Election 2020 Candidates Address Climate Change Policies in First Debate

Candidates address climate change policies like a carbon tax, soil amendments and the Green New Deal.

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There’s a recognized pressing need to address the underlying man-made biological system disruptions that are exacerbating storms and fires -- otherwise known as climate change.

While storms and fires are greatly stressing public safety resources, surging emergency response expenses and creating economic catastrophe that sharply triggers municipal and state government costs, discussing climate change has proved politically challenging.

But, science aside, the low-level of discourse on climate change is also bad politically,” wrote Justin Worland, Time Magazine’s energy reporter, in his article that largely focused on the first night of the Election 2020 first round Democratic debates.

Despite the inherent challenges in publicly addressing solutions, several candidates on the second night of the debates went a toe deeper.

Talk -- and Lack of Talk -- on the Carbon Tax

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg highlighted his city’s more recent devastating storm experiences to explain how rural America is part of solutions to address climate change. He raised a federal carbon tax and soil enrichment initiatives.

Andrea Fox is Editor of Gov1.com and Senior Editor at Lexipol. She is based in Massachusetts.

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