When the list of topics for the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was announced by moderator Chis Wallace, there was one key issue missing: climate change. To be sure, the subjects that Wallace wanted to focus on, including COVID-19, the Supreme Court, and Black Lives Matter, were important ones this campaign season. But coronavirus aside, is there any issue more crucial to Americans right now than the life-altering impact of climate change, from the relentless, devastating fires in the West to the freakish sequence of hurricanes battering the Gulf Coast?
Writing in Wired, Gilad Edelman called the omission “morally indefensible,” but added that it was hardly new when it came to presidential debates: “The moderators didn’t ask a single question about climate change during the three 2016 debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,” he wrote, noting that “the topic was discussed for about five and a half minutes total, mostly in passing.” He added: “Somehow, 2012 [between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney] was even worse: zero minutes on climate change.”
Wallace did unexpectedly bring up the topic of climate change in the final 10 minutes of the Sept. 29th debate, looking almost weary from the 80 chaotic ones that had preceded them. “I’d like to talk about climate change,” Wallace abruptly said, cutting off yet another acrimonious exchange between the two men. Speaking directly to Trump, Wallace said, “What do you believe about the science of climate change, sir? Do you believe that human pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, contribute to climate change?”
Of course Trump’s response was both defensive and incoherent and Biden’s was lost in the fog of the next day’s coverage, which mostly focused on Trump’s incessant interrupting of the vice president and his cruel taunting of Hunter Biden’s history of substance abuse.
Things didn’t get much better at the dueling town halls a week after that—Biden was asked just one question, about fracking, and Trump was asked none at all—leaving many climate activists disappointed. And, of course, the issue of climate change got short shrift at the Supreme Court hearings last week, when Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett refused to even acknowledge its existence, to the amazement of her questioner, Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for vice president.