Renewable Friday: CNN Climate Crisis Town Hall

Democratic Presidential candidates have greatly expanded their plans to deal with the Global Warming crisis since I wrote Renewable Friday: Inslee's Got a Plan, and Beto's Got a Plan, and All God's Chillun Got Plans only a few months ago. This is because the IPCC has warned that we only have 11 years left to get moving on it, and we have to get to Net Zero Carbon before 2050. They got a chance to explain their ideas at the CNN Climate Crisis Town Halls last week, and I have gotten hold of the transcripts in order to pull out the good bits.

Even Republican pollster and Orwellian wordsmith Frank Luntz admits he was wrong, back when he helped obfuscate the Global Warming issue by telling Republicans to use the less scary-sounding phrase "climate change".

Frank Luntz, the GOP’s message master, calls for climate action

As per usual, Luntz's advice to Democrats now on what to do is change the wording of the messages. Never mind that nonsense. The candidates know that we have real work to do.

CNN Interviews Ten Democratic Candidates on Global Warming

Let's take it as given that we need to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, reverse the current President's actions, get to 100% renewables and all-electric vehicles, and end fossil fuel subsidies. What did the candidates say that stands out?

Julián Castro

Transcript

We don't need climate scientists to tell us what we can see with our own eyes.

Forbid drilling on Federal lands

Q. What proposals of your would help us stay in our home in a flood plain?

In my plan, we actually help subsidize the cost for folks because I want to make sure that people are protected, that their property is protected. And in those instances where, because of a natural disaster, they have to rebuild, that they're able to do that. [This would just make the problem worse.]

Q. What is your plan for holding corporations accountable?

• End Citizens United
• Tax pollution
• Clean energy standard

A decade ago natural gas was a bridge fuel. We're coming to the end of the bridge.

I support local bans on fracking.

I believe that we can get to net zero by 2045, and clean energy by 2035.

I propose a new civil rights law that gives people a private right of action. That is how it was until a certain supreme court decision.

I had a conflict of interest with a client of the law firm where I worked, who wanted to build a golf course over the town's underground aquifer. Under ethics rules for lawyers, I couldn't vote against in on the city council. At last I quit my job and voted against the project.

Blitzer [First republican talking point]:

What is the biggest sacrifice you would ask the American people to make to help solve the climate crisis?

Castro ignored the question as stated, and talked about teaching our children environmental responsibility.

Blitzer: Should Climate Change be taught in schools?

We need to fix the system of state boards that decide what goes into the curriculum, where Right wingers can get complete control.

Andrew Yang

Transcript

Yang: I would redefine our economic bench marks actually to include environmental sustainability.

Because right now, the trap that Democrats are in is that, we're being told that moving towards a green economy is bad for jobs, it's bad for business, and that couldn't be further from the truth. We actually need to redefine our economic measurements to include clean air and clean water.

[Yang has fallen headlong into the Denialist trap. No, renewables are profitable.]

GPD [sic; he means GDP] is out of date.

We can't fall into this false dichotomy that what's good for the planet is bad for the economy. [Too late for you!]

We would 100 percent make funds available to communities around the country for adaptation and resilience.

My plan is to give every American citizen 100 democracy dollars that you can give to any campaign or candidate that you like in any given year. This would wash out the lobbyist cash by a factor of 8-1.

Blames African countries for taking Chinese coal plants because they are the cheapest. [No, Andrew, coal is not the cheapest. It's because they can't get any other financing. You should know better.]

Yang's big idea is the $1000/mo Freedom Dividend. But he would make poor people choose between that and existing welfare programs. Free money for the rich and merely prosperous, very expensive money for the poor. [BTW, that $1000/mo is for adults only. No help with rent for another bedroom, or school and child care and all that.]

Yang has promoted geoengineering, including a space mirror [not even science fiction, but fantasy] and spraying sulfates in the atmosphere [treating the symptoms, not the disease].

Blitzer: [second Republican talking point] Will we have to drive electric cars?

Yang: We are all going to love driving  electric cars. [Yes, indeed.]

Modernize land use [OK] Mom and pop farms [fantasy]; crop rotation [more than a century old]; Americans would be happy to pay for locally-sourced food [for the poor, this is a fantasy]; eat less meat [They're taking away our hamberders!]

Green New Deal would take away air travel in a particular time frame. [No, you idiot, you're spouting Republican talking points! That's a flat-out lie!]

Lightbulbs are made so they intentionally burn out. [Conspiracy theory!]

Questioner brings up Republican talking point: Why should the US go first? Blitzer joins in: How can you be sure America's efforts won't be in vain if China or India continues to expand emissions. Yang agrees: There are a lot of countries that signed the accords, and that's it. [Lies]

Supports thorium for nuclear power. [Currently a fantasy. There is only one working thorium reactor. It cannot possibly become commercially viable in time to help.]

Kamala Harris

Transcript

Erin Burnett: What would you do first as President?

Harris: I would declare a drinking water emergency.

Republicans want to debate whether science should be the basis of public policy.

Get rid of the filibuster.

Burnett, next do-nothing talking point: What would stop the next president from just undoing it and sort of having this become a seesaw?

Harris: I'm going to first attempt to work across the aisle. But if we don't see any traction there, yes, I will take executive action. [We don't have time to go through this song and dance yet again.]

 Just as we did with the tobacco companies, we have to sue the big oil companies about misinformation and actual harm.

Zero emission vehicles by 2045. [I would expect it by 2030.] All-electric school buses by 2030 so children don't have to breathe those fumes.

Nuclear? What about the waste? We have to figure that out.

Amy Klobuchar

Transcript

Burnett, next Republican talking point: How much will it cost? [No, these are profitable investments, not costs]

Klobuchar: Regulate fracking, don't ban it.

Put a price on carbon.

Keep existing nuclear plants, but don't build more unless we solve the nuclear waste storage problem.

We haven't talked about buildings, right? The changes we can make to new buildings — energy storage, appliance standards — what I call building a fridge to the next century.

I have been through this mitigation issue from flooding in my own state, and we have actually made sure that some of the people moved their homes. Sometimes we find a way to move their homes, to move them off of flooding areas that keep consistently flooding. Because otherwise they're paying too much money.

Joe Biden

Transcript

Biden: Science and technology are going to change. And as it changes, we learn more, we can do more.

I've never chosen money and power over our lives and our futures.

I got involved back in 1986. I introduced a climate change plan thatPolitiFact said was a game- changer.

[Supports carbon tax.]

Anderson Cooper: President Trump has said that even if we do everything right, other countries are not going to be following it and therefore it's not worth being part of it.

Biden: Well, he's dead wrong across the board on basically everything. We've got to start choosing science over fantasy here.

I propose we have 500,000 charging stations in the new green economy. [There are about 68,000 now.]

The US should own the electric vehicle market. [Not happening.]

Cooper, Republican talking points: You're not saying that you support everything in the original Green New Deal. Do you think it goes too far? Is it unrealistic, promising too much?

Biden: No, it's not. It doesn't have a lot of specifics. I went into more detail.

We can create over 10 million jobs that are making $25 bucks an hour.

There used to be an EPA.

There has to be a price to pay for what China is doing, they're exporting coal technology, they're building coal plants on their Belt and Road area. [Punishing China is not the answer. The rest of the world needs to step up to provide financing for renewable energy in those countries.]

I've been pushing really hard for mass transit and for rail. We can take millions of vehicles off the road if we had high-speed rail.

