Every Mention of Climate and Environment From the U.S. Presidential Debate

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former U.S. President Donald Trump faced each other on the debate stage for the first time in Philadelphia last night. During the 90-minute session hosted by ABC News, the opposing presidential candidates squared off on key issues of importance to the American public, including the rising cost of living, reproductive rights and election integrity. Read on for every time they mentioned climate change and environmental issues, along with fact-checks and commentary from the TriplePundit news desk. 

Moderators asked only one question about climate and environment during the presidential debate

The topic of climate change was only posed once in the presidential debate. While this may come as disappointing to some voters, it's fairly consistent with mainstream media coverage of climate change in the U.S. The major U.S. television networks — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — devoted less than 1 percent of their airtime to discussing climate change in 2023, according to the nonprofit Media Matters for America. Toward the end of the 90-minute time slot, ABC News anchor Linsey Davis addressed the candidates with the following: 

“We have another issue that we'd like to get to that's important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters, and that's climate change. President Trump, with regard to the environment, you say that we have to have clean air and clean water. Vice President Harris, you call climate change an existential threat. The question to you both tonight is what would you do to fight climate change?”

Vice President Harris had this to say in response: 

“The former president had said that climate change is a hoax. And what we know is that it is very real. You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up. You ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go. We know that we can actually deal with this issue. The young people of America care deeply about this issue. And I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels.

"We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while I have been vice president. We have invested in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world. Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs. And I'm also proud to have the endorsement of the United Auto Workers and Shawn Fain, who also know that part of building a clean energy economy includes investing in American-made products, American automobiles. It includes growing what we can do around American manufacturing and opening up auto plants, not closing them like what happened under Donald Trump.”

The former president did not mention climate change or the environment in his response, spending the one-minute allotted time criticizing the Biden-Harris administration's record on manufacturing jobs.

Our take: The framing of the question itself is noteworthy. While polling shows that young voters are the most likely to list climate change as a top issue, research shows it is important to voters across demographics. Even as the cost of living crisis looms large, more than a third of Americans list climate change as a top-three issue facing society, including 38 percent of baby boomers, according to research released by TriplePundit this summer. A report published by Deloitte this week also indicates it's a top-three issue for the majority of C-suite executives. 

Despite voter concerns, Donald Trump did not take the opportunity to dispute or amend his 2016 statement that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese government. More recently, he said rising global temperatures would come with the benefit of "more oceanfront property." 

Harris, on the other hand, directly referenced the impact that climate change already has on the American public. In the first eight months of 2024 alone, the U.S. experienced 20 weather and climate events with losses greater than $1 billion each, according to the U.S. National Centers of Environmental Information. Each of these events represents thousands of people whose homes were damaged or lost, and whose towns now face months or years of reconstruction. 

The trillion dollars in clean energy investment Harris mentioned likely refers to provisions included in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. While environmental groups have called them "the most ambitious environmental laws in U.S. history," fact-checkers at outlets including Atmos.Earth observe they don't add up to a trillion dollars in investment. That said, a key goal of the legislation is to stimulate private investments in clean energy that go above and beyond direct funding from the federal government, and it is unclear if Harris included private capital in her trillion-dollar total. It is also true that domestic U.S. production of oil and gas set new seasonal records in 2023, though overall greenhouse gas emissions tied to energy fell by about 7 percent. 

Trump calls clean energy into question 

While climate was only mentioned once, the U.S. energy system came up a number of times across the debate that are worth noting. In particular, former President Trump made some outlandish claims about the viability of clean energy, including: 

“​​If [Harris] won the election, the day after that election, they'll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead. We'll go back to windmills and we'll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out. You ever see a solar plant? By the way, I'm a big fan of solar. But they take 400, 500 acres of desert soil. These are not good things for the environment that she understands.” 

He later addressed Harris with the following: 

"[Y]ou believe in things that the American people don't believe in. You believe in things like we're not going to frack. We're not going to take fossil fuel. We're not going to do things that are going to make this country strong, whether you like it or not. Germany tried that and within one year they were back to building normal energy plants. We're not ready for it. We can't sacrifice our country for the sake of bad vision." 

Our take: There's a lot to unpack here. For starters, what is a "normal" energy plant anyway? A hundred years ago, a normal energy plant would have been powered by coal, but because coal is now the most expensive source of energy in the U.S., the use of coal power continues to decline. In short: Things change, which is why you'll rarely hear expert professionals using words like "normal" to describe matters of consequence to public life. 

Similarly, the notion that the U.S., and the world more broadly, are "not ready" to source energy from renewables is not supported by data. Generating energy from solar and wind is now cheaper than oil and gas in most scenarios, and investment in renewables is set to double investment in fossil fuels globally this year. Germany in particular is a clean energy leader, supplying more than half of its power needs with renewable energy in 2023. (To be abundantly clear, Germany plans to continue to expand its use of renewable energy, but it did stop using nuclear energy last year.) In the U.S., zero-carbon sources made up over 40 percent of the energy mix in 2023.

Also worth noting: While the land footprint of renewables remains a challenge, most solar farms are far less than 500 acres in size, and advancements in both solar and green hydrogen technologies allow new projects to create more energy on less land. 

Fracking emerged as a major topic of conversation, but do Pennsylvanians really care? 

With the debate located in Pennsylvania, a key swing state where the candidates are polling neck and neck, the topic of fracking was mentioned more than twice as many times as climate change. Trump aimed to put the vice president on the defensive for her previous calls to ban fracking, saying: “Fracking? She's been against it for 12 years.” 

Harris moved to clarify her position, saying she no longer supports a fracking ban:

"I made that very clear in 2020. I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as Vice President of the United States. And, in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking. My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil. We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over rely on foreign oil."

Our take: It's true the Biden-Harris administration made no attempt to ban fracking. At the same time, the very notion that fracking — short for hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting oil and gas by injecting a chemical solution into the earth — is popular enough in Pennsylvania to warrant multiples mentions across the debate is questionable. 

While the state makes a lot of money from fracking, environmental groups say the claims around jobs are overstated, and no research shows that Pennsylvanians are in universal agreement on the practice being of benefit to them and their communities.

"Here’s the truth from someone who actually lives in Pennsylvania. Most folks, especially in areas like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and their suburbs where many voters reside, don’t really talk about fracking — certainly not as much as the big issues like the economy or abortion rights," longtime Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch observed last week. (As a Pennsylvanian myself, I agree.) Bunch cited polls that range from 30 percent to 50 percent support for fracking across the Keystone State and referenced financial data that indicates fracked gas has only economically benefits one or two of the state's 67 counties. 

The bottom line

For voters who consider climate change and the environment as they head to the polls, Trump didn't give them much to go on beyond continued support for fossil fuels. Major environmental groups including the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, the Sierra Club and Clean Energy for American Action have already endorsed Harris for president, citing a long track record of support for reducing emissions and pollution. 

“Whether holding polluters accountable as San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General, leading the charge on electric school buses in the U.S. Senate, or casting the deciding vote on the biggest investment ever in climate, clean energy and environmental justice and leading on climate on the world stage as Vice President, Kamala Harris has long been a climate champion,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, said in a statement endorsing Harris. 

What is your take on the candidates' environmental records, and what stood out most to you during the first presidential debate? Tell us about it here.