Anyone who views the climate crunch as a compelling effect can but exist frustrated by how it has been handled in presidential debates over the years—neglected, generally. And every bit the first round of debates for the 2020 election arrives, the frustration may be repeated, if for different reasons this fourth dimension around.

It's not that the outcome won't come upwards. It will, driven by climate events in the real globe, by the extraordinary record of reversal and denial in Washington, past the emphatic alarms of scientists, and past the loud insistence of activists that candidates and the media alike practice their share in focusing the spotlight on the urgency of activeness. Fifty-fifty if the interrogators don't emphasize it, some candidates will.

To prepare for the debates, we explored the candidates' evolution on climate change and early progress in bringing the issue to the forefront in 2020. In the following serial of profiles, we focus on the most prominent candidates and those with the most detailed climate proposals, with an middle toward showing the spectrum of policy choices.

[ Read and share the candidate profiles ]

This week, twenty candidates face questioning from a panel of journalists in two rounds, with 10 candidates each evening. With so many candidates and then much ground to embrace, there may be only slight attention to climate alter. Information technology may be hard to distinguish the candidates' climate policy positions from ane another, let alone to discern the circuitous details in depth, or to decide which answers are the more coherent, practical or politically appealing.

One goal in these profiles: to help y'all prepare to watch the debates, perhaps forming in your own mind what climate question you lot would pose to candidates beyond the most simplistic.

Instead of beingness asked "do you lot believe in global warming?" or "would you stay in the Paris treaty?"—every Autonomous candidate does and would—we think they should face questions like these:

  • "How much would you lot need that U.S. emissions decline in your first term, in order to put your targets within reach by the terminate of your second term?"
  • "Many people say we have only 12 years to act. Can y'all explain where that number comes from and whether you believe it?"
  • "Should fossil fuel producers be held liable for the amercement being inflicted at present because of emissions from our previous use of their products?"
  • "Exercise you think American youth have a constitutional right to a condom climate that could exist enforced by the courts?"
  • "Should any of the revenues from a carbon tax be spent on research and development of clean technologies, or should it all be returned to households as a tax rebate or dividend?"
  • "How much expansion of our natural gas production would exist consistent with reaching naught internet emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050?"
  • "Would you rely heavily on whatsoever of these technologies: a new class of nuclear reactors? Capturing the carbon from smokestacks or the temper for storage hush-hush? Geo-engineering to reflect sunlight or seed the oceans as a carbon sink?"

Of course, yous can't count on such probing questions beingness asked or answered. But keeping careful, probing questions in mind may assist you to sort out which candidates are truly informing the public. We, too, will parse the answers afterwards.

Post-obit are profiles of most a dozen candidates, listed alphabetically. They were drawn from those who are leading in the polls, accept detailed climate platforms, or represent diverse policies.

Michael Bennet

"What's the point of existence a progressive if nosotros tin can't make progress?"
—Michael Bennet, November 2017

Been At that place

Sen. Michael Bennet frequently talks near the twin problems of drought and wildfire that have plagued Colorado for years, problems that scientists say will only worsen with global warming—longer wildfire seasons, shorter ski seasons, scorching drought. In an Iowa campaign speech, he said: "I spent the whole summer coming together with farmers and ranchers in places where I'll never get 30 percent of the vote in Colorado, who are deeply worried about beingness able to laissez passer their farms or ranches along to their children or grandchildren because they have no water because of the droughts."

Done That

Bennet, a scion of a political family with insider Autonomous credentials, was initially appointed to the Senate to fill a vacancy. He's since navigated through the minefields of climate and fossil fuel policy. Notably, he repeatedly broke with most Senate Democrats to vote for the Keystone Forty pipeline, an deed that climate activists might not swallow easily. He bemoaned the fight over Keystone as "i of those idiotic Washington political games that bounces back and forth and doesn't really attain anything," as he said to the Wall Street Journal.

Getting Specific

  • Bennet has published an extensive climate platform that promises zero emissions past 2050 "in line with the most aggressive targets ready by the globe'south scientists."  Only he hasn't embraced the Green New Deal: "I'grand non going to pass judgment i manner or another on the Green New Deal," Bennet said during an Iowa speech in Feb. "I'm all for anyone expressing themselves about the climate any way they want."
  • His climate platform boosts ideas like these: Giving everyone the correct to cull clean electricity at a reasonable price from their utility, and doing more than to help them choose make clean electric cars. Setting upwardly a Climate Bank to catalyze $10 trillion in private innovation and infrastructure, and creating a jobs program with x one thousand thousand dark-green jobs, especially where fossil industries are declining. Setting bated 30 percent of the nation'due south state in conservation, emphasizing carbon capture in forests and soils, and promoting a climate role for farmers and ranchers.
  • The problem he faces is squaring that with an clashing tape on fossil fuels. His support for Keystone was not an anomaly: Bennet has been supportive of fossil fuel development generally, especially natural gas, as in his back up for the Jordan Cove pipeline and natural gas export last project in Oregon. In a 2017 op-ed in U.s. Today, Bennet wrote that "saying no to responsible production of natural gas—which emits half the carbon of the dirtiest coal and is the cleanest fossil fuel—surrenders progress for purity."
  • On the other hand, he favors protection for Alaskan wilderness from drilling.
  • According to his campaign, Bennet "does not take money from whatsoever corporate PACs or lobbyists." Merely Bennet has not signed the No Fossil Fuel Funding pledge. [Update: Bennet signed the pledge on June 26.]
  • Bennet'southward climate program doesn't outline specific carbon pricing goals, but he recently released a carbon pollution transparency plan to recognize the full climate costs of carbon pollution when assessing the benefits of ecology protections.
  • In 2017, Bennet co-introduced a beak to allow businesses to use individual activity bonds issued by local or land governments to finance carbon capture projects.
  • And he has proposed legislation to expand economic opportunities in failing coal communities.

