Live commentary: How to solve the climate crisis

I‘ve spent much of the last 25 years thinking and lobbying about climate change and trying to get it on the agenda. This town hall impressed me. While there were differences, all the candidates seemed well-informed about the issue and backed policies that make sense.

It was clear that Senator Amy Klobuchar had thought about the climate crisis from many angles. She seemed much more detail-oriented than Senator Kamala Harris. Less charismatic though. How do you trade off expertise against personality??

Less specific and less clear than Klobuchar was Joe Biden, though he was still well informed. He emphasized the need to involve the rest of the world – and that without them, even if the US goes net zero, the world will still have a crisis. Good point. He talked about his experience in working with foreign leaders and the need for diplomacy – again, good point. He said he’d go to Brazil to talk with President Jair Bolsonaro right away.

Again, that makes sense.?

Bernie Sanders, like Biden, stressed the need for diplomacy and involving the rest of the world.?Sanders was very emphatic about the priority of climate change and the need to preserve the planet. Although he was rather vague about where exactly his famous $16 trillion will come from, he did list some plausible sources. And he sees nuclear energy as expensive and risky, which is accurate. Sanders also suggested that his administration would compensate people who work in fossil fuels and lose their jobs by paying them incomes for five years. That seems fair and is also good politics.?

Senator Elizabeth Warren was very coherent – as usual. She supports a carbon tax and moving away from nuclear and spoke of a need for carbon-based border adjustment taxes – no one else did.??

Like Sanders, Warren was very aware of the need to provide for those who lose jobs in fossil fuels. Her suggestion was to employ them in infrastructure investment.

She wants to get to zero carbon in new buildings by 2028, in new cars by 2030 and power generation by 2035. This is probably just about feasible and the right way to tackle the problem. Warren also reacted well to a question about the impact of CO2 on the oceans. No one else spoke of the impact of climate on the oceans, but it’s a big issue.?

Senator Cory Booker, who spoke last, came across as having thought about the issues more than most. His statement that if we want to get off carbon as early as 2030 then we have to continue using nuclear energy was potentially controversial to a Democratic audience, but is also probably true, so I give him high marks for this. He also seemed more aware than others of the climate-agriculture connection and the need to bring factory farming under control.

No doubt some policies would be more effective than others, but nevertheless having a town hall devoted to climate change makes the 2020 presidential elections more advanced than previous years.

Geoffrey Heal, the Donald C. Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise and a Chazen Senior Scholar at Columbia Business School, is the author of “Endangered Economies – How the Neglect of Nature Threatens Our Prosperity.”

Here’s a brief take on the top three Democratic candidates at tonight’s Town Hall on the Climate Crisis:

— Joe Biden and his team can take heart that he was a more effective and more energetic candidate tonight.?There were a few bobbles along the way but overall, he was sturdier than in the debates.?It would help if he would now slow down a bit, be less defensive, and warm up to his audience.??

?— Bernie Sanders was warmer than Biden and seemed more comfortable.?But he didn’t have much energy on this occasion and–more to the point–he has yet to make a compelling argument about how he would pay for all his climate plans without blowing up the national debt.?Warren says her plan will cost some $3 trillion; Sanders says his will be around $16 trillion.?How can the country possibly afford that??

— Elizabeth Warren emerged once again as the strongest, most effective and compelling speaker.?She also seems a happier warrior, relaxing into her role as her crowds grow.?My bet is that her crowds are likely to grow again after tonight.

But one more point needs to be made: these candidates are still ducking and dodging on two issues that are crucial to holding climate warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less.?One is nuclear power.?Many serious students of climate change think we won’t get there without investing in nuclear power and using fracking as a short-term bridge to renewables.

Hopefully, these Democratic candidates will step up to these questions soon.??

David Gergen has been a White House adviser to four presidents and is a senior political analyst at CNN. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service and founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School.?

There’s an impressive ease with which Senator Cory Booker talked about the environment. He switched from broad, insightful statements about climate being “the lens, through which we must do everything that we do,” to the details of next-generation nuclear energy. It was clear that he has thought deeply about these topics, and he mixed in much-needed humor as the end of the seven-hour event approached.?

Discussing climate change effectively requires a combination of heart and wonkiness. Climate change is affecting people in very personal, emotionally challenging ways, costing homes and livelihoods. Yet it’s also about numbers and data. Wednesday night, Senator Booker proved he understands both. He connected with people’s personal experiences, while citing data and quantitative targets. He fittingly summed up his approach by saying: “in God we trust, but everybody else bring me data.”

Four points stood out in Booker’s climate plan:

Booker gave the impression that he could have gone on much longer, and maybe he will get the chance to. ?