Cooper: Should — will there be a point or would you like there to be a point — and if so, when — that everybody drives an electric car or has to drive an electric car? [RTP]

Biden: That's going to be based upon whether or not we can make it economically feasible. And it is economically feasible. They're not efficient relative to what else is available to be done. That's why people are going to move and that's why it's going to create so many new jobs for us.

CNN Chief Climate Correspondent, Bill Weir: There were 14 separate billion-dollar storms or fires last year,total of $91 billion, and it just seems logical to assume that at some point insurance companies are going to stop covering places that are vulnerable, even in fire regions.

Biden: And so we have to, you know, be in a position where when we build back, we don't build back to normal, we build back to what is necessary.

I remember when I was a kid, and the first misty day, turn on the windshield wiper, there would be oil on the window. I don't know if that's why I have asthma.

First thing that happened when President Obama and I were elected, we went over to the Pentagon, sat down and got the briefing on the greatest danger facing our security.You know what they told us it was, the military? Climate change.

Bernie Sanders

Transcript

Q. Senator, your climate plan is specific about how you will spend [INVEST!] $16 trillion, and I'm delighted that somebody is willing to spend that much. Can you be equally specific about where that money is coming from? For example, you say that you'll tax fossil fuel companies, but the central idea behind addressing climate change is eliminating use of fossil fuels. How much money can you raise from companies whose income will be drastically reduced or eliminated? And where else will the money come from?

Bernie: Good. If I could, Richard, let me begin and predicating everything I'm going to say to you this evening. Donald Trump thinks that climate change is a hoax. I think that Donald Trump is dangerously, dangerously wrong. I may be old fashioned, but I believe in science.

For a start, insanely, but honestly, what goes on right now is we are giving the fossil fuel industry approximately $400 billion every single year in subsidies and tax breaks. Obviously, we end that.

Second of all, we believe that the federal government is the best way to move aggressively to produce sustainable energy, like wind and solar. We will expand concepts, public power concepts like the TVA right now to produce wind and solar and actually make a profit on that as we sell that to electric companies all over the world.

Thirdly, we are not going to have to spend money on the military defending oil interests around the world. We can cut military spending there, as well.

Fourthly, fourthly, our program will create up to 20 million good-paying jobs over the period of the 15 years. And when we do that,you're going to have a lot of taxpayers out there who will be paying more in taxes. You'll have people who are not getting food stamps and so forth.

Cooper: Would you guarantee to the American public tonight that the responsibility for $16.3 trillion, which is a massive amount of money, wouldn't end up on taxpayers' shoulders?

Bernie: Well, it will end up on some taxpayers' shoulders. [Oil companies, corporations that currently pay no taxes, rich people in general]

Q. You have wavered at times in your stance on eliminating the filibuster.

Bernie: I have not. haven't wavered. What I believe is the Senate should not be the House and we shouldn't simply have a majority body. But what I have said repeatedly is we need major filibuster reform. We can use Budget Reconciliation, which only needs 51 votes.

Q. You argue that nuclear energy is, quote, "a false solution" to the climate crisis.

Bernie: It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to add more dangerous waste to this country and to the world when we don't know how to get rid of what we have right now. The truth is that it costs a lot more to build a new nuclear power plant today than it does to go to solar or to go to wind. [Right on!]

Weir: The U.S. gets about 20 percent of our electricity and power from nuclear, while France is about 70 percent.

Bernie: I'm not a fear-monger here, and I wish the people in France the very best. But I think that the way forward, the most cost-effective way forward, the way forward that is safest is moving to sustainable energies like wind and geothermal.

I'm not here to tell you that I think it will happen like this, but I think it's worth a try — that in this extraordinary moment of global crisis, I think we need a president, hopefully Bernie Sanders, that reaches out to the world, to Russia and China and India, Pakistan, all the countries of the world, and say, guess what, whether you like it or not, we are all in this together. And if you are concerned about the children in your country and future generations, we're going to have to work together.

And maybe, just maybe, instead of spending a $1.5 trillion every single year on weapons of destruction designed to kill each other, maybe we pool those resources and we work together against our common enemy, which is climate change. [and global poverty and oppression.]

In my community, in Burlington, Vermont, if I'm not mistaken, over the last many years, despite good economic growth, we are not using any more electricity than we did 10 years ago because we have put investments into energy efficiency. And so that's the direction we've got to go.

Q. Human population growth has more than doubled in the past 50 years. [Yes, population is up while the birth rate has been declining, but not yet far enough.]

Bernie: The answer has everything to do with the fact that women in the United States of America, by the way, have a right to control their own bodies and make reproductive decisions.

(APPLAUSE)

And the Mexico City agreement, which denies American aid to those organizations around the world that are — that allow women to have abortions or even get involved in birth control to me is totally absurd.

So I think, especially in poor countries around the world where women do not necessarily want to have large numbers of babies, and where they can have the opportunity through birth control to control the number of kids they have, it's something I very, very strongly support.

Q. How would you help workers of the fossil fuel industry transition to other respectable fields of work in a future green economy?

Bernie: I consider myself to be perhaps the most pro-worker member of the United States Congress. I think I have a 100 percent pro-union AFL-CIO voting record, and I've spent my entire life fighting for workers.

So let me be very clear, is that the coal miners in this country, the men and women who work on the oil rigs, they are not my enemy. What is my enemy is climate change. And what we have done is built into our plan, our $16 trillion plan, tens and tens of billion of dollars for what we call a just transition.

And that says that if some worker through no fault of his own or her own loses their job because we're moving away from fossil fuel, we're going to guarantee them an income for five years, we're going to guarantee them the education that they need, because those workers are not our enemies. They should not be punished because we're trying to save the planet.

Cooper: I just want to ask, of all of your ambitious plans, free public college, Medicare for all, eliminating student debt, full employment, Green New Deal every president has to prioritize in terms of where they're going to put — what is the priority on climate change compared to all these others, if you have to choose?

Bernie: Well, I have the radical idea that a sane Congress can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.

We should be leading the world to a global energy transition and you have a president who thinks it's not real. That is idiotic.

Q. Are you in favor of changing FEMA rules to encourage retreat from properties that have suffered repeated catastrophic losses?

Bernie: Yes.We have the absurd situation where FEMA will only pay to repair a facility or a piece of infrastructure where it was before it was destroyed. That's pretty stupid. If people want to rebuild in an area which will be devastated by the next storm, they're certainly not going to get any federal assistance from my administration to do that.

Cooper: How do you manage to get people to relinquish, you know, the car they love?

Bernie: You make it worth people's while by heavily subsidizing the industry. [In a few years, this will no longer be necessary.] We can create a whole lot of jobs by moving away from internal combustion engine cars to electric cars.

Q. How will you address the concerns of businesses, especially small ones, who will be expected to conform to changes in the law to protect our environment and might cost them money, i.e., using sustainable products?

Bernie: Jane and I have put solar on our house. And it turns out, with the tax credits that we got, we pay it off in seven or eight years and then we have free electricity. It's a pretty good investment. We can afford to do that. There a lot of families that cannot afford that $15,000 or $16,000.

So we're going to make it possible to lend those people that money to put the solar up on their roofs. They will not be paying a nickel more than they're currently paying for electricity, and then they're going to have free electric after that.That is a sane approach which also creates jobs. Those are the kinds of things that we want to do for small business and homeowners.

Cooper: Sacrifices?

Bernie: So there's going to be change, and we're going to have to ask people to understand that we have got to make those changes now even though they may be a little bit uncomfortable for the sake of future generations. [Soon enough our current Denialists will be claiming that EVs and renewables were their ideas in the first place.]

Elizabeth Warren

Transcript

Chris Cuomo takes over.