Our Take

Bennet is a climate-aware politician from an energy-rich simply environment-friendly swing land who doesn't aggressively challenge the fossil fuel industry's drilling, pipeline and export priorities. His platform covers the basics of emissions command, plays a strong federal hand and includes protections for public lands. But his back up for the Keystone Xl and other fossil evolution and his sidestepping of bug like carbon pricing shy abroad from some of the climate deportment that progressives hope to button forward.

—By Nina Pullano

Joe Biden

"The willing suspension of disbelief tin merely exist sustained for then long."
—Joe Biden on climate denial, March 2015

Been There

Amongst the current candidates, merely one-time Vice President Joseph Biden has debated a Republican opponent during a past contest for the White House—when he was Barack Obama's running mate and took on Sarah Palin in 2008. It'south a moment that might come back to haunt him, because in a brief discussion of climate change—a chance to trounce her on the question of science denial or fossil fuel favoritism—he instead slipped into a give-and-take of what he called "make clean coal," which he said he had favored for 25 years. He explained it away as a reference to exporting American free energy technology. Only his loose language, taken in today's context, sounds archaic.

Done That

Biden likes to say he was among the first to innovate a climatic change bill in the Senate, and fact checkers generally agree. It was the Global Climate Protection Act of 1986 that was largely put into a spending bill in 1987. The Reagan administration pretty much ignored information technology, but the beak did call for an EPA national policy on climate modify, and annual reports to Congress.

Biden represented Delaware in the Senate 36 years, and he had a lifetime environmental voting score of 83 percent from the League of Conservation Voters. In 2007, he supported higher fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles, which passed, and in 2003, modest caps on greenhouse gas emissions, which didn't.

Only his longevity is a liability, because the longer the voting record, the more than contradictions. He missed a key vote in 2008 on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Human activity, which was said to exist the strongest global warming bill to ever make it to the Senate floor. Biden also opposed tightening fuel efficiency standards earlier in his career.

The Biden-Obama assistants was strong on climatic change, especially in its second term, notably achieving the landmark Paris climate understanding, asserting climate activity and jobs go manus in hand. Information technology pushed through auto fuel economy standards that deeply cutting emissions. It as well produced regulations on coal-fired power plants, but the rule was stymied by litigation and has been replaced with a weaker rule by the Trump administration.

Often overlooked, the Obama era stimulus package of 2009 included big investments in climate-friendly enquiry and infrastructure. Just Biden is too tethered to Obama's "all-of-the-in a higher place" philosophy, which left aplenty room for the fracking boom that bolstered one fossil fuel, natural gas, over another, coal, and put the U.S. on track to get the world'south leading oil producer.

Getting Specific

  • Biden surprised some activists and pundits in June when he presented his campaign's first climate platform. It went farther than many of his previous positions, and embraced the Dark-green New Deal equally a "crucial framework."
  • Biden foresees $i.7 trillion in spending over the adjacent x years, and $3.three trillion in investments by the private sector and state and local governments.
  • He wants Congress to laissez passer emissions limits with "an enforcement mechanism … based on the principles that polluters must bear the full price of the carbon pollution they are emitting." He said it would include "clear, legally-bounden emissions reductions," simply did not give details.
  • His plan too calls for back up for economically impacted communities. He has been slow to concord with activists' calls for him to swear off campaign contributions from fossil fuel interests, merely his campaign has signaled that he soon will do so. [Update: Biden signed the No Fossil Fuel Funding pledge on June 27.]

Our Take

Biden has signaled he volition embrace central concepts of the Green New Bargain—that the earth needs to go net zero greenhouse gas emissions past 2050 and that the environment and economy are connected. He was slower to exercise and then, and for that reason he has faced criticism from immature, impatient voters.

That compounds the challenge of explaining Senate votes that took place a long fourth dimension ago. Simply he is known for his ability to communicate with blue-collar voters who abandoned Democrats for Trump, besides as older voters who have turned out in the past.

—By James Bruggers

Cory Booker

"The reverse of justice is not injustice, it'south inaction, indifference, aloofness."
—Cory Booker, October 2018

Been There

Sen. Cory Booker traveled to Paris during the negotiations of the United Nations climate treaty in 2015, and when he came dorsum, he took to the Senate floor to recount conversations he had at that place with lawmakers from Bangladesh, one of the poorest and nigh vulnerable of the signatory nations. Every bit the Himalayan glaciers melt and the oceans ascent, he said, "right now Bangladesh is losing 1 percent of its arable country each year, displacing millions of Bangladeshis, literally creating climate refugees." The richest people on the planet, he was proverb, should make common cause with the poorest.

Done That

Since he rose to prominence as an organizer, council member and mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker has built a distinct ecology brand that centers on issues of racial and form equity. By 2017, as a U.South. senator and member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, he was pushing to strengthen federal environmental justice programs. This year, as a presidential candidate campaigning in Due south Carolina, Booker formally adopted the theme as a platform plank.

Booker has consistently achieved a nigh perfect voting record on the annual greenish scorecards of the League of Conservation Voters. But like most other Senate Democrats, there's no enacted police force he tin can point to that would mark him as an especially constructive climate or environmental champion.