Jessika Trancik?is an Associate Professor in Energy Systems at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren embraced flawed policy priorities during the CNN town hall, rejecting nuclear energy and calling for expensive, job-killing carbon mandates and $3 trillion in new taxpayer spending. Her?proposal to ban offshore oil drilling would hike?gas prices and the cost of household goods, hurting middle-class families.

When asked how she would care for oil and gas jobs displaced by “green energy” policies, Warren glossed over this inconvenient truth: she sounded like Hillary Clinton boasting – to her 2016 downfall – about putting “a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”?

Warren said she disagreed with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal to seize energy utilities and place them in public ownership, however she admitted she wanted something even more drastic: “I think the way we get there is we just say (to fossil fuel companies), sorry guys, but by 2035 you’re done.”

Warren said the displaced workers in a place like Port Arthur, Texas – the location of the country’s largest oil refinery – would simply get new infrastructure jobs such as those “right on the water.” She breezed over details, like who would pay for those new jobs, whether they are sustainable and how workers would be retrained.

The carbon mandates Warren embraced on Wednesday?would hike monthly energy bills. This would hurt low-income families the most, given that?they proportionately spend more on energy than wealthier families.

Carrie Sheffield is national editor for Accuracy in Media, a conservative media watchdog organization, and a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.??

The CNN moderator threw some real curve balls at political novice Andrew Yang tonight: Are we all going to have to drive electric cars? Should Americans change their eating habits and eat less beef? What is he going to ask of the American people?

Perhaps to the surprise of many viewers, he handled them all like a pro. And he was funny, besides.

Yang directly took on the myths fueled by Trump’s caricature of a green dystopian future where there are no more hamburgers, or cars, or personal freedom – an attempt to make Americans fear the clean energy future. And he dispelled them in simple, engaging and even humorous terms.?

No, the government is not going to take away your car. “This is not a country where you take someone’s clunker away from them. But you are going to offer to buy the clunker back and help them upgrade.” People will love driving electric cars, he suggested, saying, “It’s awesome[…] You feel like you’re driving the future.”?

And yes, your burgers are safe too. Becoming a vegetarian helps lower your carbon footprint, but no one is going to force you to do it.?

And although the looming climate catastrophe is an inherently gloomy topic, he brought cheer and a grounded optimism to the subject: “It’s not enough to do less of the bad. We need to do more of the good.”

He also talked about the need for solidarity: “This is an ‘us’ problem, not a ‘you’ problem” – and we need to act accordingly.

In talking about clean water as a right: “You know what’s expensive? Poisoning your kids!”

He didn’t duck the gravity of the challenge – even pointing out that America already has climate refugees, referring to a sinking town in Louisiana.?

But the green economy is about building a better future for all – and newcomer Yang conveyed that masterfully.

Van Jones is the host of the “The Van Jones Show” and a CNN political commentator. He is the co-founder of Green For All, a program of Dream Corps,?and the CEO of the?REFORM Alliance.?

Communities all across our country are experiencing the effects of climate change. You hear it in the many questions being asked in this Democratic Town Hall. People are asking about the disparity in the effects of climate change based on income, race, gender or abilities, about the vulnerability of coastal communities and sea level rise, about our fossil-fuel economy’s health effects, or citizens who have lost their homes to wildfire.

Some of these individuals are fortunate to live in communities looking to develop strategies to reduce the impact. Participants in the National Adaptation Forum share these ideas across geographies and there is a whole database of these efforts waiting to be replicated by any of us. We can all work in our own communities, but it is slow going and a patchwork of small-scale actions is insufficient and inefficient in protecting us from many of the effects of climate change.

Isolated local action also creates climate haves and have nots since unfortunately some of the individuals asking questions at the town hall do not live in communities that are taking these issues into account in their local planning and investments. The “big change” that Senator Elizabeth Warren called for – change that works for everybody – means creating government structures that enable all communities to do what the vanguard is already undertaking.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg noted that “our national government has failed” and that correcting it will be a “major national project.” We urgently need a national approach if we are going to help citizens – from Louisiana’s Isle de Jean Charles to native Alaskan communities to Paradise, California – who are climate refugees. For them, local solutions cannot sufficiently address their problems.

This is not to say that local action is unnecessary. It is the driver of innovation. Our local community examples will inform our national solutions. If you’re taking local action, please keep it up! If you’re not taking local action, see if you can get something started. As many candidates have said tonight, we need all hands on deck. And those hands need to be coordinated.?

Lara?Hansen is the Chief Scientist, Executive Director and co-founder of the not-for-profit organization EcoAdapt, and co-author of?Climate Savvy.

