean, they’ve just stopped using Chevron, period.
Is there a world in which courts develop more subject matter expertise as a result of being forced to decide on questions of statutory interpretation?
Over the years people have offered the possibility of science courts or environmental courts — specialized courts where adjudicators have expertise. That’s never really taken off — never really at all taken off. Certainly the D.C. Circuit judges handle administrative cases all the time. Cases go exclusively to them, and I think the judges do develop some expertise. But it doesn’t turn them into ecologists or engineers. And the thing is that the structure of a judicial chambers is both tiny and insular: you have one judge; on the Supreme Court four clerks, but elsewhere two to three. It’s just not that much. Whereas EPA, they have teams of people on these rules from all over the agency, and then the rule gets reviewed by others.
We’re obviously focused on climate-related regulations, but is there an area of policy that you think will be most vulnerable immediately without Chevron?
The hallmarks of where Chevron has been really important: complicated statutes; technical and/or scientific subject matter; places where the language is either vague or just broad enough, it’s not clear how to fill it in. That’s environmental law, but there’s a lot of other law that’s also … I mean, it’s just OSHA, FDA, the FTC. Looking for those signature traits, that’s going to be a place where it pinches particularly hard. I think the agencies now are sort of bracing for this, but they still have a lot of rules in the works, and this is going to come down in the middle of that in election year.
Chevron started with Reagan wanting to change the way the EPA interpreted its mandate. Would removing it potentially make things more difficult for an incoming Trump administration?
I mean, it should. Chevron was supposed to work that way. But certainly the major questions doctrine, at least as it’s been practiced, so far cuts only against ambitious regulation. It doesn’t cut in favor of it.
The thing that worries me is the anti-regulatory skew that’s in some of the court’s other recent rulings. So for example, in West Virginia itself, the Supreme Court struck down Obama’s Clean Power Plan but upheld — without even explaining why — Trump’s plan. They were the same question under the same statute with the same evidence, the same costs and benefits. Everything was the same except for the direction. If one was a major question, the other should have been a major question. And so if you want to put it in the terms of these two possible administrations, they will go after Biden rules more than they’ll go after Trump rules, at least on the major questions idea.
On Biden’s fumble, SCOTUS, and EV sales
Current conditions: Forecasters are keeping an eye on a weather system moving toward the Caribbean that could strengthen into a tropical storm • Heavy rains have rejuvenated dried-up lakes and lagoons in Chile • Severe storms could bring strong wind, excessive rain, and hail to parts of Europe over the next few days.
Well, last night’s first 2024 debate between President Biden and Donald Trump was “altogether distressing,” writes Heatmap’s Katie Brigham. And while climate was far from the main focus, the two candidates did have one notable exchange. Trump initially dodged a question about whether he would take action to slow the climate crisis, then briefly noted “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O.” Biden responded by criticizing Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement. “I immediately [re]joined, because if we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, at any one point, there’s no way back,” Biden said. “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”
Making Paris the focus of the debate’s one exchange around climate was an odd choice, Brigham says. According to a poll conducted last November by Heatmap, only 35% of Americans say they are at least “somewhat familiar” with the Paris Agreement. The Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature piece of climate legislation, didn’t come up once. (Not that they’re that familiar with the IRA, either.) “Solar, wind, carbon emissions — all terms that resonate with Americans, none of which were mentioned,” Brigham adds.
HEATED’s Emily Atkin summed up reaction from climate-conscious viewers nicely, too: 
X/emorwee
The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to pause an EPA environmental rule while it is challenged in a lower court. The so-called good neighor plan would impose strict emissions limits on power plants and other industrial sources in 23 states, and was intended to prevent dangerous pollution that can cause breathing problems from drifting across state lines. The rule has been challenged by a number of Republican states, as well as companies. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that those challenges were “likely to succeed on a claim that the Good Neighbor Plan is ‘arbitrary” or “capricious.’” The ruling blocks the EPA from ramping up pollution limits while the challenges are being heard. According to the EPA, the plan would prevent 1,300 premature deaths and cut down on ER visits.
U.S. sales of electric vehicles were up 12% in April (the most recent month for which data is available) compared to the same month in 2023, “countering the widespread notion that American consumers have lost interest in the technology,” according toE&E News. The data, from S&P Global, also finds this increase was led by “traditional” automakers – Ford, Toyota, etc. – not Tesla. Those manufacturers have been encroaching on Tesla’s position as the dominant U.S. EV seller for a while, and may soon close the gap entirely. We’ll know more next week, when manufacturers are expected to report their second-quarter sales.