Q. Most economists believe that a carbon tax is the most efficient way to reduce carbon emissions.

Warren: I think of this as what my mother taught me, and that is you got toclean up your own messes. And that means if you're going to be spewing carbon into the air and messing up the air for the rest of us, it's your responsibility to clean it up. I'm there.

I want to think about the three areas where we get the most carbon pollution in America right now. And what are they? They're in our buildings and homes, right, what we're burning. It's our cars and light-duty trucks that we drive. And it's the generation of electricity where we're still using a lot of carbon-based fuel to make that happen.

Governor Jay Inslee said let's get tough on this and let's put in place some real rules about this. So what I've adopted is, by 2028,we don't have any more new building that has any carbon footprint. By 2030, we do the same thing on vehicles, on our cars and light-duty trucks. And by 2035, we do the same thing on electric generation.That will cut 70 percent of the carbon that we are currently spewing into the air.

Q. What is your opinion on the prospect of nuclear energy to help replace fossil fuels? And do the risks outweigh any potential benefits?

WARREN: So you rightly point out about nuclear energy. It's not carbon-based, but the problem is it's got a lot of risks associated with it, particularly the risks associated with the spent fuel rods that nobody can figure out how we're going to store these things for the next bazillion years.

In my administration, we're not going to build any new nuclear power plants, and we are going to start weaning ourselves off nuclear energy and replacing it with renewable fuels over — we're going to get it all done by 2035, but I hope we're getting it done faster than that.

Cuomo: When it's bright and sunny, Germany generates so much wind and solar that it can flood the market and puts the wholesale price almost to zero.When it's dark in the wintertime, when they need the power, they have to use nuclear, they have to look for other sources.

Warren: So, remember, it's not only about production, it's also about storage. And to the extent we do a better job, for example, in how to store all of that energy, then you get to use solar power at high noon but you also get to use it at midnight. So I'm going to tell you where I place my biggest bet, and that is on science. Make that investment in science, make that investment in research and development. And that's how it is that we will both have more renewable generation, but more to the point, we will also have more storage so that renewable power makes more sense 24 hours a day, 365days a year.

Cuomo: You're on the debate stage. You're across from the president.And he says the Green New Deal is a dream because we're 60 percent right now on fossil fuels.

Warren: He says the Green New Deal is a dream? I would say where he is right now is a nightmare.

IQ.  have seen firsthand the devastating impact of mountaintop removal coal mining. Would your administration support policies, like the Appalachian Community's Health Emergency Act, H.R. 250, that take into account the impact coal has on our communities and help provide a path forward?

Warren: The answer is yes. You don't get to ruin the air for everyone else, the water for everyone, the soil for everyone else.

You know what I think is the fundamental question right now is how have we gotten ourselves into this mess? How has it gone this long when the climate science year after year after year has told us it's getting more and more dangerous out there, it's getting worse and worse for life on this Earth.

And the answer is because of Washington. We have a Washington that works great for the wealthy and the well-connected, a Washington that is working great for giant oil companies that want to drill everywhere. It's just not working for the rest of us who see climate change bearing down upon us.

When you see a government that works great for those with money, a government that works great for those who can make big campaign contributions and hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers, and it's not working for everybody else, that is corruption, pure and simple, and we need to call it out for what it is. Fight back.

Cuomo: What about the workers?

Warren: See, you know, I think this is one of the best parts about the Green New Deal. It's not only about setting the targets on green so that we save this planet. It's about a new deal for people who work. It's about justice for people whose communities have been destroyed. It's about racial justice on environmental issues. It's about worker justice.

I have, among my many plans, one of the ones is about a green manufacturing plan. So let me use that as an example. Coming up, there is an estimated $17 trillion market for green around the world. Think about it. Green generation of power, but also green to take carbon out of the air, to clean up the water, desalinization, and, by the way, a lot of this stuff hasn't been invented yet.

And I've got a three-part answer to that. The first is, make the big investment in science and research and development, the things we do best here in America.

Part two is we say to the world, you can produce whatever we come up with in our science, whatever devices, you can have it, you can apply it, but whatever is manufactured from it, you have to manufacture right here in the United States of America. That will produce an estimated 1.2 million new manufacturing jobs, good jobs, union jobs, not jobs that pay less, not jobs that are an afterthought, but real jobs.

We want to sell this stuff around the world. That's how you generate a change in how we see both our economy, building unions, building good jobs, and [third]  at the same time both saving our own nation and the rest of the world on the climate front.

The oceans are rising. You know, I visit a lot of port cities. I live in one. We are going to have to make big change, and that means we need our workers. We need our workers to be there, to help us, to be partners in this, and quite frankly, to have the good, well-paying jobs as part of that.

This is a win-win for everybody.

Cuomo: Do you think that the government should be in the business of telling you what kind of lightbulb you can have?

WARREN: Oh, come on, give me a break. You know, this is exactly what the fossil fuel industry hopes we're all talking about. They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws, and around your cheeseburgers. When 70 percent of the pollution of the carbon that we're throwing into the air comes from three industries, and we can set our targets and say, by 2028, 2030, and 2035, no more.

Now, the other 30 percent, we still got to work on. Oh, no, we don't stop at 70 percent. But the point is, that's where we need to focus. And why don't we focus there? It's corruption. It's these giant corporations that keep hiring the PR firms that — everybody has fun with it, right, gets it all out there — so we don't look at who's still making the big bucks off polluting our Earth.

Q: Bernie Sanders has endorsed the idea of the public ownership of utilities, arguing that we can't adequately solve this crisis without removing the profit motive from the distribution of essential needs like energy. As president, would you be willing to call out capitalism in this way and advocate for the public ownership of our utilities?

Warren: If somebody wants to make a profit from building better solar panels and generating better battery storage, I'm not opposed to that. What I'm opposed to is when they do it in a way that hurts everybody else.

Q: I'm from the Island of Jean Charles, Biloxi, Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe. We've been dubbed as many — by as the first American climate refugees. We had a front-row seat to climate change for the past 20years. I had to move my home from my island home when I was little due to mold-induced asthma and from repeat flooding. So my question to you is, if president, what changes would you make to support communities like mine who face community-wide displacement and culture erasure?

Warren: Part one is that everything we spend on climate has to be about reducing our carbon footprint. It has to be about justice, as well,though, for people who have been displaced, for workers who have been displaced, for people in communities of color who have for generations now been the ones where the toxic dumps got sited next to their homes. Their children breathe the nasty particulates that brought on asthma, their seniors died earlier.

And so part of this change is not only about reducing climate footprint,about reducing our pollution of this Earth, but it's about trying to help those who've been injured from all that's happened.

I want to work on this with the communities that are affected — ismaking sure that this money goes down to the community level.

I just want to add one more piece. You know, when I think about climate, it is the existential threat. It is the one that threatens all life on this planet, that every day we're losing species. It's changing. The oceans are getting more acidic.

So when I first started thinking about how to describe what I will fight for when I run for president, I decided I wasn't going to do one climate plan. I decided I was going to try to look at climate in every part of the plans I'm working on.

So, for example, on the policies about our relationship, our federal government's relationship with our native tribes, it's about respecting the tribe's ability to take care of their own land, to be good stewards of the land.

Weir: The Motiva oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, is the biggest in North America. It is owned by a Saudi company that makes twice as much profit as Apple Computers. Although right next door, I met a family in a $60,000 house that can't afford to fix the mold from Harvey. Even though they understand the problems, they would tell you, please don't shut them down because I will die of starvation before I die of pollution. They're worried about jobs. And so what do you tell the pipefitters and cafeteria workers in Port Arthur what will happen to them if these places go dark?