The best thing about CNN’s Town Hall?on the Climate Crisis tonight is that this event is occurring at all.?For too many years, our media and our political leaders have treated the dangers of climate change as a secondary concern.?It was virtually ignored?in the presidential debates of 2016, and when President Trump went to the G-7 summit recently, his team objected to a session about climate dangers, calling it a “niche issue.”

It is especially good to see CNN return to its roots.?Founder Ted Turner believed to his core that global warming was an existential threat to the planet and he wanted CNN to be on the cutting edge in enlightening the public about the dangers.?He should be very proud tonight.?

These conversations with the 10 Democratic candidates have also accomplished something else important: suddenly, the climate crisis has emerged as one of the highest priorities of the party heading into the election year, joining health care, immigration, guns and abortion.?Perhaps even surpassing them.?

We have never seen either party treat threats to the environment with such urgency.?Having just returned from a glacier expedition in Greenland — and seeing firsthand how real the threats are — I can just say: this could be a major tipping point in our politics.??

David Gergen has been a White House adviser to four presidents and is a senior political analyst at CNN. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service and founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School.?

At half time of CNN’s climate crisis town hall, we have heard numerous sweeping plans to confront climate change.?All of the Democratic candidates appear to agree that the first step in this long journey is to re-enter the Paris Climate Accord.?After that, their plans – and priorities – on addressing what many refer to as an “existential threat” to this country begin to differ.

Former Sec. Julian Castro highlighted an ambitious plan aiming to get the United States to net-zero?by 2045, meaning all coal-generated electricity will be phased out and replaced by zero-emission sources.?And while Castro focused on taxing “corporate polluters,” he could not name one of the culprits when asked.

Businessman Andrew Yang supports ending subsidies for?the fossil fuel industry.?He wants everyone to love driving electric cars, as opposed to “gas guzzlers” and “clunkers.”

California Sen. Kamala Harris vowed to issue an executive order to implement the Green New Deal.?She also supported bans on offshore drilling, fracking and plastic straws.

As usual, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar was the most realistic about making promises that are simply not sustainable. She discussed “carbon pricing,” a fee on the carbon content of fossil fuels, to?ease the?burden on the?environmentally disadvantaged.

Former Vice President Joe Biden made the strongest case with regard to the Paris Climate Accord and the fact that we need to bring the rest of the world together in addressing an issue that knows no geographical bounds.

Interesting note – each candidate has attacked President Donald Trump and his rolling back of federal government regulations.?But that was a cornerstone of his campaign and will undoubtedly be a focus of his re-election pitch to voters.?

Alice Stewart is a CNN political commentator and former Communications Director for Ted Cruz for President.

To hear Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tell his town hall audience, his sweeping Green New Deal is a logical and practical response to climate change. But Sanders’ description of how he plans to raise the money to fund his plan – an estimated $16 trillion over the course of a decade – shows he is planning to profoundly transform American society.

In addition to taxing the rich, Sanders would end tax incentives and subsidies for fossil fuel companies, which is straightforward enough. But he also plans to cover the cost, in part, by spending less on overseas military deployments in support of fossil fuel companies. That sounds like he plans to reduce troop commitments in the Middle East, which raises big questions about our diplomatic and national security aims and interests in that part of the world.

Sanders also talks about having government take the lead in developing renewable energy sources – and using profits from those investments to help offset the cost of the Green New Deal.

Sanders, in short, is calmly proposing a huge restructuring of the American economy, and he seems to think Congress will come along for the ride if he’s elected. As for the people in the oil and gas business who would lose their jobs, Sanders says he would provide 5 years of income as well as education for displaced workers.?

The coal miners in this country are not his enemy, Sanders argued. “Climate change is my enemy.”

If Sanders becomes the nominee, Republicans will point to his $16 trillion plan and call him a tax-hungry, big-government socialist. But Sanders says climate change is too dangerous for lesser measures.

“We are fighting for the survival of the planet earth,” he said. As such, we need to lead the world through “a global energy transition.”

It was a smooth, quiet call for the most radical proposals ever offered by a serious presidential candidate.

Errol Louis is the host of “Inside City Hall,” a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel.?

We’re half-way through the CNN Climate Crisis Town Hall with 10 leading Democratic presidential candidates. The contrast could not be more obvious. Democrats think addressing climate change is an urgent and priority issue, which they take very seriously. Donald Trump thinks it’s a hoax spread by the Chinese.

That is so stupid, part of me wants to think it is a joke. And so, by extension, the people who support Trump don’t believe there is a climate crisis either. To the point that the Trump campaign is selling plastic straws to own the “Liberal snowflakes” or something like that.

