A Debate About the Future That Never Broached the Subject of Climate Change

September 27, 2016 – In last night’s U.S. Presidential debate, the moderator chose not to ask the candidates about climate change. And climate change got merely a mention when Hillary Clinton pointed out that Donald Trump considers the subject a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government. To which Trump replied that he had never said any such thing.

In a sense that’s true because he tweeted it on so many occasions I wonder how he could deny it with a straight face.

Unless Trump doesn’t write his own tweets then we must all be misinformed about what he does and does not say.

The only other time climate change came up happened during the discussion about nuclear weapons when after Clinton talked about non-proliferation Trump interjected saying that nuclear weapons, not climate change, were the biggest threat to the planet. In a recent interview Trump had made such a statement before. In March he stated, “I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons….That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now.”

So the Republican nominee doesn’t know the difference between nuclear weapons and climate science.

But to me the lack of discussion about climate change at this first Presidential debate seems unfathomable.