Warren: I would say two things to them. The first one is, that's not the only job in Port Arthur over the next 20 years. I've seen Port Arthur. Port Arthur is going to need a lot of infrastructure rebuilding and strengthening. It's going to need a lot of help right on the water.

Those are good jobs. Those are union jobs. Those are skilled jobs. We have a lot of work to do, and I hope the workers in Port Arthur will be a big part of that. That's part one.

But part two is, who's making the real money off Port Arthur and those workers? Who's making that money? It's the investors, it's the Saudis who own this company. How is it in a democracy that we could have a handful of corporations that year after year keep dragging in bigger and bigger profits while the oceans continue to rise, while your home disappears, while your children have asthma, while people die? That's not right.

And the reason it is happening is Washington. Washington is corrupt. And if we don't call that out and attack it head on, understand, in the next few years, there will be bills that will be called climate bills. They'll have fabulous names. All the air has just been cleaned up, water is now pure and wonderful, that will be the name of the bill, comma, brought to you by Exxon.

Q: (From oyster farmer) Now warming waters and acidification are killing seed coast to coast and reducing yields. Those of us that work on the water, we need climate solutions and we need them now. The trouble is, is the Green New Deal only mentions our oceans one time. This is despite the fact that our seas soak up more than 25 percent of the world's carbon. So what's your plan for a Blue New Deal for those of us working on the oceans?

Warren: I like that. I talk to folks who fish commercially off our shores, down by New Bedford, up by Gloucester. You know what they tell me? They keep pulling stuff up that they don't even know what it is.

And so what do they do? I talked to one who said, so I'd call my brother-in-law who fishes commercially off the coast of Florida, because I send him pictures and he says, oh, yeah, we used to catch those down here. But now they've moved to Boston and to the waters around Massachusetts and New England.

So here's what really scares me. This isn't slowing down. It's speeding up.

But part of getting the carbon out of the air, out of the water, out of the soil is also about the change in what's happening in our oceans, these big dead patches now and the patches of trash.

We can't just think about cleaning up the United States of America. We have to think about the whole world. And that's why many of my plans intersect with our global opportunities and responsibilities. Like I said, lots of plans, elizabethwarren.com/climate. Because we've got to be working on all fronts.

Cuomo: You say $3 trillion over 10 years, and Senator Sanders says he's going to do $16 trillion. Does that mean he is more dedicated to this than you?

Warren: No.

I've got a $1 trillion plan and picking up how we're going to cutcarbon emissions by 70 percent by 2035. But we got to use all the tools in the tool box. We need to be willing to use our regulatory tools.

I think that we need a climate adjustment fee on products that are imported to the United States.

You want to import something here in the United States, we want to know, how much carbon was used to produce that? And let's think about how we have to equalize price on it.

I want to say, I proudly adopted many of Governor Inslee's plans. Hesaid have at them, they're open source. My view is you go everywherewhere there's a good idea, including a Blue New Deal.

Pete Buttigieg

Transcript

Q. Major health organizations representing millions of doctors, nurses, and health professionals have declared that climate change is a health emergency. Under your leadership, South Bend does not yet havea climate action plan. Given that your own city has been slow to act, how can I and other health professionals be confident that you will address the climate health emergency with the urgency it requires?

Buttigieg: And we are under way on a climate action plan. We were one of the cities that committed joining with cities around the world to live upto the Paris commitments, even if the national governments are failing to do it. [This turns out not to be the case.] And right now we have built out the capacity to assess what's happening with greenhouse gases in our city and act on it.

And cities around the world, beginning with the C-40 that New York right here was one of the first members of back in 2007, have said we can't even wait for the national governments to catch up.

We have to actually unify the country around this project. And that means bringing people to the table who haven't felt that they have been part of the process. [No! Not the Denialists! Oh, wait, the marginalized, the excluded. OK.] Does anybody really think we're going to meet that goal if between now and 2050 we are still at each other's throats? It's not going tohappen. [Drat. He does mean the Denialists. No, that's what isn't going to happen. We are, in fact, doing it without them, and will go on doing so.]

Cuomo: Carbon Tax?

Buttigieg: Absolutely. I propose that we rebate all of the revenue we collect right back out to the American people on a progressive basis, so that low- and middle-income Americans are made more than whole. We need to make sure that the carbon tax is something whose incidence is on the polluters, not on the American people, especially lower-income people who are already suffering so much and climate change is only going to make it harder.

Q. The average American farmer is 58 years old. What is your plan to bring stability back to the ag sector so that farmers like me can actually meet environmental regulations?

Buttigieg: Rural Americans can be such a huge part of the solution. To me, the quest for the net zero emissions cattle farm is one of the most exciting things we might undertake as a country. It can be done right now, strictly speaking, scientifically, but it's completely unaffordable , of course, to make it pencil out.

We needto change the economics of it with Federal investmint in R&D. Scientifically — and I know we're moving away from cattle a little bit to the planting side. But there is the potential of our soil to take in as much carbon as the entire transportation sector puts out. We've got to unlock that.

[The two can go together. Mixed pasture on more fertile soil instead of ryegrass monoculture would go a long way to reducing methane burps and increasing the health of cattle.]

Cuomo: One of the elements of your plan is biofuels as an alternative source. Then you get in to people who will say, well, but the way you fertilize corn to make your biofuel adds nitrogen to the water and that creates hypoxy or dead areas and algae blooms.

A carbon tax lets a lot of these things get sorted out without anybody in Washington having to figure out all the answers.

[I'm OK with biofuels for aircraft and ships, temporarily, but not for cars or mass transit. Subsidized corn or sugar ethanol is an environmental and human disaster. So is palm oil diesel.]

Q. How would you use the Green New Deal to bring Americans together andaddress racial, gender, and socioeconomic disparities?

Buttigieg: This is such an important example of the moral stakes of dealing with climate. This is not only a question of generational justice. It is aquestion of social, racial, and gender justice. And as you cited in your questions, communities of color and communities that have already been disadvantaged by prejudice and hatred in this countryare being made even worse off by what's happening with climate.

We've seen it in South Bend. Some of those most impactedby some of the historic flooding that we've seen were those who were economically least able to deal with it. We're seeing far more black kids needing to be treated for asthma than white kids. That's not a coincidence.

And so it's one of the reasons why our Douglass plan for dealing with systemic racism in the country looks at how everything from economicempowerment to housing comes into play. [Hey, Frederick Douglass really is still doing great things! :<þ ]

We're also proposing health equity zones. Some of the reasons that, for example, black patients are at adisadvantage with public health outcomes has to do with what happens when they go into a doctor's office or a hospital. A lot of it is what happens in your own home, in your own environment, because of these environmental factors.

Q. What's one question you would ask Donald Trump about climate changeduring a debate?

Buttigieg: I don't know that you can get to this president by asking him aquestion. I don't think you can't get to him at all. And it's notjust him. It's all of the enablers in the congressional GOP, right?

I mean, Congress right now — it's like a room full of doctors arguing about what to do over a cancer patient, and half of them are arguing over whether medication or surgery is the best approach, and the other half are saying cancer doesn't exist.

So I can't think of anything I could ask him other than, would youplease step aside and allow us to do something about this issue?

Cuomo: What would you say about the people who say, well, he rolled these things back. What are you going to do to bring them back?

Buttigieg: Well, look, some of the things he did by executive action we can doundo by executive action. But this time, let's actually some putlegislation behind it so it's not at the whim of a president.

This ought to be a bipartisan issue. This once was a bipartisan issue. And now it's gone completely off the rails.