As a Floridian, it is insane to me that addressing the climate crisis has become a tribal political issue, with one group listening to science and the other group listening to Trump. Monster hurricanes forming in increasingly warm waters off the US coast don’t give a damn if you are a “Red State” or a “Blue State”. Rising sea-levels, threatening cities like Miami, where I live, don’t stop to ask for partisan affiliation before eroding the beaches.

Republicans love their children as much as Democrats. Why are Republicans resisting and mocking small and big efforts to try to take care of our planet and preserve it for generations to come??

Ana Navarro is a Republican strategist and CNN political commentator. Follow her on Twitter @ananavarro.

Democratic candidates are spending an entire evening of town halls discussing climate change on CNN. The candidates have used their time to promote different plans for dealing with this global crisis. In contrast to the Republican silence on this issue, each of the Democrats have a vision about what needs to be done.?Center and left agree that Washington needs to act.

But the one proposal that came out of the town halls, more important than any other, is getting rid of the filibuster. When Senator Kamala Harris joined the chorus calling for an end to the practice that allows a minority of senators to block the desires of the majority, she revealed a growing recognition within the party that it will be impossible to tackle climate change without this reform. Following the town hall, she reiterated the point,

tweeting: “If Republicans continue to block progress, I’ll get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal.”

Under Senator Mitch McConnell, Republicans have shown repeatedly that as a majority they will not support substantive legislation to curb emissions and as a minority they will use the filibuster to prevent Democrats from passing such bills. In other words, regardless of who controls the Senate in 2021, none of the Democrats seeking the presidency would be able to make progress via the legislative branch unless they have a 60-vote majority. And executive action, as President Barack Obama?learned, can be easily reversed.

To paraphrase what Speaker Pelosi likes to say about needing to have 218 votes to move forward with an idea, without ending the filibuster Democrats are just having a conversation.

The time has come for action. The damage and threats that the world faces from a ravaged environment get worse every year. And as of now, most of Republican leaders have moved firmly into the denialism camp and reject the need for legislative solutions.

Democrats, as we saw tonight, do want to do something about climate change. But without filibuster reform, it will just add up to a lot of talk.

Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, and author of the forthcoming book, “Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party.”

At nearly every opportunity at the CNN climate crisis town hall, former Vice President Joe Biden weaved in his experience on the international stage and on national security issues. His basic message was, ‘I will bring the world together – and that’s what we need to address climate change.’

In that vein, he brought up the Paris climate agreement. Now, while that issue is important, it is not what will move the general public to sustain the kind of activism we have seen from young people and progressives who have pushed this issue to the forefront.???

However, it may be a preview of how Biden will attempt to differentiate himself from his opponents at the next debate.?His experience as Vice President and as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee do stand in comforting contrast with the current inept?leader of the free world.

But at this stage in the primary process he would benefit from talking more about children struggling with asthma because of increased pollution than leading with his negotiating skills with China.

Jen Psaki, a CNN political commentator, was the White House communications director and State Department spokeswoman during the Obama administration. She is vice president of communications and strategy at the?Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Follow her at?@jrpsaki.?

Let’s be clear, taking no action on climate change is the riskiest action we can take. This includes proposals that commit us to continuing to invest in fossil fuel infrastructure – including natural gas which emits greenhouse gases not only when it is burned to make energy, but also in its extraction, refining and distribution. Senator Elizabeth Warren aptly called the current state of affairs where inaction rules “a nightmare.”

Let’s be clear, climate change is a monumental problem (as Senator Amy Klobuchar put it) and an existential crisis (as Senator Bernie Sanders reminded us) that we have spent over a century creating. It is a driver of the intensity of Hurricane Dorian, which is being reported on during this town hall.

Let’s be clear, we need a monumental solution but we do not have a century to enact it. We need bold, rapid action. Senator Kamala Harris’ commitments to use legal recourse and regulatory tools to spur this change, and Sanders’ economy wide plan may seem risky if you have not been focused on climate change and its impacts. However, these strategies are anything but risky, they are lifelines in the heavy seas that surround us.

These approaches lead us to former Vice President Joe Biden’s reflection on how these solutions create new jobs. They also lead us to Harris’ reflections on improvements for air and water quality. Sanders even discussed the concomitant advantage of joining the global community to fight the common enemy of climate change – it can help to reduce global conflict.

Indeed, these proposed solutions are rich with benefits beyond simply reducing the rate and extent of climate change.

Lara?Hansen is the Chief Scientist, Executive Director and co-founder of the not-for-profit organization EcoAdapt, and co-author of?Climate Savvy.