Getting Specific

  • Booker was among the first senators with eyes on the Oval Office to endorse the Green New Deal in December 2018, right on the heels of Bernie Sanders. The sweep of its policy prescriptions reflects his own broad calendar: more than than a year ago he proposed model jobs legislation that would include federal employment support in fifteen pilot cities. Booker also favors Medicare for all.
  • His past policies have not been quite that ambitious. Every bit recently as 2016, Booker co-sponsored a non-bounden resolution to establish a national goal of 50 percent clean electricity by 2030. That'southward a more moderate goal than the Light-green New Deal's crash program for zero emissions economic system-broad.
  • Still, Booker passes most, if not all, of the litmus tests that the party's progressive wing is presenting to presidential candidates this year. He has opposed the Keystone Twoscore pipeline. He has said he favors a cost on carbon; depending on its details this could address economic disparities.
  • Booker is one of several candidates who are willing to cover new nuclear technology as part of a climate solution. He has been critical of fracking for natural gas, which tin can contaminate groundwater and impact local communities.
  • Booker has promised not to take fossil fuel money—not a big sacrifice for a candidate whose main sources of corporate finance accept been in other industries, such every bit finance and pharmaceuticals.
  • In i distinction, Booker turned to vegetarianism as a fellow and says his last non-vegan repast was on Ballot Day in 2014. In an interview with Vegan News, he talks expansively about the climate and other environmental benefits of avoiding meat. How that plays in states where cerise politics thrive on red meat is an open question. Just voters in Iowa, for example, may actually be more interested in his position on corporate agronomics, family farms and industrial concentration.

Our Take

Booker once remarked on Twitter that the very beginning question he was asked as a candidate in Iowa was almost climatic change. Merely he rarely mentions it on the social media platform—merely twice in a recent 30-day period, once when he signed the pledge not to take contributions from fossil fuel companies, and one time while visiting flooded farmland. By comparing, he tweets constantly about other hot-button issues like gun control, health care, reproductive rights and social justice. A meaning vox on racial and class inequities, Booker adds nuance to a argue that others sometimes give short shrift.

—By John H. Cushman, Jr.

Pete Buttigieg

"If this generation doesn't step up, we're in trouble. This is, after all, the generation that's gonna be on the business organization end of climate change for as long as we live."
—Pete Buttigieg, April 2019

Been There

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, often talks well-nigh the surprising catastrophic flooding that hit his urban center twice in ii years afterward he took role. A 1,000-year flood occurred in 2016. And then, in early on 2018, a 500-year alluvion hit, costing millions and damaging thousands of homes. "For as long as nosotros're alive, and the younger you lot are the more y'all take on the line, you know our adult lives are going to be dominated past the increased severity and frequency of weather and even crazy chain reactions that happen," Buttigieg wrote in an email.

Done That

Indiana is heavily coal reliant, its state leadership across the board is Republican, and information technology has passed so-called pre-emption laws that curtail local initiatives to accost climate modify and fossil fuel employ. Notwithstanding Buttigieg ready an Function of Sustainability for South Bend. In the aftermath of the U.South. exit from the Paris climate accordance, the metropolis has jumped aboard campaigns past mayors to run across the treaty's goals.

"Nosotros've continued to demonstrate our climate values past edifice LEED-certified fire stations, introducing free electrical vehicle charging stations, empowering national service members to improve free energy efficiency in low-income neighborhoods, and mentoring other Indiana cities seeking to atomic number 82 on climate problems," Buttigieg said.

His assistants is also working to repair remaining damage from recent flooding and to ensure that vulnerable South Bend neighborhoods don't get battered once more. The city approved a contract to install gates on stormwater pipes that drain into the river, for the next fourth dimension the river reaches overflowing phase.

Getting Specific

  • Buttigieg said he backs "a dark-green new deal that promotes disinterestedness in our economic system while confronting the climate crisis." That includes a nationwide carbon tax which would pay dividends to Americans, and a commitment to retraining displaced workers from fossil fuel businesses that close downwards. His climate plan also calls for at least quadrupling federal research and development funding for renewable energy and energy storage.
  • Buttigieg signed the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge in March. His climate programme foresees a dwindling office for fossil fuels that would be engineered by federal policies. Any new energy infrastructure would take to be "climate positive," which could leave a loophole open, especially in the case of natural gas. He too said that while carbon capture might play a role, information technology should not get an excuse for connected fossil fuel evolution.
  • He said he would ban all new fossil fuel development on federal lands. Buttigieg wrote: "I favor a ban on new fracking and a rapid end to existing fracking so that nosotros can build a 100 percent clean energy social club as soon as possible."
  • He recently spelled out the climate role that American farmers could play, even though many deny manmade global warming. "There are some estimates that through improve soil direction, soil could capture a level of carbon equivalent to the entire global transportation industry," Buttigieg told a young questioner at an MSNBC town hall in June.

Our Take

Buttigieg, at age 37, is the youngest candidate in the Democratic primary. And so when the inevitable first question comes asking if he'due south besides immature to run for president, Buttigieg points to climate change equally a big reason for his candidacy. He explains that in 2054, when he'll be 72, the current age of Donald Trump, his generation will be suffering some of the worst effects of climate change.

His website, in a tacit nod to the links between his armed services tape and his recognition of the climate crunch, lists the latter under the rubric of security. If he was slow to roll out specifics for addressing climate change in his burgeoning entrada, the next challenge may exist to flesh out his climate positions to bulldoze dwelling that sense of urgency and differentiate himself from the big, more experienced pack.

—Past Neela Banerjee

Julian Castro

"We're gonna say no to subsidizing big oil and say yep to passing a Green New Deal."
—Julián Castro, Jan 2019

Been There

As U.South. secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama administration, Julián Castro spoke about the increasing frequency of natural disasters as a sign that the nation needed to build smarter and invest in resilience before the next tempest hits. The success stories he saw from that position—including energy efficiency work in public housing and sustainable country-apply planning later on disasters—would keep to shape the policies he's candidature on at present.