Let's talk about national security at a time when our militaryleaders say that this is one of the greatest threats to stability.There's a lot of evidence that the Syria civil war is one of thefirst that was partly caused as a consequence of climate change. [Tru e.]

If you believe that God is watching as poison is being belched into the air of creation, and people are being harmed by it, countries areat risk of vanishing in low-lying areas, what do you suppose God thinks of that? I bet he thinks it's messed up. [I can give you chapter and verse, and so can the environmental Evangelicals, among others.]

How do you and [your husband] Chasten think about leaving the world a better place, particularly around the climate change issues discussed here today, to the next generation and any children you may choose to raise?

Buttigieg:

Well, we're hoping to have kids one day. And I want to know that our kids can thrive. When I got into this campaign, I talked a lot aboutthe idea of generational justice.

And at first, people looked at me funny. [No, no for the reason you first thought of. Mayor Pete's friends are not bigots. Lots of people are saying not to have children in the face of this looming disaster. I say no, we need the children of those who get it. Now, and for the problem after this one.]

More and more the questions I get from kids are about climate. They're almost always either about gun violence or about climate.

When we're talking about whether we hit this target of 2050, decarbonizing our economy, you know, Lord willing, I plan to be here. I would be in my 60s. By the time we know whether we have succeeded and could look back at 2020 and be proud of what we did, to begin getting on the right track, or realize that we're the ones who blew it. These are the years.

Cuomo: Air travel is about 2 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Your second quarter filing says your campaign spent about $300,000 on private flying. You're going to get the finger shaken at you that you should not be doing that if you're going to be the green guy.

Look, I'm interested in decarbonizing the fuel that goes into airtravel. I also don't believe we're going to abolish air travel.

Look we do need to do more to provide alternatives to air travel. How is it that we have such an inferior train system when trains are a lot easier to power on a green basis because they run on electricity. You know, think what it would mean for areas like the industrial Midwest, where I live.

I'm not even asking for asking for Japanese level trains. Just give me like Italian level trains and we would be way ahead of where we are right now. [Been there, done that. Yup.] And if anybody says we shouldn't subsidize trains, they got to stand on their own two feet. Think about just how many ways we subsidize driving which is among the most carbon intensive things we could be doing.

Cuomo: Italian trains. You'd have a huge upgrade in food too probably —

Buttigieg: There you go.

Weir: Humanity buys one million plastic bottles a minute.

Buttigieg: We need to make sure that we have regulations and incentives that promote things like biodegradable alternatives to plastic.

Cuomo: What do you do to incentivize and to encourage people to move from one of the main parts of our existence, which is how we get around every day, to electric cars?

Buttigieg: We've got to make sure we have the right kind of incentives forthat. Expand the tax credits, set them up in the right way and make sure eventually that we are requiring that emissions fall to zero in American auto production. The auto companies are actually ahead of the Trump Administration when it was trying to pull us back.

Cuomo: Part of the competition in campaigns is about timing. Yes, I'll do it too but I'll do it faster. Coal being removed from the economy in 10 years. That sounds hyper ambitious. Is that a realistic period?

Buttigieg: I don't think anybody's going to object to doing it quicker. I'm not going to quibble over a five year difference between this plan and that plan when we've been wrangling over the same plans for my entire adult lifetime. The question is how are we going to break the log jam and actually, truly make something happen and that is going to require a different level of political will. It's going to require Democratic reform so that dollars can't outvote people.

Q. What would you do to ensure a just transition for this displaced workers in the new renewable energy economy and for the people of communities, particularly communities of color, most effected by climate change in your vision of a Green New Deal? And will you support the upcoming Global Student Strike on September 20th for climate?

Buttigieg: Great. So I'll start with the last one's easy which I'm verysupportive. So yes.

A lot of the jobs that are being created in the green economy arealso good paying union jobs. And not all of them are exotic, a lot of them are good old fashioned building trades jobs that we're going to need more of to do the retrofits to get the energy efficiency that we need. We can create tremendous economic opportunity but let's be honest about the fact that this also means transition for a lot of people. So one of thereasons why my climate plan includes funds that will support everything from retirement to healthcare to transition assistance for people as a result of this national mobilization we've got to undertake.

Cuomo: This cattle issue is really is about supply and demand. So what do you say to the Americans that you want to persuade who maybe aren't that left? Maybe they're in the center or center right and they're saying, you want me to eat less beef?

Buttigieg: Look, first of all I'm from Indiana and secondly I love cheeseburgers.

We can have a more balanced diet and therefore a more balanced footprint and not propose that they abolish the cow, which is what alot of people are saying about the Green New Deal. Not because that's what it actually envisions but because it's an easy Republican talking point. A carbon tax and dividend resets the price signals in the market to help make that happen without ordering Americans to abandon something that is very important to them.

Q. The U.S. military is heavily reliant on fossil fuels and is asignificant contributor to global greenhouse emissions. Additionally,military resources and bases are at risk from sea level rise andincreased heat. What is your plan to ensure that the military helps to solve the climate crisis instead of contributing to it while alsopreparing for our new climate reality?

Buttigieg: The exciting thing is that the military can also be a huge part of the solution. One of the things that was certainly true when I was in the military is that you just figure out a way to get done what you've been ordered to do. It was true with racial integration of the Armed Forces.

By making sure like, for example, fleet and future uses of fuel are relying on biofuels, by making sure the installed base of theAmerican military footprint is carbon neutral or carbon negative. [The Navy actually prefers synthetic jet fuel, which could be made on aircraft carriers at sea from seawater, air, and nuclear power, and would not have to be transported by ship.]

Make sure that the U.S. military, which is a huge purchaser of things like ordinary cars and vans is leading the way in purchasing vehicles that are zero carbon. And my plan calls for us to do that very quickly. I think that the purchasing power of the U.S. military and just the resolve of our service members to get stuff done when it is a national priority could help lead the way for the rest of society.eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Beto O'Rourke

Transcript

Don Lemon: You know, scientists have partly blamed human-induced climate change for the intensity of these storms that are hitting our coastal states.

O'Rourke: Thank you all. Gracias.

Lemon: The first thing that you would do to deal with this climate crisis.

O'Rourke: Day one, re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement. On that same day, makesure that we lead the world in going well beyond the Paris ClimateAgreement. Ensure that we regulate and enforce reduced greenhouse gasemissions from methane, and then get to net zero on public lands byensuring we have no new oil and gas leases on federally protectedlands and offshore areas that are now being drilled today. Thosethree steps are a great place to start and a good pace to set. Andthen we follow that up by making sure that we have legallyenforceable standards every single year over which no polluter canemit. We make sure that we get to net zero greenhouse gas emissionsby 2050, earlier if we can, halfway there by 2030. And then weprotect the most vulnerable communities, those who are on the frontlines of climate change and pollution, making sure that we lift themup, protect their populations and ensure that there's environmentaljustice in this country.

Q: So your climate proposal is unclear as to whether or not you support a carbon tax.

O'Rourke: No. So we should certainly price carbon. I think the best possible path to do that is through a cap and trade system. There would be allowances granted or sold to polluters, not just in the energy sector but in transportation as well as our industrial sector — cement, steel, the chemicals that we produce. There would be a set number of allowances that would decrease everysingle year.

Q: What will you do specifically to make going green more affordable forall Americans?

O'Rourke: Those cap and trade allowances that we sell, that income, that revenue is used tohelp Americans meet the costs of a transitioning economy by making sure that all of us can meet our obligations when it comes to climate change.