Amy Klobuchar had a great night tonight. She really did her homework and shared her climate plans through the eyes of real Americans.?

Mychal Estrada from Green For All (an organization I helped to create) asked Kamala Harris an important question before Klobuchar took the stage tonight: “As we make the transition from dirty diesel and coal, our industry workers – many of whom voted for Donald Trump in the last election – may fear losing their jobs, benefits, and ability to provide for their families. How will you work across the aisle to support all workers, and build trust with the Republican constituents dependent on a fossil-fuel economy?”

Unfortunately, Kamala Harris failed to directly answer the question. But later Klobuchar took the challenge head-on: We can’t build a green economy that leaves anyone behind, she said.?

Her grandfather was a coal miner, so it’s personal to her. She talked about the need to support impacted workers and help them make the transition while still being able to provide for their families. She shared ways farmers can be part of the solution by sequestering carbon in the soil. She talked about how low-income Americans might save money through clean economy solutions.

She also talked about the importance of environmental justice for communities of color living on the front lines of pollution; she touted plans for moving money from polluters’ pockets into programs that can lift these communities up with a price on carbon.?

Klobuchar laid out a vision for a green economy where everyone has a place and no one gets left behind. That’s something that can resonate with the voters watching tonight.?

Van Jones is the host of the “The Van Jones Show” and a CNN political commentator. He is the co-founder of Green For All, a program of Dream Corps,?and the CEO of the?REFORM Alliance.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar began her segment by making the connection between climate change and people’s lives.?That was good. A survey shows that people are more likely to care about climate change when it is connected to their lives.?But much of her discussion focused on the “personal action” theme, such as doing laundry with cold water (which she said she got from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, but that was probably the least important aspect of his plan).?For what it’s worth, I’ve been washing my clothes in cold water all my adult life, and while it makes me feel virtuous, it hasn’t moved the needle on climate change. ?

Maybe she’s got laundry on her mind, because her discussion felt more like a laundry list than an integrated program.?For a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, she seemed oddly lacking in clear priorities.?When asked about jobs, she said that wind and solar were a growing area of the economy.?But they are not just a growing area, they are the fastest growing job sectors in the US.?And, sorry, but stronger levees are not climate mitigation – they are climate adaptation.?They are not a means to stop climate change, but only a means to try to live with its effects.

Naomi Oreskes?is Professor of the History of Science?at Harvard University and the author of the new book?Why Trust Science?

The most urgent climate challenge of the next two years is to get Donald Trump out of the White House.?Unless that happens, there is no way?to restore sanity to US climate policy. Four more years of Trump is unthinkable.

Therefore the most important climate plan is not the most eye-wateringly dramatic version of the Green New Deal, but the one that – as part of an overall winning strategy – stands the best chance?of persuading the widest spectrum of American voters possible, and across political divides.

It won’t be easy, because climate change has become part of the culture wars, and many right-wing voters see climate denialism as a core part of their political identity.

For this reason it is a mistake for Democrats to go too far to the left with their?Green New Deal and climate wish lists.?What matters is reducing emissions to zero as quickly as possible, nothing else.

One way for candidates to show they are serious is to endorse the current grassroots campaign to keep nuclear power plants open across the US as alternatives to fracked gas.

Yet Buttigieg, Castro and Sanders, for example, all oppose nuclear, for no?good reason. Nuclear is still by far the largest-source of emissions-free electricity in the US. It is also largely supported by Republican voters and politicians.

A climate plan that phases out the nation’s largest source of emissions-free power indicates more clearly than anything that a candidate values political tribalism over the urgency of the climate crisis.

The starkness of the two parties’ divide is illustrated by the mere fact of this CNN Climate Crisis Town Hall. The Democrats are debating sensible and thoughtful ways forward to tackle the climate crisis.

The Republicans are persisting in outright denial of the basics of climate science, and their leader, the President, is?calling climate change a hoax and trying to keep the US hooked on coal–after pulling?the nation out of the only international climate treaty that matters, the Paris Agreement.

If we continue with the politics of Trump, the climate crisis will not be solved, and the world will tip into a spiral of rapid global heating, bringing temperatures that this planet has not experienced for millions of years, endangering human civilization and causing a mass extinction of other life.

Nothing else matters. Whatever climate plan has the best chance of defeating Trump is the one to go for.

Mark Lynas is the author of several books on climate change. He is currently writing an updated version of Six Degrees, due to be published next year. Twitter @mark_lynas

Kamala Harris was impressive. Making a lot of references to her record in California – which has great environmental policies and has tackled climate and other environmental issues more effectively than any other state – Harris was very self-assured. Her California record is a big plus -?though a lot of distinctive California policies predate her.?