Done That

Before joining the Obama administration, Castro was mayor of San Antonio from 2009-2014, when he led the metropolis-endemic utility to pivot away from coal and toward more than renewable energy. The utility adopted a goal of xx percent renewable free energy by 2020, announced the closure of a coal-fired power found, adult a plan to cut energy utilise, and expanded its purchasing of solar ability. Castro tried to position San Antonio as a hub for clean free energy by attracting new businesses and partnering with the University of Texas, San Antonio.

As Housing secretary, Castro oversaw a $1 billion grant program for innovative projects that aimed to make cities and towns more resilient to flooding and extreme conditions. The programme, adult with the Rockefeller Foundation after Hurricane Sandy, helped pay for projects in eight states and five cities, including coastal restoration in Louisiana and a plan to protect parts of Manhattan from rising seas. He also promoted a program that boosted free energy efficiency in multi-family unit housing as a manner to cutting costs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Merely it wasn't all green for Castro. His tenure as mayor coincided with a fracking boom in the nearby Eagle Ford shale, and Castro welcomed the jobs and investment that came with oil and gas development. In 2012, he told theSan AntonioExpress-News that the drilling smash brought an "unprecedented opportunity" and that high schools and colleges had to do more to train students for oil field work.

In a 2015 interview, Castro said that while he had concerns about the safety of fracking, he supported the do as long equally it is well regulated. "I believe that there is a utility to it and that it has a potent economic value, that natural gas is an important component of our energy futurity and at the same fourth dimension keeping an open listen as inquiry continues to come in," he said.

Getting Specific

  • Castro has said that his first executive gild as president would be to recommit the U.Southward. to the Paris climate understanding.
  • Climatic change plays a prominent function in Castro's "People Outset Housing" programme, which includes a $200 billion light-green infrastructure fund that would go toward public transportation, electric vehicle charging stations, free energy efficiency, upgrading the electricity grid and more. This would be part of an try to "achieve net-naught global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, reduce U.S. emissions to at least half of 2005 emissions levels by 2030, and run into the promise of the Greenish New Deal."
  • The housing programme likewise calls for zoning changes to increase housing density, boost public transportation use over personal vehicles and make new development more resilient to the furnishings of climatic change.
  • Similar several of the Democratic candidates, Castro has pledged that his campaign won't have contributions from fossil fuel companies.

Our Take

Castro has spoken often about the urgency of the threat posed by climate change, and in his campaign announcement, he called information technology "the biggest threat to our prosperity in this 21st Century." Simply while he has established credentials working to heave energy efficiency and renewable energy in San Antonio and as part of the Obama assistants, climatic change does not appear to be 1 of Castro's signature issues. Beyond the specifics in his housing plan, his campaign has not announced a detailed climate policy.

—By Nicholas Kusnetz

Kirsten Gillibrand

"When John F. Kennedy said, 'I want to put a man on the moon in 10 years,' he didn't know if he could practise it. But he knew information technology was an organizing principle. … Why non practise the same here? Why not say let'due south get to cyberspace nothing carbon emissions in 10 years not because it's easy, but because it'south difficult?"
—Kirsten Gillibrand, April 2019

Been There

As a senator from upstate New York, Kirsten Gillibrand has seen two climate hot-button issues state in her backyard: fracking and the impacts of extreme weather. She is continuing to seek funding for recovery from Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Irene and has cited the impacts from those storms—besides as the contempo flooding in the Midwest—equally evidence that leaders need to take on climate change urgently.

On fracking, her position has evolved. Early in her Senate career, Gillibrand saw fracking equally bringing an "economic opportunity" to the state, though she regularly underscored the need for it to exist done in a way that was prophylactic for the environment, according to East&Eastward. More than recently, she has supported plans that would probable proceed any remaining oil in the ground—making fracking a moot point.

Washed That

Gillibrand boasts a 95 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation voters, having voted on the side of environmentalists 100 per centum of the fourth dimension since 2014. Since becoming a senator in 2009, Gillibrand has been a member of the Surround and Public Works Commission, where she has co-sponsored multiple pieces of legislation, including bills calling for a carbon revenue enhancement and for the Green New Deal.

Getting Specific

  • In late January, Gillibrand sent a letter to the environs committee chairman, John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), urging him to make the tenets of the Greenish New Deal central to the committee'south agenda. She went on to co-sponsor a Dark-green New Deal resolution in the Senate, along with many of her swain 2020 candidates.
  • She'due south been an active supporter of implementing a carbon tax, and in April, was one of four co-sponsors of a Senate bill that would put a cost on carbon. The bill aims to reduce greenhouse gases by an estimated 51 pct by 2029, compared to 2005 levels, while generating an estimated $2.3 trillion over ten years. Resource for the Future found that, if implemented, the plan would lead the U.Southward. to outpace the targets laid out in its Paris Agreement pledge and double the utility sector carbon reductions by 2030 that were promised by Obama's Clean Power Plan.
  • Gillibrand signed the "No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge" in March, and is an original co-sponsor of a Senate plan to create tax credits for renewable energy engineering and energy efficiency. She has said that Congress needs to "facilitate the development of renewable technologies like wind and solar."
  • Gillibrand is opposed to opening new areas of the Outer Continental Shelf to offshore drilling and cosponsored legislation to keep the Trump administration from doing and so.

Our Take

Unlike most of her peers in the 2020 race, Gillibrand hasn't put out a lengthy climate policy plan—this really isn't her issue. But she does accept a tape in the Senate that, by and large, brands her as a climate progressive. Her early support of fracking may come dorsum to bite her, though.