I routinely meet people who are driving one or two hours to work whoare being paid a minimum wage or maybe a little bit more, unable toafford the life that they have so they're working a second or a thirdjob. If we create more housing stock closer to where people live andhave the resources to invest in that through a cap and trade system,then we're going to be able to meet our challenges and improve thequality of life of our fellow Americans.

Lemon: What would you like to see Americans do to help fight climate change? What can we all do in our own lives?

O'Rourke: I want America to come together, regardless of Republicans or Democrats or your geography or any other difference, do not allow that to divide us at this critical, important, defining moment.

Q: I'm so panicked by this crisis that I've now dedicated my future career to climate activism full time. And I grew up in a Republican household in Florida a long time ago. And my question is, Republicans used to be the protectors of nature. So how do we renew that spirit among the people of Texas and America in general?

O'Rourke: I'm thinking about Teddy Roosevelt, one of the great Republican leaders of more than a century ago who was so instrumental inprotecting our public lands. Republicans as well as Democrats as wellas Independents have kids and grandkids, care about the future ofthis planet, care about the future of the generations that willfollow them and want to do the right thing. How do I know that?

I campaigned for the United States Senate in the state of Texas. Every single one of the 254 counties that I went to, we talked about climate change. We talked about freeing ourselves from a dependence on fossil fuels, about investing in wind and solar, the renewable energy technologies that will allow us to meet our obligations to that future generation and also create the high value, high wage, high skilled jobs that are demand in this country right now.

Andat the end of the day, we won more votes than any Democrat had in Texas history, won Independents for the first time in decades, andmore than 400,000 Republicans like my mom, who we convinced to vote for me, supported us in that election.

Lemon: President Trump has rolled back a number of Obama environmental — Obama era environmental regulations, including plans announced justtoday to reverse a rule about energy efficient light bulbs. Would youbring back all of those Obama era regulations?

O'Rourke: Absolutely.

The next iteration of the Farm Bill pays them for the environmental services that they want to provide. Planting cover crops, keeping more land under conservation, allowing them to use regenerative agriculture and ranching.

Q: I'm from Brazil and I immigrated to various countries before coming to the United States. I witnessed the climate crisis in each countryI've lived in, from droughts in Angola, from flash floods in Brazil, to contaminated water in Ecuador and extreme weather in the U.S. Now, the Amazon is being burned. A big incentive for deforestation comes from U.S. investors in the Brazilian meat industry.
How will you use U.S. trade leverage to encourage Brazil to protect these vital resources and the indigenous people who live there?

O'Rourke: You mentioned our involvement and investment in Brazil. This is one of the pernicious outcomes of Donald Trump's trade policies. This trade war with China that has not only closed markets that farmers in Iowa and across this country have worked their entire lives to open up. It's not only put them further in debt at a time of declining farm incomes. It is providing an incentive for people to burn down the Amazon rainforest to plant soybeans so that they can sell into China because China right now is looking for new sellers, new producers for those soybeans that they are no longer buying from the United States of America.

We've helped to precipitate a drought in Guatemala that they have never seen before, which has forced families to travel 2,000 miles to come to this country seeking asylum and refuge and salvation only to have their children placed in cages and their parents deported back. We have to understand that we are all connected on this planet.

Q: An important environmental justice concern is extreme heat which kills more residents each year than storm surge.

O'Rourke: We talked about the ability to spend on helping those communities on the front lines of climate change right now through the revenues from cap and trade system. So that means that those communities, very often lower income, and right now race and ethnicity is the best predictor, to your proximity to a polluter, are first in line to get the help that they need. That they deserve and that they've missed for generations.

This is a personal issue for me. El Paso, Texas is the second fastest warming city in the United States of America today. We'vehad more than 14 days over 100 degrees over the month of August which broke the record for as long as we've been studying records in our community.

Q: We all know about the recent events that made Puerto Rico to be in the international media. Especially about the wrong handling of funds and other types of assistance that were sent after the hurricane hit. This made us victims, very angry, feel betrayed and heartbroken. What will your plan be if another natural event happens to make sure that victims get the necessary assistance on time and in a fair way?

O'Rourke: It makes me angry as well. I hope it makes everybody angry the waythat we've treated the people of Puerto Rico, our fellow Americanswho were left in harms way without the necessary investment in theinfrastructure to mitigate the storms that we knew were going to hit them. And to add insult to injury, President Trump is taking money away from FEMA to send to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lemon: Texas has been hit hard by climate disasters recently and you know Harvey was particularly damaging to Houston, Texas. Yet it has been reported that many people are rebuilding, moving right back into homes in the exact locations that are known to flood now, badly now or in the future. The question is, parts of Houston or Texas, are there parts that people should simply not live in because they're too risky now?

O'Rourke: We should help people move when they need to move, when they'verepaired their homes not once, not twice but three times just in thelast five years because Houston, Texas, the example you gave haswitnessed three 500 year storms in five years.

I think there are neighborhoods that have repeatedly flooded. People who would move out of those neighborhoods, if they could, they are sick and tired of being flooded and rebuilding but they cannot afford to move.

Q: Environmental consequences of the climate crisis have cause enormous human migration movements for communities in the global south, wouldit be America's strategy to address migration and a potential influx of immigrants under your administration?

O'Rourke: Let's begin by acknowledging our culpability and our responsibilityconnected to that. The wealthiest countries in the north that have produced the majority of the climate change that we are seeing but it's disproportionably impacting not just the global south but countries like the Bahamas.

What if we offered temporary protective status, TPS to anyone in theBahamas who wants to come and seek shelter and refuge here in theUnited States of America? To those in Guatemala who are facing the greatest drought that country has ever seen. What if we don't turn them away from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lemon: Currently people who migrate because of climate crisis don't havespecial protections under international laws, as refugees underinternational law. Secretary Castro proposed creating a special category for climate refugees. Would you do the same thing?

O'Rourke: Yes. As I just said, I think that is part of our responsibility and also we better than any other country on the face of the planet, understand the benefit that we gain when immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers come here.

Weir: A question I'm sure you hear in Texas every now and then. To grow onepound of beef, it takes 20 times the land and creates 20 times thecarbon pollution as one pound of plant protein. And so as president,how do you think the American diet should change, agriculture shouldchange and to all those carnivores in your state can they have theirsteak and eat it too?

O'Rourke: The answer is yes but what we eat, what we consume, how we live isall going to have reflect the true cost of carbon and climate changeand pollution. And I'm confident that those ranchers in Texas whom I've visited with (and my wife grew up on a cattle ranch in New Mexico), they're going to be able to meet the targets that we set.

Q: Congressman, many candidates on the stage tonight and you in therecent past have said that climate change is our greatest existentialthreat. Those are really strong words and while I agree I think itsimportant to know why. So I'm curious to know if you've sat down withclimate scientists to discuss what's actually going on? If you have aclimate scientist on your staff and do you fully understand thefundamental, physical problems of greenhouse warming?

O'Rourke: Yes. I listen to and read the work that scientist produce. Threehundred years after the enlightened, I think they're the best subjectmatter experts on what we're talking about today. So I believe inthat science and the truth and in the facts and that's reflected inthe policies that we've adopted.

I look at this. Uninhabitable Earth, which describes the consequences of our inaction. That says in the year 2100, when my eight year old son Henry is going to be 88 years old, this planet will have warmedf our and a half to five degrees Celsius. [if we do not take action.]

As scientists say, at that point we are screwed.

Q: How does your climate plan create opportunity for people who'seconomies have relied on fossil fuels like oil towns in Texas andcoal towns in West Virginia? What do you say to people who think thatgreen energy threatens their way of life and financial future and how will you get them on board with your plan?

