It’s impossible to know what’s going to come up at the first debate between Clinton and Trump, or how the debate will proceed. What we do know is that one candidate is strong on policy and experience while the other is a master of bullshittery. Facts and figures don’t fare well against appeals to the gut and bombast on the teevee machine.
Donald Trump is on record as saying Climate Change is a hoax put out by the Chinese to cripple our economy. He’s doubling down on carbon-based energy, saying he’s going to get rid of “all unnecessary regulations, and a temporary moratorium on new regulations not compelled by Congress or public safety.”
He’s promised to ‘save’ the coal industry— when it’s cheap natural gas from fracking that’s really killing coal. It’s not simply environmental regulations — it’s because the need for energy from coal is dropping! Market forces are at work here. Alternatives are both cheaper, cleaner and easier to operate.
Hillary Clinton can turn this right back on Trump with stories people can easily grasp. Climate Change is a Chinese hoax? The BBC reports
China has been building two wind turbines every hour, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has told BBC News.
This is the world's biggest programme of turbine installation, double that of its nearest rival, the US.
The nation’s entire annual increase in energy demand has been fulfilled from the wind.
emphasis added
If the Chinese are promoting Climate Change just as a hoax to cripple American manufacturing, they’re sure putting a lot of resources into it. The story goes on to add that China has also been building so many coal power plants, the grid can’t handle all the power — they’ve had to turn off wind turbines to keep the coal plants running because coal plants are much less flexible to operate. China is putting a moratorium on new coal plants through 2018. China isn’t just building wind turbines either — they’re going full speed ahead on solar power as well.
China’s real problem is setting priorities. Their grid isn’t keeping up with all the new power coming from wind and solar. They’re dealing with massive water and soil pollution that threatens health and their ability to feed themselves. While the world economy presently turns on energy, in the future food is going to be a critical commodity, especially if population growth doesn’t stabilize. And that’s without adding in the effects of Climate Change on food security. (pdf)
Food security—the ability to obtain and use sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food—is a fundamental human need. Climate change is very likely to affect global, regional, and local food security by disrupting food availability, decreasing access to food, and making food utilization more difficult.
Food security exists “when all people at all times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” and affects people through both under- and overconsumption. Food security requires that food be simultaneously (1) available—that it exist in a particular place at a particular time, (2) that people can access that food through economic or other means, (3) that people can utilize the food that is available and accessible to them, and (4) that each of these components be stable over time. Constrictions within any of these components can result in food insecurity.
Droughts, floods, heat waves — throw that in the mix with polluted air and polluted water, it’s not good. Climate change isn’t just about hot days or rising seas. It touches everything, including what you have — or don’t have — to eat. Add in massive rain storms becoming more frequent and other climate changes, effects of coal mining and coal waste on land and water, leaking oil piplines, leaking gas wells, earthquakes, and there is more than enough reason to move away from fossil fuels.
What happens when you get a government run by people who ignore regulations, who ignore science, who ignore the environment because they’re entirely focused on ‘growing the economy and creating jobs’?
Bad things. Really bad things.
The waters of the Aral Sea once supported a fishing industry that supported thousands. The town of Moynaq became the home of a huge fishing fleet and a canning industry which processed the fishermens’ catch.
But the controversial Soviet decision to divert the rivers feeding the Aral – in order to irrigate Uzbekistan’s cotton fields – starved the Aral Sea of water. The lake began to evaporate and recede in the 1960s.
The Aral Sea is now the Aralkum Desert. The end result destroyed thousands of jobs, created serious health problems, and even affected local climate. Imagine that kind of damage on a global scale — driven by leaders who think ignorance is strength. The damage done to the Aral Sea is slowly being reversed in one small section, but the larger sea is unlikely to return absent a determined effort to make it happen.
Hillary Clinton can take all of the above and put it into some easy to grasp talking points, using these stories to make her arguments.
- 1) Going to wind and solar will not cripple the economy — China has more power than it can use.
- 2) Jobs from fossil fuels are only as good as the demand for those fuels, and last only as long as those fossil fuels are available. Jobs from alternative energy will be around as long as the wind blows and the sun shines. We should start calling it primary energy — because it’s always there.
- 3) Fossil fuels are a danger not just because of what they’re doing to the climate. They damage the land and water we need to feed ourselves. They damage our health.
- 4) It matters who is in charge. Leaders who can’t deal with the big picture are not the leaders we need. The problems never get smaller.