Climate Fight Could Determine Election

Climate Change Divide Bursts to Forefront in Presidential Campaign

Coral Davenport, August 1, 2016 (NY Times)

“During the 2012 race for president, the issue of climate change…did not come up during the [Obama-Romney] debates…But this year, as Hillary Clinton thrusts climate change to the heart of her campaign, the issue is taking on a prominence it has never before had in a presidential general election…Mrs. Clinton regularly highlights her plan to combat global warming…Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, her main rival in the primaries, spoke of the issue forcefully…[Donald J. Trump] has gone further than any other Republican presidential nominee in opposing climate change policy. He often mocks the established science of human-caused climate change and dismisses it as a hoax. The Republican platform calls climate change policy [‘the triumph of extremism over common sense’ and the] divide between the two parties over the issue is the widest it has been in the decades since it emerged as a public policy matter…

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“Democratic Senate candidates in swing states like Pennsylvania and Florida are also embracing the issue…A Gallup poll in March found that 65 percent of Americans believed that climate change was caused by human activity, an increase of 10 points from a year earlier…[and] 38 percent of Republicans believed the same thing, an increase of four points from a year earlier. The poll also found that 76 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 accepted that human activity is behind climate change…” click here for more

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