—By Sabrina Shankman

Kamala Harris

"As California breaks i wildfire record after another, nosotros demand to speak the truth—in order to mitigate these fires, we must combat the effects of climatic change."
—Kamala Harris, Baronial 2018

Been At that place

Kamala Harris is just the latest example of a presidential candidate using a newly won Senate seat every bit a launching pad, only her political profile was built in California, a state where ecology and climate policy rank high on the calendar.

As San Francisco's district attorney she created an ecology justice unit of measurement and as California attorney general she confronted the fossil fuel industry, opposing a Chevron refinery expansion in Richmond. She frequently joined other blueish-state AG'southward to claiming Trump regulatory rollbacks. One of 17 to join AGs United for Clean Power in 2016, she signaled back up of an investigation of ExxonMobil merely did not have on the visitor every bit did Massachusetts and New York, which pursued active legal challenges that continue to this day.

Done That

In the Senate minority, Harris has opposed Trump and the Republicans on environmental issues, especially those that involve California, similar rollbacks of regulations involving offshore drilling or automotive fuel efficiency standards.

She joined with five other senators to file a brief in court on behalf of San Francisco and Oakland in their climate damages lawsuit against fossil fuel companies, citing the millions of dollars the industry has spent to sow climate change doubt and influence lawmakers.

Harris, like other senators running for president, has embraced the Green New Deal. "Climate change is an existential threat, and confronting it requires bold activeness," she said, adding: "Political stunts won't get us anywhere."

Getting Specific

  • In comparison to other candidates, Harris has been light on the details of how she would address climate change.
  • She has expressed doubts almost fracking, only not embraced a ban. Her position is also vague on the role of nuclear ability. In 2017, she voted in commission against a beak to spark innovation in advanced nuclear reactors, which had bipartisan support but never became law, arguing that it didn't address waste bug.
  • She has taken no position on a carbon tax or other ways of putting a cost on carbon. That's a striking silence, given that California has long led the fashion with its comprehensive cap-and-merchandise system for restricting emissions of greenhouse gases.
  • Harris signed a pledge not to accept fossil fuel money in her presidential campaign. She has taken industry donations in the past.

Our Take

There's no question that Harris understands the importance of climate change, its causes, and the need for rapid solutions. But she has not made it a hallmark of her campaign and has shied away from the particulars. She doesn't have the kind of comprehensive, detailed programme that many other candidates accept offered, and in a few instances, such as whether to vigorously pursue an investigation of Exxon'southward activities, she has backed off.

"Combatting this crisis showtime requires the Republican bulk to cease denying science and finally acknowledge that climate change is real and humans are the ascendant crusade," her statement on the Dark-green New Deal said. If that'south an attempt to focus attention on the problem of Donald Trump and GOP denial, it may not propel her far in a turbulent climate argue amid Democrats.

—Past David Hasemyer

John Hickenlooper

"For some reason, our party has been reluctant to express directly its opposition to democratic socialism. In fact, the Democratic field has non only failed to oppose Sen. Sanders' agenda, but they've actually pushed to embrace it."
—John Hickenlooper, June 2019

Been There

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who calls himself "the only scientist at present seeking the presidency," got a master'due south degree in geology at Wesleyan Academy in 1980. He then went to Colorado to work as an exploration geologist for Buckhorn Petroleum, which operated oil leases until a price collapse that left him unemployed. On the rebound, he opened a brewpub, somewhen selling his stake and getting into politics every bit mayor of Denver, 2003-2011, and governor of Colorado, 2011-2019. Both previous individual sector jobs mark him as an unconventional Democratic presidential contender.

Done That

In 2014, when Hickenlooper was governor, Colorado put into force the strongest measures adopted past whatever state to command methane emissions from drilling operations. He embraced them: "The new rules approved past Colorado's Air Quality Command Committee, after taking input from varied and often conflicting interests, will ensure Colorado has the cleanest and safest oil and gas manufacture in the country and help preserve jobs," he said at the time. Now, as a presidential candidate, he promises that he "will use the methane regulations he enacted every bit governor as the model for a nation-wide program to limit these potent greenhouse gases."

Getting Specific

Hickenlooper has made a point of dismissing the Light-green New Bargain, which he considers impractical and divisive. "These plans, while well-intentioned, could mean huge costs for American taxpayers, and might trigger a backlash that dooms the fight confronting climate change," he alleged in a campaign certificate, describing the Greenish New Deal.

But his plans are full of mainstream liberal ideas for addressing climate change:

  • He endorses a carbon tax with revenues returned straight to taxpayers, and he says that the social price of carbon, an economic judge of future costs brought on by current pollution, should guide policy decisions.
  • He offers hefty spending for green infrastructure, including transportation and the grid, and for job cosmos, although he presents few details. He favors expanding research and development, and suggests tripling the budget for ARPA-Eastward, the federal agency that handles exotic energy investments.
  • He emphasizes roping the private sector into this kind of investment, rather than constantly castigating manufacture for creating greenhouse gas emissions in the first place. For case, when he calls for tightening building standards and requiring electric vehicle charging at new construction sites, he says private-public partnerships should pay the costs.
  • He would recommit the U.Southward. to helping finance climate aid nether the Paris agreement. But he also says he'd condition trade agreements and foreign aid on climate activeness by foreign countries.

Our Accept

Hickenlooper'southward disdain for untrammelled government spending and for what he sees every bit a drift toward socialism in the party's ranks, stake out some of the well-nigh conservative territory in the field. He has gained petty traction then far. But his climate proposals are not retrograde; like the rest of the field, he's been fatigued toward house climate action in a year when the issue seems to hold special sway.

—By John H. Cushman, Jr.