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The Biden administration today finalized a decision to block construction of a 211-mile mining road on federal land in north central Alaska. The move protects areas of pristine wilderness that are important to the traditions and livelihoods of Native communities from being carved up for copper and zinc mining. The venture behind the project, Ambler Metals, insists the materials it wants access to are essential for clean energy technologies like wind turbines and transmission lines, and says it will explore legal challenges. Below is a map of the proposed road: 
DOI/BLM
In a separate decision, the Interior Department also said it would protect 28 million acres of land in Alaska that former President Donald Trump had tried to make available for drilling and mining. President Biden has a goal of conserving 30% of U.S. lands and waters.
Pope Francis has chosen a site for its solar farm, which will power Vatican City. Francis picked Santa Maria di Galeria, a patch of land on the outskirts of Rome that has long been used as the base for Vatican Radio transmitters. It’s not clear how big the solar farm will be or when construction will be completed. In a letter outlining the plan, Francis called for “a transition to a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, setting the goal of climate neutrality.”
Global offshore wind capacity increased 24% last year, which makes 2023 “the second-highest year in offshore wind history,” according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
Who thought that was a good idea?
In an altogether distressing debate in which climate was far from a main focus, the two candidates did have one notable exchange regarding the Paris Agreement. The 2015 treaty united most countries around the world in setting a goal to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, with 1.5 degrees as the ultimate target.
After Trump initially dodged a question about whether he would take action to slow the climate crisis, he then briefly noted “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O.”
While it is true that there was H2O during Trump’s presidency, Biden responded by criticizing Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement. “I immediately [re]joined, because if we reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, at any one point, there’s no way back,” Biden said. “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”
But according to a poll conducted last November by Heatmap, only 35% of Americans say they are at least “somewhat familiar” with the Paris Agreement at all, perhaps making it an odd choice to anchor the debate’s one exchange around climate. By contrast, the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature piece of climate legislation, didn’t come up once. (Not that they’re that familiar with the IRA, either.) Solar, wind, carbon emissions — all terms that resonate with Americans, none of which were mentioned.
Of his decisions to leave the Paris Agreement in 2017, Trump claimed, “The Paris Accord was going to cost us $1 trillion,” while it would cost China, Russia, and India “nothing.”
The $1 trillion number actually appears to be a discount on Trump’s previously cited estimate. In his Rose Garden address announcing his decision to exit the agreement, he said that by 2040, compliance would entail a cost to the economy that would approach “$3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs,” citing a study conducted by NERA Economic Consulting.
According to the fact-checking website PolitiFact, the study’s authors were explicit that these projections are highly uncertain and do not take into account all the job gains and GDP growth that could be associated with the energy transition. PolitiFact also said NERA put forth a news release (which now appears to be unavailable online) stating that "the Trump administration selectively used results" from its study, and that “NERA’s study was not a cost-benefit analysis of the Paris Agreement, nor does it purport to be one.”
When Trump said that China, Russia, and India would not have financial commitments under the Paris Agreement, he was perhaps referencing the obligation (which the Paris Agreement reaffirmed) for wealthier nations like the U.S. to direct hundreds of billions of dollars to poorer nations to both aid their transition to clean energy and help them adapt to the impacts of climate change. It’s true that there’s controversy around whether China or India, which have giant (but still developing) economies, should either provide this funding or receive this funding. Russia, which joined the agreement in 2019, hasn’t really been a part of this conversation though.
In response to Trump’s defense of his decision to exit the agreement, Biden countered, “We were the only ones of consequence who were not members of the Paris Accord. How can we do anything if the United States can't get its pollution under control?” He said the U.S. had made significant progress on climate, and while it felt like a moment to, I don’t know, note the job growth from the administration’s investment in cleantech manufacturing (in predominantly red states), Biden instead cited the formation of the Climate Corps, a nice but thus-far modest fellowship program that puts young Americans to work fighting the climate crisis. Most of the public likely hasn’t heard of it, and Biden has been mostly quiet about it of late.
The exchange ended when Biden said, “We're moving in directions that are going to significantly change the elemental cause of pollution. But the idea that [Trump] claims that he has the biggest heart up here and is really concerned about pollution, and about climate, I've not seen any indication of that.”
And just like that, it was onto prescription drugs, who is better at golf, and Trump’s weight. You know, the usual debate stuff.