But she waffled on some issues. Nuclear was one. Should we replace nuclear power stations at the ends of their lives by more of the same, or by renewables?

This is a complex question and Senator Harris didn’t seem to have thought it through. She talked mainly about the disposal of nuclear waste and Yucca Mountain – a big issue but not central to the choice.

And she said she’d leave it to the states.??But we need action at the federal level if we are to develop and implement new nuclear technologies. She would ban fracking and the production of oil and gas on federal lands – I agree, but this is controversial and perhaps not necessary. If we can reduce the use of oil and gas by promoting new technologies, this will automatically reduce demand for oil and gas and so its production.

Overall she seemed very emphatic about the importance of climate.

Geoffrey Heal, the Donald C. Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise and a Chazen Senior Scholar at Columbia Business School, is the author of “Endangered Economies – How the Neglect of Nature Threatens Our Prosperity.”

Kamala Harris seems to be confused. She dodged the opening question—would you declare a climate crisis?—by saying she would declare a drinking water crisis.?She segued to the Montreal Protocol, but that deals with the ozone hole!

On the big policy questions—like carbon pricing—she seems lacking in specifics and repeatedly resorts to the slogan, “leaders have to lead.” Sure, but how exactly? She talked about a lot of small-bore issues like plastic bags, drinking straws, and cheeseburgers.?Not eating cheeseburgers might be a good idea, but it is not a policy.?

Harris also talked at some length about climate change denial, in part in response to a question about its parallels with tobacco harm denial. My colleague Erik Conway and I literally wrote the book on that parallel, but I don’t think that is the central issue now. Polls all show that the American people are on board about climate change; our central challenge is to implement the policies that will accelerate the renewable energy transition.?

How do we do that? She had very little to say. I’d say her heart is in the right place, but both Castro and Yang are in front of her on the specifics of the issue.

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science?at Harvard University and the author of the new book Why Trust Science?

There’s a fine line that the candidates have to walk. On the one hand, so much more needs to be done to fight climate change – and so much more quickly. We need to step up our efforts, and the candidates are right to focus on this. On the other hand, there are policy successes that the candidates should cite and build on. So far, we haven’t had enough discussion of the policies that have driven technological innovation.

Of course, this is not to say there has been no discussion of innovation and smart policies. Sen. Kamala Harris mentioned the process of innovation in passing, and businessman Andrew Yang discussed the importance of pushing industrial efforts toward more low-carbon innovation.

But we’re still missing some of the most inspirational evidence of recent progress in batteries, wind power, electric vehicles and solar energy. In the case of solar energy, the costs of solar panels dropped 99% over four decades. This drop in costs was driven by government policy, with an estimated 60% of the cost decline driven by market-expansion policies around the world to grow solar energy, and 30% from global government support for research and development.

It’s easy for people to feel discouraged when talking about the climate change challenge. The problem seems enormous, and many feel their individual decisions and votes don’t matter. But recent history shows something different – with real and tangible policy successes in driving technological innovation. Candidates should cite this evidence. And the American people should recognize how powerful their votes can be.

Jessika Trancik is an Associate Professor in Energy Systems at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Andrew Yang just hit the ball out of the park. He moved the debate right where it needs to be:?into the economic and politics of climate change.?

In a few short minutes, he raised three crucial points that economists have been trying for years to get front and center in our debate.

1.) The GDP is a terrible measure of well-being and needs to be replaced by something that takes into account health and environmental sustainability.

2.) We currently subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year.?(Most Americans think that renewables are heavily subsidized, when, in fact,?permanent tax expenditures that subsidize fossil fuels exceed renewables by a?7-1 margin)

3.) Jobs versus the environment is a false dichotomy.?He is totally right about that.?More than that, it is a pernicious myth.?I’ve never understood why Democrats don’t do more to reject it. Good for Yang for calling this out in no uncertain terms.

I don’t know if this man is qualified to be President, but he’s on track on this issue.

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science?at Harvard University and the author of the new book Why Trust Science?

The fundamental question tonight – how will Democratic presidential hopefuls separate themselves on climate change?

Democrats concur that rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement is important. But telling voters in my hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, about plans to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord does not make clear how their lives and communities will be directly impacted.?And Democrats cannot afford to lose sight of what climate change means for?marginalized Americans, particularly rural populations and communities of color.?

Railing against fossil fuel executives might be therapeutic, but what does transition look like for communities whose livelihoods rely on those jobs? What resources will be directed to low- and moderate-income communities that are hardest hit by extreme weather? And how will candidates ensure that post-recovery communities are still affordable and not catalysts for gentrification?