Jay Inslee

"I am the merely candidate saying, unequivocally, that I will make defeating climatic change the number i priority of my administration."
—Jay Inslee, June 2019

Been There

Since taking office in 2013, Gov. Jay Inslee has seen seven of the x largest wildfires on record in Washington, a state half covered with woodland. "Climate change is ravaging our forest," Inslee said at the site of a fire that burned for iii months in the Wenatchee National Wood in 2017. "The combination of beetle kill, drought and college temperatures accept made our fires, bombs, waiting to go off."

Done That

When Inslee signed a law in May committing the nation's 10th largest country economic system to 100 percent clean energy past 2045, it was a testament to both his perseverance on climate and the power of the forces that lined upwards against him. For six years, Inslee pushed a vision of Washington equally part of a West Declension vanguard in the fight to curb carbon emissions, but first he had to battle a Republican legislature, the country's large oil refining industry, and even segmentation among environmental activists. A slew of proposals either died in the country capitol or at the election box earlier Inslee could claim victory for what he chosen "the strongest clean free energy policy in the nation." He had to drop his goals for carbon pricing and a low-carbon fuel standard.

Getting Specific

  • The Green New Deal has "gotten people talking about climate change, information technology's elevated the scope of people's ambitions," says Inslee. He argues he can put this "aspirational document" into action with dozens of proposals in four separate policy platforms then far—a 100 percent clean free energy program, a program to create 8 meg new jobs, a strategy for U.South. re-engagement in global climate leadership, and a "Freedom from Fossil Fuels" plan. Altogether, they would toll $9 trillion, with some funding coming from a new "climate pollution fee" on the fossil fuel industry.
  • To achieve a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and net zero domestic climate pollution by 2045, Inslee foresees $300 billion in annual spending leveraging $600 billion in private sector investment over the side by side 10 years.
  • Inslee's plan calls for zero emissions—basically, electric vehicles only—for all new passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks and buses by 2030, and would ensure those vehicles are made in the United States by union workers. He'd leap-kickoff market demand for EVs with rapid electrification of regime vehicles, and would encourage consumer turnover with a "Make clean Cars for Clunkers" trade-in rebate plan, a nod to the 2009 stimulus bill.
  • Inslee'due south goal of "all make clean, renewable and zero-emission energy in electricity generation by 2035" in theory leaves room for nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage, merely neither are mentioned in his plans. In contrast, he talks virtually how federal lands can exist a base for expansion of solar and wind energy, and he foresees federal activity to expand and upgrade the grid and electricity storage to bolster renewables.
  • After Inslee's repeated failed efforts to enact a carbon taxation in Washington land, he turned his focus to other climate measures that he described as "more attainable in the short-term." But he revived the idea of a levy in his latest programme. "While putting a price on the toll of climate pollution does not stand for a single silver bullet, it nonetheless remains an effective tool for both ensuring that polluters pay and for generating new revenue to address the harms caused past those emissions," he said.
  • The fracking ban in Washington state that Inslee signed into constabulary on May 8 was non a heavy political lift in a land with no known oil or natural gas reserves. But in a reversal, Inslee also appear his opposition to other gas infrastructure projects. Inslee in one case thought natural gas would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the style to a clean energy transition; now he opposes "locking in these multidecadal infrastructure projects." He has rebuffed industry's efforts to open Washington'south prized coastline as a gateway for fossil fuel exports to Asia.
  • Inslee said he would enact a "Thou.I. Neb" to aid fossil fuel workers who lose their jobs, and protect pensions and disability payments, and a "Re-Power Fund" would boost communities at present reliant on fossil fuels.
  • Inslee was the 2nd candidate to sign the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, on January. nine. Amidst current presidential candidates, simply Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) signed earlier.

Our Accept

While embracing his function as the starting time presidential candidate to center a campaign around climate change, Inslee seems determined to evidence he's non a single-issue candidate. When his full platform is unveiled, information technology will encompass upwardly to seven split detailed policy papers. In approaching the make clean energy transition as an economic effect, a labor issue, a foreign policy issue, and more than, Inslee tries to avoid the characterization of i-play tricks pony while pestering the Democratic National Commission to concur a debate on climate change alone.

—By Marianne Lavelle

Amy Klobuchar

"The people are on our side when it comes to climate change. Why? Considering like you lot and I, they believe in science."
—Amy Klobuchar, Feb 2019

Been At that place

Sen. Amy Klobuchar speaks of Fran, a woman she met in Pacific Junction, Iowa, along the Nebraska border during recent flooding. "Hanging in that location on her cervix was this pair of binoculars. She had me look through them and she says, 'This is my house, I bought it with my husband, our 4-year-old twins, nosotros were going to retire in this house, and at present information technology's halfway underwater.'" It'south a personal connection, merely tin can that drag the Minnesota senator amid the other candidates?

Done That

Months into her offset Senate term in 2007, Klobuchar introduced a bill to commencement a carbon-tracking program as a step toward a cap-and-merchandise arrangement to address climate change. Another bill of hers called for an expansion of renewable energy tax credits, provisions of which later became constabulary equally part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Human activity of 2008.

Getting Specific

  • Klobuchar co-sponsored the Green New Bargain resolution, but she calls it aspirational rather than prescriptive, telling CNN that it doesn't make sense to her to "get rid of all these industries or do this in a few years," while it does make sense to "starting time doing concrete things, and put some aspirations out there on climate change." She supports putting a cost on carbon, but told the Tampa Bay Times "it would have to be done in some way that is non at all regressive.
  • She answered a Washington Post questionnaire on fracking by saying she doesn't want to ban the method of extracting oil and gas, simply would like to regulate information technology meliorate. She has said that "safe nuclear ability" along with "cleaner coal technologies" should go on to be adult as part of a comprehensive energy strategy, according to an upshot cursory on her Senate website.
  • Klobuchar supports research into carbon capture and storage technology and co-sponsored a 2017 bill to expand a tax credit to assist carbon capture inquiry.
  • She signed the No Fossil Fuel Funding pledge in May.