O'Rourke: I come from an oil and gas rich state. I come from a wind and sun rich state. We lead the country in the amount of wind generation that we produce. We will soon lead the country, when it comes to solar energy generation in our state. We've invested in the transmission lines and the infrastructure that makes it possible and by the way, the high skill, the high value, the high wage jobs that come along with that.

Oil field workers want to know that we're going to elevate the role of unions, create 5 million apprenticeships over the next 10 years to make sure that we have the skills, the trade to command those high skill, high wage jobs that we can create in this country if we only set our minds to it.

Last week I was in Bland County, Virginia, this is part of coal country in the southwestern part of the state. I was told by those at the town hall meeting that no presidential candidate from either party has ever been to Bland County before. Many of them worked in the coal industry know that that's not the future of this country but want to make sure that we protect their pensions, and their healthcare and that we electrify or connect their communities to broadband internet which they're missing right now.

Which they know is fundamental towards completing an education,l ooking for a job, starting a small business. Those aspects of modern life that many of us take for granted that are missing from many parts of this country right now. They too will be first in line in our investments to make sure that we make everyone whole as we transition this economy and this country to meet the greatest challenge that we've ever faced.

Lemon: Let's talk about off shore drilling for oil. Would you ban it?

O'Rourke: Yes. Absolutely, we're going to follow the lead of Joe Cunningham in South Carolina.

Lemon: The biggest personal sacrifice that you're asking quickly if you can, that you're asking Americans to make to solve this climate crisis? [Bo-o-o-o-ogus.]

O'Rourke: I'm asking Americans to make this our priority as a country.

Cory Booker

Transcript

Lemon: First thing you would do to deal with the climate crisis?

Booker: Climate is not a separate issue. It is the issue, the lens, through  which we must do everything that we do. It is an every day mission. That means every one of my departments, every one of my agencies, every one of my cabinet members from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of Agriculture has to be coming up with an aggressive climate plan. I'm going to use the power of my pen to write away. Go after the executive orders that Donald Trump did to unravel the things that Obama did. I'm going to make sure I go further than that. Banning extractive oil fracking from public lands. Going after the drilling and licensing, stopping from our coasts. Making sure that we'resetting standards to put ourselves on a mission to have zero emission electricity by 2030 and a carbon neutral country by 2045.

Q:What is your administration planning on doing to make sure that as a nation, we are as prepared as we can be for these unnaturaldisasters?

Booker: I was the mayor of the city of Newark at the time of Sandy, and not only did I have my neighbors and others lose their homes, but we lost lives in the city of Newark, and I know you did here in New York City as well.

Much of what I'm going to do is going to be about climate resiliency. Making the kind of investments we need in making sure that communities are not as susceptible to flooding, whether that's the flooding in the Mississippi or sea level rise that's affecting cities like Atlantic City.

I will set up permanent disaster funds to make sure that politicians aren't making this decision. That we're making it with our heart. We're Americans, we take care of our own.

Lemon: You know sea levels are rising because of climate change. Do you think there's some coastal communities, perhaps even in your home state of New Jersey, where people should move inland because this is going to get worse?

Booker: A lot of people have this misperception that we're not already seeing climate refugees. I was down in Louisiana meeting with proud Native American community who is already having to move because the sea level is rising above their low-lying communities, ancestral communities.

Q: Senator Booker, you recently unveiled a $3 trillion plan to tackle climate change, specifically meant to support low income individualsand communities of color. How will your plan support Iowans and the Midwest in protecting thedomestic agriculture industry?

Booker: This problem didn't just happen. I've already put in legislation to help farmers and ranchers deal withwhat we're seeing is an increasing crisis, not only on bigger issues of climate but also other issues that are affecting family farmers right now, the independent family farmers on a crisis because of corporate consolidation and these massive factory farms that are gobbling up a lot of our heritage.

I'm a Northeastern guy, but my grandma was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, and what I've loved seeing since I've been going out there for family reunions is the emergence of windmills and other things on farm land where farmers are getting new sources of revenue.

Well, my plan is going to have farmers be incentivized through hundreds of billions of dollars we're going to be putting into a fund. Whether that's cover crops that are going to pull carbon out of the air or whether that is justc ommon sense stuff like ranching practices that help to preserve the soil and minimize the carbon footprint. We can do this and farmers don't get hurt by that. Actually, family farmers will be able to create new sources of revenue by doing practices that preserve our heritage, enrich our environment, and help to deal with this larger crisis.

Lemon: So you're a vegan? And I want to quote you. Let me get it right. You said, that you don't want to preach to anybody about their diets. So my question is,your administration wouldn't have any programs to encourage healthy diets if it also combat climate change?

Booker: Oh my gosh. So let's go right at this because I hear about it all the time. Booker wants to take away your hamburger.

That is the kind of lies and fear-mongering that they spread out there, that somehow the Democrats want to get rid of hamburgers.Look, I am a vegan. I take my diet very seriously. I actually became a vegetarian when I was coming out of playing college football. But this is the point.

We live in a society right now, going back to the corporate consolidation that we're seeing, where the farming practices are becoming so perverse. I've been to a place called Duplin, North Carolina. My dad is from the state and activists asked me to come down there. And you see this massive factory farms where the farmers themselves are living like sharecroppers, deeply in debt. All that pig refuse is going into massive lagoons and then they spray it over fields.

I watched how the stuff fell on the fields but misted into the black community. I sat in a room packed with activists who said, look, we can't open our windows. We can't put our clothing on the line. We can't run our air conditioning. We have respiratory diseases, asthma. Our creeks, because when storms come through they pull that stuff out and pollute creeks and rivers.

I'm sorry, I'm not going to be a president that's giving tax breaks to people who are polluting folks, causing cancers, destroying our environment as well.

I come to you right now as the only person in this entire campaign, only person in the Senate that lives in an inner city, black and brown, low-income community, you know what we're furious about in my community? Communities all across this country, is that we don't have access to fresh and healthy foods. We live in food deserts. There's a guy — you would love this guy and you should interview him. He's — one of the best TED talks I've listened to is a guy named Ron Finley.They call him the Guerrilla Gardener.

Lemon: He's producing for me now.

Booker: He has this saying about South Central. He says, in South Central we have drive-bys and drive-throughs and more people are getting killed by the drive-throughs than the drive-bys.

We got our first supermarkets built in decades. We turned entire city blocks into urban gardens, gave guys coming home — men and women coming home from prison jobs on the farms. It helped with our heat island that we had. All helping our environment but giving access to fresh and healthy foods.

Already in the first 10 minutes, we've talked about corporate corruption, campaign finance, agriculture, environmental justice. All of these things are interrelated. You can't separate them out. And so I'm going to be the president (who says), when we talk about health care, let's not just talk about doctors and nurses. Let's talk about healthy food systems and the toxins that are in our food. And so I will always be about the freedom to eat what you want, but we are going to have to make sure our government is not subsidizing the things that make us sick and unhealthy and hurt our environment.

Lemon: I want to talk about nuclear energy. Because you say nuclear energy is key to fighting climate change.

Booker: I used to say, in God we trust, but everybody else bring me data. And we need to look at the numbers right now.

Where the science is going right now is new nuclear  actually portends of exciting things where you have no risk of the kind of meltdowns we're seeing, where they eat spent fuel rods.

[This is thorium molten salt reactors. Booker is correct about the promise, but ignoring cost and time to develop the technology to commercial availability.]

My plan has a massive moonshot-like investment in the technologies ofthe future, which range from battery storage technology to the aviation industry all the way to nuclear. I've already been in Washington working across the aisle to clean upa regulatory regime that's made for the nuclear reactors of the '70sto prepare for the possibilities of the future.I've already been in Washington working across the aisle to clean upa regulatory regime that's made for the nuclear reactors of the '70sto prepare for the possibilities of the future.