Additionally, the Senate map still presents an uphill battle, even if Democrats win the White House in 2020. As a result, any sound climate agenda that is introduced will likely be in jeopardy because of Senate Republicans. While there is value in proposing ambitious legislative measures, we also need a Plan B.?

Simply put, how will the next Democratic president’s executive authority effectively move the needle on climate change and build on the environmental justice strides made during the Obama administration? Families deserve answers to this question.

Lastly, it is hard to argue that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s focus on climate change has not shaped the Democratic primary. Tonight’s town hall is a testament to his leadership on this matter, and we will sorely miss his perspective.?

Bakari Sellers is a former Democratic member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and a CNN commentator.

Secretary Castro wants to rejoin the Paris Accord (what Democrat doesn’t?) and follow it with a series of executive orders.?But executive orders are fragile.?Unless we can build a coalition—in Congress, or on the state and federal level—any action taken by the White House is unlikely to prove transient and ineffective.

Castro should do more to emphasize the jobs that are being created in the clean energy sector—far more than in fossil fuels—and that clean energy is cheaper than dirty energy. These economic benefits offer a basis for building a new, profitable, clean energy system.

The heart-stopper of Castro’s segment was when he said he wants to see that “more people are protected by national flood insurance” by subsidizing it.?That would be a mistake.?Flood insurance encourages people to live in flood zones that should never have been populated in the first place, and are now more vulnerable than ever.?It’s sad, but the reality is that climate adaptation will necessarily involve relocating some Americans out of high-risk flood zones. I would rather he had suggested paying for necessary relocation out of his carbon pollution fee.??

The gaffe of his segment was his promise to make America “carbon-free.” All life is based on carbon; we can’t be carbon-free!?What he means is carbon-emissions-free, but that is harder to say.

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science?at Harvard University and the author of the new book Why Trust Science?

All over the world life forms are experiencing weather that attacks rather than sustains.

Unseasonal heat that kills, rain that instead of sweetening, inundates and destroys, hurricanes that devastate.

This is climate change.

We are in it. It is all around us and set to get worse.

Everything depends on what we do now.

To read more from Emma Thompson’s op-ed, click here.

Emma Thompson is a writer and actor from the UK.??

Climate change isn’t what I’d call urgent. Not any more. The time for urgency has passed. Our government and the rest of the world largely ignored the red lights and warning bells. It’s now much bigger, and much worse, than urgent.

Heat waves, wildfires and monster storms are killing people outright. Unstable weather is threatening the global food supply. So is seawater acidification, which is destroying coral reefs that support the ocean food chain.

Rising seas threaten to inundate all low-lying seacoasts and islands.

Climate change so dominates news about the environment that many of us seem to have forgotten that we have a ton of other major problems not directly linked to a warming planet. Shrinking wild lands, polluted air, poisoned waters, exhausted farmlands and depleting irrigation and drinking wells, overfished seas, species going extinct, clearcutting for more farms and more wood, a plasticizing ocean, mercury in seafood. It goes on.

To read more from Carl Safina’s op-ed, click here.

Carl Safina’s most recent book is “Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel.” A MacArthur Fellow, he holds the Endowed Chair for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and is founder of the not-for-profit Safina Center.?

But to really address our climate crisis head-on, we must address the legacy of environmental racism and recognize that climate change doesn’t impact every community equally. Hard data shows that it disproportionately impacts communities of color, indigenous people, and low-income Americans. People of color are?more likely?to live in neighborhoods with toxic waste facilities. Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to be?exposed?to air pollution than white Americans. Intense storms bear down on these communities – with?recovery?that is slow, painful, and often lacking total?support?from the government. Latinx families and?workers?are?vulnerable?to record heat waves and heat-related deaths.?Indigenous people?are seeing their food supply threatened, facing displacement from their homes, and are being trampled over by special interests that want to exploit their lands and sacred sites. I could go on.

Our climate crisis will leave no one untouched. It poses an existential challenge – but it also gives us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to marshal all of our resources and all of our people to unleash the best of American innovation and creativity to take it on.

To read more from Elizabeth Warren’s op-ed, click here.

Elizabeth Warren is one of 10 presidential candidates taking part in CNN’s climate crisis town hall Wednesday, September 4 at 5:00 p.m. ET. She is a US senator from Massachusetts.

Industrial America – including South Bend and the Studebaker cars we once produced – was built on oil and gas. But just as my community has moved forward, so must our country. So we’ll launch a 21st-century Industrial Revolution, investing in mass transit, transitioning to electric vehicles, and making buildings and homes more energy efficient. And with scientists?indicating our soil can absorb?as much carbon as the?global transportation system emits, we’ll put American farmers at the center of our climate revolution. Too often, rural America has been told they’re the problem, not invited to be part of the solution. Through investments in soil management and other technologies, we can make a farm in Iowa as much a symbol of confronting climate disruption as an electric vehicle in California.