Our Take

Klobuchar describes herself as a progressive who can still win moderate voters in swing states such every bit Iowa and Wisconsin. On climate issues, still, her tone and positions hateful that the majority of the field is to her left. She is a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal resolution but says it shouldn't be taken literally, and she shies abroad from stances that could be branded as farthermost, such as banning fracking. Simply she tin argue that her actions on climate and the surround are progressive, as shown past her 96 percent lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters and her early on support for a cap-and-merchandise program.

—By Dan Gearino

Beto O'Rourke

"Literally. Not to exist melodramatic, but literally, the futurity of the globe depends on united states right at present, here, where we are. Allow's discover a way to do this."
—Beto O'Rourke, March 2019

Been There

Quondam Rep. Beto O'Rourke frequently cites the devastation from 2017's Hurricane Harvey, which walloped his habitation state of Texas with record amounts of rain and caused $125 billion in damage, as an case of what will befall American cities if emissions aren't brought under control. "We many not exist able to alive in some of the cities nosotros telephone call habitation today," he told a oversupply on a campaign stop. That could further fuel migration, already affecting places like El Paso, at the Mexican edge—a "crunch of a different magnitude birthday."

Done That

With simply three terms in the U.S. House, which was dominated past the GOP at the time, O'Rourke hasn't much of a climate record. His entrada cites green credentials earned in El Paso city authorities, including pollution and land utilise issues like copper smelting pollution and protecting grasslands from drilling.

Every bit he rose to fame in an unsuccessful challenge to Sen. Ted Cruz concluding year, O'Rourke presented a precipitous contrast on climate modify—as deep as whatever Trump will present to the eventual Autonomous nominee. In their final contend, Cruz denied the human being role in climate change and mused that "the climate has been changing from the dawn of time." O'Rourke retorted: "Three hundred years later the Enlightenment, we should be able to listen to the scientists."

O'Rourke was the first candidate out of the gates with a detailed climate-specific platform, releasing a $5 trillion plan in late April that calls for the U.S. to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. That's equally big a scale equally practically any candidate'southward with the possible exception of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

"Some will criticize the Green New Deal for being as well bold or being unmanageable," O'Rourke told a crowd in Keokuk, Iowa, in March. "I tell y'all what, I haven't seen annihilation better that addresses this singular crisis that we face, a crunch that could at its worst pb to extinction."

Getting Specific

  • O'Rourke's climate proposal threads the needle on whether he would support a carbon tax. It says that he will work with Congress to create a "legally enforceable standard" to go to net-zero emissions past 2050.
  • "This standard will send a clear price signal to the market place to change the incentives for how we produce, eat and invest in energy, while putting in place a mechanism that will ensure the environmental and socio-economical integrity of this endeavour," a spokesman said in an email.
  • Two days after O'Rourke issued his climate platform, he released a video on maxim he had signed the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge. He promised to return any donations to a higher place $200.
  • O'Rourke took more than than $550,000 from oil industry sources during his Senate race confronting Ted Cruz—the second highest amount accustomed by any candidate during the 2017-2018 election cycle after Cruz.
  • It was no oddity in Texas for a Democrat to favor natural gas exports, resist limits on offshore drilling, consider nuclear function of the solution, and include carbon capture engineering as a fashion to address some of the emissions from fossil fuels. Texas is also a major wind-power state. But O'Rourke's support for natural gas, in item, has put him nether scrutiny from commentators like Bill McKibben, who wrote in the New Yorker that the fourth dimension has come to choose between fossil fuels and renewables.
  • O'Rourke's climate plan includes $ane.2 trillion for "economic diversification and development grants for communities that have been and are beingness impacted by changes in energy and the economy," his campaign said. It besides supports pensions and benefits owed coal industry employees.

Our Take

Afterward declaring his candidacy, O'Rourke attempted to distinguish himself as a leader on climate. But, being from a conservative, fossil-fuel dependent country—admitting i that has embraced wind energy—O'Rourke has a complicated relationship with the oil industry. Sometimes his rationale for past votes, like opening upward export markets for oil and gas, echo those of the industry. His campaign says his positions are changing as the climate threat becomes more clearly understood.

Like other candidates, O'Rourke well-nigh forcefully cites the IPCC'south alert that the globe has a critical 12-year window in which to nigh effectively act on climate change. That'southward hard to reconcile with an enduring pact with fossil fuels.

—Past Georgina Gustin

Bernie Sanders

"There is no 'middle ground' when it comes to climate policy."
—Bernie Sanders, May 2019

Been There

Tropical Storm Irene, which in 2011 caused the deaths of six people in Vermont, forced thousands from their homes, and washed away hundreds of bridges and miles of roads, was a wake-up call for a land where Sen. Bernie Sanders is a thoroughly established favorite son. "No one idea a northern country similar Vermont would be hit by such a strong tropical storm," Sanders said.

Done That

Sanders ofttimes says he introduced "the near comprehensive climate change legislation in the history of the United States Senate." It was a carbon tax-and-dividend bill and accompanying make clean energy bill co-sponsored with and then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in 2013. The bills were expressionless on arrival, but they marked an of import shift in the Democratic drive for climate action—a pivot away from the cap-and-trade arroyo that had foundered, and toward carbon tax.

Sanders' biggest legislative climate accomplishment was a national energy efficiency grant program he introduced his first year in the Senate. It passed in 2007. He successfully pushed for $3.2 billion for the program to be included in the Obama administration'south 2009 economical recovery package. The grants were the largest investment in free energy efficiency and renewable energy at the community level in U.S. history.