Q: How will you communicate effectively to the skeptics on climate change in order for them to realize the urgency and need for everyone to act?

Booker: Young Republicans, millennial Republicans are really with us. I'm not one of these people that wants to vilify an entire party. The reality is the people that need to be vilified are Republicans in Congress who are the only major political party on the planet Earth whose leadership denies the science of climate change.

I went to western Illinois, I went to Nebraska — met with farmersthat were Republicans. And I was amazed that once they got throughthe skepticism of a Democrat from the northeast sitting down with them, we found common cause and common purpose on the strategies that work.

The battle we have right now is the obstruction that is going on by the Congressional Republican Party.

If you elect me your president, I'm going to ask more from you thanany other president in your lifetime because I grew up from parents who taught me if there is no struggle, there is no progress. I'm not going to ask you to put up with more, turn on the TV and be embarrassed of your president more. But if we do the right things, we have tremendous opportunity to expand millions of jobs to boost our economy, to give pathways out of poverty, to deal with environmental injustice. This actually is acrisis that presents a chance to deal with restorative justice issues as well.

Lemon: Would you ban offshore drilling?

Booker: Absolutely yes. Because when we know they drill, they spill. Ask Alaska. Ask California. Ask the Gulf Coast.

Lemon Q: Would you ban fracking?

Booker: Right away on public lands.

Lemon Q: What about the export of fossil fuels from the United States? Would you ban that?

Booker: Absolutely.

Weir: Senator, so many folks around the world watching horror recently as the Amazon burned, and a lot of folks are blaming the policies ofwhat some call the Tropical Trump, President Bolsonaro of Brazil downthere. His promises to mine and farm and deforest the Amazon by some estimations would be the equivalent adding another China and a half to the global carbon footprint.

And next door, I've seen firsthand how illegal gold miners are ripping up the Peruvian Amazon. Just right under the noses of the government there, so as thecommander-in-chief, how would you save something as vital as the Amazon when it is under the control of leaders who either don't believe in climate science or just don't have the means to enforce conservation?

Booker: More and more rainforest is being torn down, principally for grazing lands and large international corporate animal agriculture and more. [And sugar ethanol and palm oil biodiesel.] We have a crisis at a time that my plan calls for the planting of billions and billions of trees from urban areas that desperately need them to all throughout our nation.

Before we turn in a self-righteous way and preach to others, let's make sure that we are also getting our own house in order. That we are going to lead by example because we've got to be the change we want to see in the world.

Everything that I do will be done through a green lens in the urgencyof climate change. So every lever that I have on foreign policy,every single one—

Weir: Including military action?

Booker: No, sir.

Number one, I see our president meeting with world leaders. You have billion of dollars of foreign aid going to countries allaround this planet that should be contingent on doing things onclimate. You have your - - your trade deals. Labor and climate shouldbe the center of any trade deal we do right now. You have alliances as well.

But let's talk about military because a U.N. report just came out talking about what's going on in Yemen and America's role in this. We are ramping up militarization in this country in ways that not only violate our Constitution but violate our morals and we think we're going to solve problems by dropping bombs.

We need to begin to have a dividend or pool resources and startplowing it in to dealing with the climate change problem which willnot just bleed our economy trillions of dollars spent in warsoverseas. But it will actually fuel our economy by investing inthings that create a multiplier effect benefit in terms of economicgrowth, in terms of jobs, new industries, expansion in manufacturingand more and that's the kind of president I will be.

Q: Do you support research into climate intervention also known asgeo-engineering? Do you think we have to be informed about the potential benefits and risks of blocking the sun with a cloud in the upper atmosphere to cool Earth if global warming gets too dangerous despite our best efforts at mitigation and adaptation?

Booker: I heard about the geo-engineering question. I have to say it's an area of science I don't know much about, sir. My plan calls for a massive investment, not only in expanding the technologies we know of but what I call R & D, research and development, moon shots in every single state.

his is a commitment I'll make to you is I'm going to read a lot moreabout geo-engineering which is something I'm just not familiar withbesides what I saw in Star Trek.

Links

CNN's climate crisis town hall

Here's the key takeaway from each candidate's town hall:

• Julián Castro said that “new civil rights legislation”to address environmental racism — minority communities facing the brunt of the climate crisis — is part of his plan to combat global warming. "I know that too often times it’s people that are poor, communities of color, who take the brunt of storms that are getting more frequent and more powerful,” he said.
• Andrew Yang said that if he's elected president, he'll eliminate gross domestic product as a measure of national success and replace it with a system that includes environmental factors."Let's upgrade it with a new score card that includes our environmental sustainability and our goals," he said.
• Kamala Harris said that, as president, she would direct the Department of Justice to go after oil and gas companies who have directly impacted global warming. "They are causing harm and death in communities. And there has been no accountability," she said.
• Amy Klobucharcalled for a reversal to the Trump administration's move to rollback regulations on methane emissions. "That is very dangerous," she said of the administration's move.
• Joe Biden was asked by a 19-year-old activist how young voters can trust him to prioritize their futures over big business. "I've never made that choice. My whole career," he said.
• Bernie Sanders was asked whether he would roll back Trump administration plans to overturn requirements on energy saving lightbulbs. He delivered an emphatic answer: “Duh!"
• Elizabeth Warren said that conversations around regulating light bulbs, banning plastic straws and cutting down on red meat are exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants people focused on as a way to distract from their impact on climate change.
• Pete Buttigieg said that successfully combating climate change might be “more challenging than” winning World War II.“This is the hardest thing we will have done in my lifetime as a country,” he said.
• Beto O’Rourke said that, should he be elected president, his administration would spend federal dollars to help people in flood-prone areas move to higher ground. “People would move out of those neighborhoods if they could,” he said.
• Cory Booker is a vegan — but he says he won’t try to get other Americans to stop eating hamburgers. "Freedom is one of the most sacred values — whatever you want to eat, go ahead and eat it,” he said.

Booker: People against nuclear power to fight climate change "just aren’t looking at the facts"

What happened during CNN's climate town hall and what it means for 2020

The contenders, who all embrace the science of climate change, offered voters an alternative to a President who views climate change as a "hoax" and slams their "dreams and windmills."

CNN summaries of each candidates' replies to questions.

Your guide to where the 2020 Democrats stand on the issues

Booker unveils $3 trillion climate crisis plan

Cory’s Plan to Address the Threat of Climate Change

Dramatically increase U.S. funding commitments to the UN Green Climate Fund, swap foreign military aid for clean energy aid wherever possible, and work to refocus international aid towards clean technologies.

Bernie Sanders unveils comprehensive $16.3 trillion Green New Deal plan amid climate crisis

Amy Klobuchar outlines plan to combat climate crisis

Julián Castro rolls out $10 trillion plan to fight climate change

Castro's plan — titled "People and Planet First Plan"— aims to "direct $10 trillion in federal, state, local, and private investments" over the next 10 years. The Castro campaign estimates that the influx of investment will create 10 million jobs over a decade.

Plant 30 billion trees by 2050, or roughly 1 billion trees a year.

We asked scientists to help answer your most pressing climate questions

Dr. Michael E. Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and the director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, and Dr. Jonathan Foley, an environmental scientist and the executive director of the climate solutions organization Project Drawdown.

Other Links

BTW, as of Friday, Sept. 6, ThinkProgress is shutting down tonight for good. ClimateProgress is promising to continue elsewhere.