This past spring, the Democratic National Committee shot down efforts to hold a presidential primary debate expressly devoted to the global climate crisis, a critical, genuinely existential issue. But now, thanks to additional pressure and activists who simply would not let the issue go, it’s starting to look as if a climate debate just might happen after all.
In 2016, only 2% of questions during the Democratic debates—and exactly 0% of questions during the final series of debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—dealt with the climate crisis. While the first debate of the 2020 cycle did include at least two questions that edged into the area, and candidates brought up the climate crisis when describing the biggest challenges facing the nation, barely 15 minutes out of the first four hours of debate were spent really focused on the topic. With activists and voters already upset about the lack of attention given the issue in 2016, that start to 2020 only increased the heat (… so to speak) to bring more attention to this issue.
As Mother Jones reports, the DNC’s hard line against a climate debate could be softening. The committee is currently weighing a pair of resolutions that could result in a dedicated climate debate. On Saturday, the DNC’s executive committee voted to refer the two proposals—one calling for a formal debate on the climate crisis, the other for a less-structured forum that wouldn’t officially be a debate—for consideration by the resolutions committee. The committee should return its recommendations to the complete DNC for a vote by the end of August.
However, a climate debate is far from a done deal. The committee could choose to go ahead with the not-a-debate forum, which would attract far fewer viewers and possibly participation by fewer candidates. Or the committee could still agree with the earlier executive position and determine not to have a climate crisis debate at all.
Only evidence that this issue is very important to Democratic voters, and continued pressure on the DNC, is likely to end up with candidates finally taking the stage for a two-hour talk on the thing that is literally threatening our future as a species.
Jay Inslee, who has made the climate crisis central to his campaign from the beginning, had been among those pulling hardest for a debate focused on this topic. In addition to Inslee, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, and Joe Biden have delivered plans for dealing with the crisis.
Other candidates in the Senate, including Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Cory Booker are co-signers of the Green New Deal. However, at this point Harris, Sanders, Booker, and Gillibrand have not produced detailed proposals for addressing the climate crisis.