To read more from Pete Buttigieg’s op-ed, click here.

Pete Buttigieg is one of 10 presidential candidates taking part in CNN’s climate crisis town hall Wednesday, September 4 at 5:00 p.m. ET. He is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.?

As the Earth warms due to the continued burning of coal, oil, and gas, climate-related disasters that include high-intensity hurricanes, floods, droughts, extreme precipitation, forest fires, and heat waves, pose rising dangers to life and property.?Hurricanes?become more destructive as warmer ocean waters feed more energy to the storms. Warmer air also carries more moisture for devastating rainfalls, while rising sea levels lead to more flooding.

Yet?Trump?and his minions are the loyal servants of the fossil-fuel industry, which fill?Republican party campaign coffers. Trump has also stalled the fight against climate change by pulling out of the Paris Agreement. The politicians thereby deprive the people of their lives and property out of profound cynicism, greed, and willful scientific ignorance.

To read more from Jeffrey Sachs’ op-ed, click here.

Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the?Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.?

Climate change should be a definitive issue for Black voters, but it isn’t. That is partly because environmental advocacy groups have not always looked like us, nor have they clarified what solutions mean for our communities. And few have articulated what real environmental justice looks like.

So, for any presidential hopeful that is serious about wooing Black voters in the South, take note: we expect a clear plan on how you will safeguard the air we breathe and the water we drink. We expect you to explain how climate change affects us, and how our communities will be spotlighted in response efforts.

To read more from Bakari Sellers’ op-ed, click here.

Bakari Sellers is a former Democratic member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and a CNN commentator.

It turns out that the traditional and responsible farming practices humans used for centuries before the rise of chemical agriculture are some of the best methods we can use to protect ourselves and the planet. It’s what we now call regenerative organic farming and it’s back-to-basics: Instead of using excessive amounts of fertilizers in vast single-crop fields, farmers can diversify and rotate crops, compost, plant cover crops and reduce tillage. Ranchers should raise animals that are grass-fed and free of antibiotics, added hormones and pesticides in their feed, and live free of cruel confinement conditions and the daily suffering inherent in life on factory farms.

To read more from Rose Macario’s and David Bronner’s op-ed, click here.

Rose Marcario is the president and CEO of Patagonia. David Bronner is the CEO of Dr. Bronner’s.

From the phone or laptop you are reading this on, to the car you drive, the clothes you wear or the food you eat, most of the goods you use have traveled across the seas.

According to the latest UN?assessment, freighters carry 10.7 billion tons of cargo across the oceans every year. Fossil fuels power this industry, which relies on oil, gas and coal shipments to stay in business. In fact, shipping accounts for 2% to 3% of global carbon emissions. This is greater than the emissions produced by all but the world’s five highest-emitting countries.

We need to decarbonize the global shipping industry – we cannot hope to build prosperous sustainable economies without doing so.

To read more from Luis Alfonso de Alba’s op-ed, click here.

Luis Alfonso de Alba is the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Climate Action Summit.?

Approximately?half of the world’s oxygen?— every other breath we take — is produced by the ocean. The largest ecosystem on Earth, the ocean provides food to more than?a billion people, sustains?millions?of jobs and generates trillions of dollars in?revenue. Its majestic beauty provides us with a priceless source of inspiration.

Yet, research from leading scientists and the UN assessments highlights the pace at which ocean ecosystems are failing, marine wildlife populations are shrinking and species are vanishing. The World Wide Fund for Nature’s?Living Planet report?revealed that in a little over 40 years — less than an average single lifetime — global wildlife populations have declined by 60%. This loss is not only ecologically, socially and economically untenable — it is morally unsustainable. Our planet will be less whole without endangered species like the?vaquita porpoise, Hawaiian monk seal and North Atlantic right whale. The planet’s?shallow water coral reefs?are now down to about half their original extent and 30% to 50% of the?world’s mangrovesare already gone. This tragedy for biodiversity is becoming a humanitarian crisis.

There is much to be done and no time to waste.

To read more from Marc Benioff’s and Marco Lambertini’s op-ed, click here.

Marc Benioff is chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce. Marco Lambertini is director general of WWF International. They are members of the?Friends of Ocean Action, a group of more than 50 leaders who are fast-tracking solutions for a healthy ocean. The Friends of Ocean Action is convened by the World Economic Forum and the World Resources Institute.?