Editor’s Note: The following transcript and video was originally published by Democracy Now! on October 2, 2024.
CBS moderators asked about the climate crisis in Tuesday’s debate between vice-presidential contenders JD Vance and Tim Walz, responding to pressure from activists who urged the network to tie the devastation of Hurricane Helene to the planet’s rising temperatures. “The fact that this question was asked … was a major win for our movement,” says Shiva Rajbhandari, a student climate justice organizer at UNC-Chapel Hill and a spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement. While Walz defended climate science, Vance continued to downplay the climate emergency and cast doubt over the established link to fossil fuels. “JD Vance has no backbone. He is unwilling to stand up to Donald Trump. He is unwilling to disagree with his running mate, and that is dangerous,” says Rajbhandari.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to go now to the part of the debate where they took on the climate crisis. The debate took place here in New York as the death toll from Hurricane Helene has reached at least 166. President Biden is expected to visit the Carolinas today, while Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Georgia. During the debate, JD Vance described climate change as “weird science” and expressed skepticism about the scientific consensus linking rising carbon emissions to the climate crisis.
SEN. JD VANCE: I think it’s important for us, first of all, to say Donald Trump and I support clean air, clean water. We want the environment to be cleaner and safer. But one of the things that I’ve noticed some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions, this idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change. Well, let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument, so we’re not arguing about weird science. Let’s just say that’s true. Well, if you believe that, what would you — what would you want to do? The answer is that you’d want to reshore as much American manufacturing as possible, and you’d want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.
GOV. TIM WALZ: Now, look, coming back to the climate change issue, there’s no doubt this thing roared onto the scene faster and stronger than anything we’ve seen. Senator Vance has said that there’s a climate problem in the past. Donald Trump called it a hoax and then joked that these things would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in.
What we’ve seen out of the Harris administration now, the Biden-Harris administration, is we’ve seen this investment. We’ve seen massive investments, the biggest in global history that we’ve seen, in the Inflation Reduction Act, has created jobs all across the country, 2,000 in Jeffersonville, Ohio, taking the EV technology that we invented and making it here, 200,000 jobs across the country. The largest solar manufacturing plant in North America sits in Minnesota. But my farmers know climate change is real. They’ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods, back to back.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Democratic vice-presidential nominee Governor Tim Walz and his Republican challenger, JD Vance. Prior to the debate, six youth climate activists were arrested outside CBS headquarters here in New York in a protest calling on the moderators to ask a question about Hurricane Helene and the climate crisis.
PROTESTER: I’m fighting for the millions of people who are without power, who have died in this hurricane, because Big Oil is ruining our futures and killing us.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Shiva Rajbhandari, a student climate justice organizer at UNC-Chapel Hill — that’s the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill — spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, which had also urged CBS to include a question about Hurricane Helene and climate change.
Shiva, thanks so much for joining us. You’re in a heavily hit state by Hurricane Helene. This is what? The deadliest hurricane in something like 20 years, next to Katrina. Talk about the protest and how you feel the two vice-presidential candidates responded.
SHIVA RAJBHANDARI: Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Amy.
And that’s right, Hurricane Helene is one of the worst climate disasters we’ve seen in years, certainly this year. Over 160 American lives have been lost, and hundreds, like you said earlier in the show, remain missing right here in North Carolina. And so, it is truly a climate disaster, caused by Big Oil. And I think, you know, it gives me a lot of fear for what’s to come.
First of all, I think the fact that this question was asked, especially in the way that it was asked, was a major win for our movement. We called on Norah O’Donnell and CBS to prioritize climate. We said, “Hey, millions of young people across the country care about climate change. It’s a voting issue for many, many people.” But not only that, it is front of mind for millions more here in the Southeast, where Hurricane Helene has wreaked havoc, from Tampa Bay, Florida, where I was earlier this weekend helping with disaster response, all the way up to the mountains of Appalachia.
And I think the response that the candidates gave was telling. First of all, we saw that JD Vance, you know, was unable to stand up to Donald Trump’s words, just like he was throughout the debate. He refused to say whether he thought climate change was a hoax, and he wouldn’t talk about climate disasters like the major threat to American lives like he would just a few years ago. And I think that’s demonstrative of a critical error with JD Vance and the Trump-Vance campaign, is that JD Vance has no backbone. He is unwilling to stand up to Donald Trump. He is unwilling to, you know, disagree with his running mate. And that is dangerous, not just for the success of, like, a Vance-Trump presidency, but for American democracy as a whole, especially when dealing with a wannabe dictator like Donald Trump, who is essentially sold out to Big Oil, right? He’s a billionaire, and I truly believe he would sell young people just down the river for a couple bucks or just to hang onto power for a little while longer.
I think the response that we saw from Tim Walz was strong but still fell short of my needs as a young person and as a climate justice organizer. You know, we know that climate policies are popular. The Green New Deal is popular. And Tim Walz didn’t need to distance himself from that. This all-the-above energy strategy is a strategy for death, ultimately. And we need a —
AMY GOODMAN: Shiva, just to be clear —
SHIVA RAJBHANDARI: — a Harris-Walz administration —
AMY GOODMAN: Shiva, just to be clear —
SHIVA RAJBHANDARI: We need a Harris-Walz administration that’s going to take rapid action to stop the climate crisis. We have less than six years, and I have seen no plan.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank so much for being with us, Shiva Rajbhandari, a student climate justice organizer at UNC-Chapel Hill, spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, which is not officially endorsing Harris, citing a lack of a detailed climate agenda, but has a major campaign aimed at mobilizing one-and-a-half million young voters to support Harris for president.
Coming up, we look at the vice-presidential debate issues of immigration and abortion. Back in 20 seconds.
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