Many organizations and environmental experts protested Thursday against the positions on climate change voiced by Republican candidates for the US presidential election in their first televised debate the previous day.
The topic sparked one of the most heated exchanges of the debate, which the moderators addressed after 20 minutes:
“If you believe climate change is caused by human activity, raise your hand,” they urged the eight White House candidates.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently second in the polls behind Donald Trump, clipped the question, leaving candidates to remain silent regardless of their true answer.
But one of them, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who is benefiting from rising opinion polls, jumped at the opportunity.
“The spread of the climate change thesis is a sham,” he said. “The reality is that more people are dying from bad climate policies than from climate change itself.”
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Shortly before, he had called for “unleashing America’s energy potential,” particularly through the “burning of coal.”
Democratic President Joe Biden immediately responded to X (ex-Twitter): “Climate change is real.”
And reactions among climate experts skyrocketed.
The Republican Party “is a threat not only to the nation but also to the planet,” responded Michael Mann, a prominent climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
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The group Climate Power called the sequence the “worst in politics” and noted that Vivek Ramaswamy was booed by the public after saying the word “deception”.
“Republicans will face the consequences of their denial in the election,” the organization said.
“Young Americans, including 88% of conservatives, want an action plan on climate change,” noted Christopher Barnard, president of the American Conservation Coalition.
This right-wing organization, on the other hand, praised the testimonies of the only Republican candidate, Nikki Haley.
“Is climate change real? “Yes, he is,” she was the only one who recognized it. “But if you really want to change the environment, we have to start telling China and India that they have to reduce their emissions.”
Farhana Sultana, a professor at Syracuse University, criticized this positioning and accused the candidate of trying to shift responsibility by blaming other powers.
According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), China emits more than twice as much CO2 as the United States each year. However, emissions per capita are much higher in the United States, which has historically also emitted more CO2 than China.
Either way, the debate “advanced key issues,” said the activist organization Extinction Rebellion. “It’s time for the candidates to tell the truth.”