Getting Specific

  • The sweeping free energy and social transformation known as the Greenish New Bargain is central to the Sanders entrada, and he has left more than fingerprints on it than whatsoever of the other senators running for president who co-sponsored it. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who propelled it into the eye ring in Washington, got her electoral start working for Sanders in his 2016 campaign. And with its emphasis on social justice, working course jobs, health intendance and spending without regard to revenue sources, it echoes the ideas of Sanders' long-time economical adviser, Stephanie Kelton.
  • Sanders has long advocated an aggressive carbon tax, and one was included in the Autonomous Party platform in 2016 at his campaign'due south behest.
  • His consistent climatic change message tin can exist summed up in a few words: it's real, information technology's here, we caused it, and nosotros need to shift the whole economic system abroad from fossil fuels. So he supports nationwide bans on fracking, on new fossil fuel infrastructure, and on fossil fuel leases on public lands. He supports high speed runway, electrical vehicles and public transit. He has chosen for phasing out nuclear energy, and he supports spending coin to adapt to climate change, such equally defenses against wildfires, floods, drought and hurricanes.
  • Having built his last campaign on modest individual donations, Sanders was the first presidential candidate to sign the No Fossil Fuel Funding pledge launched by climate and justice groups in 2016.

Our Accept

Sanders, with his open defense of democratic socialism, defines the leftist purlieus of presidential politics while also staking out a populist territory that resonated well in 2016. His explicit aim is  to "keep oil, gas, and coal in the ground." Although his signature entrada proposals (Medicare-for-All, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour) aren't near climate, the Green New Bargain allows Sanders to utilise climate action every bit a vehicle for his economical and social justice aims. His proposal for a federal jobs guarantee would be tied to the need for workers to build infrastructure to aid in a make clean energy transition equally well as to help communities with restoration and resilience. Whether or not he emerges every bit the nominee, his base of voters, and his ideas, volition deeply influence the 2020 campaign.

—By Marianne Lavelle

Elizabeth Warren

"Before the 2008 crash, investors and the regime failed to address growing risks in our financial organization. We're making the aforementioned fault with climate modify today—we know information technology'due south coming, only we're not doing enough to terminate information technology."
—Elizabeth Warren, September 2018

Been There

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who represents Massachusetts, a state with strong ties to Puerto Rico, paid attending to Hurricane Maria when it spread expiry and lasting destruction across Puerto Rico in 2017. Warren was already fighting for debt relief for the territory earlier the storm. Maria brought the island's plight into a climate focus. "At that place are people who have no food, there are people who accept no h2o, there are people who have no medicine, at that place are people who need our help," she said. "This is the responsibility of our authorities, the authorities that is supposed to work for u.s.a.."

Washed That

Warren came to political prominence in her detailed response to the fiscal crisis of 2008, and that has carried over into her increasingly developed position on climate change. Await at the Climate Chance Disclosure Act that she introduced in September that would require companies to disclose the take a chance climate change poses to their financial avails. The bill would require companies to release information on their greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel holdings, and how they would be impacted by both climate policies and the effects of climatic change. The bill languished, only the issue has been gaining attention from fossil fuel company shareholders in recent years and appears to be gaining traction among other candidates.

Getting Specific

  • If Warren'south entrada had a single slogan, it would be "I have a plan for that." While she entered the race with a reputation based on issues other than climate change—some environmentalists dismissed her leadership in this realm—she has made up for it with a series of expansive and fairly detailed prescriptions.
  • She struck early with a pledge to prohibit all new fossil fuel leases on public lands, which struck a chord with the "keep-it-in-the-basis" camp—she had co-sponsored legislation on the same theme that never moved in the Republican Senate. Some, but non all, other candidates quickly echoed the hope.
  • It's a tactic that has served her well so far: outline a far-reaching proposition and allow others play catch upwards. That'due south what happened with her biggest climate proposal then far, a $2 trillion package describing a 10-year plan of investment in green research, manufacturing and exporting, all to assist "accomplish the ambitious targets of the Light-green New Deal."
  • Her program would include $1.5 trillion for American-made clean free energy products, $400 billion in funding for green enquiry and development and $100 billion in strange assistance to purchase emissions-costless American energy engineering.

Our Take

Warren built her career in the Senate railing confronting Wall Street and championing consumer protection and economic equality. Simply her priorities are evolving equally ecology and economic impacts of climate change increasingly merge.

On the entrada trail, Warren is increasingly taking a leadership office on climate issues, as when she became ane of the starting time presidential candidates to sign the No Fossil Fuel pledge. When she released a detailed policy proposal in April to ban new oil and gas leases on federal lands, other candidates rapidly followed adjust. And when Joe Biden put out a big climate pledge, Warren was able to speedily trump him with an even bigger commitment of her own.

—By Phil McKenna

Jack Cushman

Managing Editor

Jack Cushman grew up in an Army family, living in many places in the Us and away. He studied political literature at Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1976. Before joining the InsideClimate News staff, he worked for 35 years as a writer and editor in Washington, D.C., principally with the Washington bureau of The New York Times. Cushman has written extensively about free energy, the surroundings, manufacture and military machine affairs, besides covering financial and transportation beats, and editing articles beyond the full spectrum of national and international policy.
Amongst his many vanquish assignments at The Times, he covered climate and the environment during the Clinton assistants. He served on the lath of governors of the National Press Social club and was its president in the year 2000. He has taught brief courses in media and environmental law at the Vermont Law School.
He is the author of Keystone and Beyond: Tar Sands and the National Interest in the Era of Climate change.