Climate change came across as an afterthought in the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump last week. At 92 minutes into the debate, ABC News anchor Linsey Davis asked the sole question addressing it directly, with answers from Harris and Trump lasting less than three minutes.
Despite this brevity, the candidates both still managed to introduce misleading information about climate threats and action in their responses to this and several other questions. With Arizona voters having just weathered their hottest summer on record — and Maricopa County on track to continue its upward trend in annual heat-associated deaths in 2024 — climate is a central issue in this battleground state, especially for its Latino and youth communities.
That priority was not reflected in the presidential candidates’ responses during the debate. Discussion of immigration and the economy took up most of the floor time, with no mention of how climate change has been directly connected to both of these issues — by contributing to driving migrants from increasingly unlivable, drought-stricken landscapes, and by worsening heat waves that result in crop and productivity losses and, by extension, higher grocery costs.
Instead, Trump alleged that U.S. chip manufacturing wasn’t real and that “fossil fuel will be dead” under a Harris administration. Harris, meanwhile, bragged about increased gas production under the current administration in the same breath that she incongruously touted its climate progress.
Several claims made on stage last Tuesday night will ring especially untrue for Arizonans (where the deadline for voter registration in the state is Oct. 7). The Arizona Republic has fact-checked and added context to climate debate content.
New poll: Latino voters want more action on climate and clean energy in Arizona
Accuracy in debate climate claims: Trump — mostly wrong; Harris — somewhat misleading
TRUMP: “The prices of energy were quadrupling and doubling. You saw what happened to gasoline. … 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.”
Parts of this statement are false or need more context, at least as they relate to Arizona.
On energy prices increasing, Trump was correct that, nationally, residential electricity has become more expensive in recent years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But that jump is on the order of 5% since 2020, nowhere near the “quadrupling or doubling” the former president mentioned. Residential gas is currently cheaper than it was at the end of the Trump administration.
In Arizona, that story is somewhat different. Residential electricity prices in the state are currently 5% lower than the national average, according to the EIA. This aligns with statewide expansions in solar energy development, which has steadily become cheaper than fossil fuel-based sources in recent years. And while residential gas prices in the state are currently 30% higher than the national average, some experts connect this to Arizona’s lack of an oil and gas industry, meaning Arizonans sometimes pay more to import these fossil fuels.
Retail gasoline prices are, as Trump suggested, slightly higher than the average during his administration. But at the end of Obama’s term, gasoline prices were as low as the lowest recorded under Trump. Energy analysts have shown that, despite voters commonly judging administrations based on momentary gasoline prices, these tend to be largely unrelated to the actions of any sitting president. Efforts to gain more control over gasoline prices have included increasing energy independence via domestic oil production, which the Biden administration has done at record levels.
Read our climate series: The latest from Joan Meiners at azcentral on climate change
Biden’s expansion of domestic oil and gas production also undermines Trump’s allegations that a future Harris administration would be the death knell for fossil fuels. Climate activists could only wish for this to be true.
“My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil,” Harris said. “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.”
Trump, on the other hand, is currently under investigation by U.S. Senate Budget and Finance Committees for making quid pro quo propositions to oil executives in exchange for campaign contributions, raising questions about whether his energy platform is for sale for personal gain.
Finally, Trump’s claims about solar development requiring a “whole desert” are overstated. While some of the largest installations do take 500 or more acres of desert soil, a more typical size in Arizona is about 262 acres, according to LandGate, a data provider for renewables projects. Many solar energy gains are happening on rooftops and in urban areas without additional land impacts. Under a plan by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to consider vast swaths of the West for renewables siting, only 2.3 million acres in Arizona are even up for consideration, much of that near already-disturbed land along Interstates 8 and 10. That’s just 3% of the state’s total acreage.
HARRIS: “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.”
This statement is not false, per se, but it is misleading. It’s also a great example of the Harris campaign’s mixed messaging on her intended approach to addressing the climate crisis.
First, the $1 trillion figure seems to be a rounding up of federal funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the CHIPS and Science Act as well as the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s historic climate legislation, plus the many private investments they incentivized. While it may be fair to take credit for spurring industry buy-in on clean energy, battery storage and other climate solutions, those dollars arguably shouldn’t count as investments by an administration. This figure also includes government spending on unproven technologies like direct air carbon capture, which some experts would like to see less emphasized in climate solutions.
Regardless of the exact grand total, it’s clear that Biden-Harris climate programs have facilitated a huge expansion in clean energy, with Arizona seventh on a list of states that benefitted the most. Two years after its passage, the organization Climate Power estimated that the Inflation Reduction Act has brought 24 new projects, 18,130 jobs and nearly $12 billion in clean energy investments to Arizona. It’s unclear what would happen to all of this under a Trump administration.
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Perhaps these impressive clean energy totals are what pushed Harris to also boast about increasing domestic gas production as part of her answer to the single debate question on how the candidates would tackle climate change. Her answer could be a capitulation to moderate voters in response to scrutiny of how her position on fracking has changed over the years.
What it’s not is a climate solution. Scientists have been very clear that global fossil fuel reliance must be quickly and aggressively reduced to keep atmospheric warming to levels compatible with modern human civilizations.
Increased domestic oil and gas production will especially not benefit Arizonans, despite the familiar Trump rally cry of “drill baby drill” being met with enthusiasm when uttered by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., on stage at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale at Trump’s campaign event on Aug. 23. Arizona has an almost nonexistent oil and gas industry, producing just 0.001% of Texas’s natural gas volumes and zero crude oil, according to recent estimates by the EIA.
Yet Arizona utilities are continuing to pursue natural gas plant additions and expansions, against their better economic interests according to many energy experts. The Arizona Republic has reported at length on examples of this in the state, some in areas where solar projects have been banned due to political opposition.
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TRUMP: “They bought their chips from Taiwan. We hardly make chips anymore because of philosophies like they have and policies like they have.”
It seems Trump hasn’t been paying much attention to Arizona, where chip manufacturing has seen a huge boom in recent years, especially in the Phoenix metro area. He is right, though, about Taiwan playing a role here.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has announced plans for a $40 billion semiconductor, or chip manufacturing, plant north of Phoenix. Construction is underway, but that hasn’t stopped opposition from environmentalists who say Arizona’s climate, groundwater and air quality cannot endure the high water and energy demands of these facilities, or the greenhouse gases and toxins they emit.
“These massive industrial plants will have enormous impacts on water and energy supplies and release hazardous liquids and gases, including the ‘forever chemical’ PFAS, into the workplace and environment,” environmentalist Lenny Siegel told The Republic’s Russ Wiles in August when discussing what he views as insufficient environmental reviews of Arizona’s growing chip manufacturing industry.
The environmental and labor coalition Siegel is a part of, CHIPS Communities United, calculated the TSMC facility in north Phoenix will “use more than 17 million gallons of water a day, generate more greenhouse gases than 32,000 homes use, and consume enough electricity to power 300,000 Arizona households.”
More scrutiny: Environmental advocates want thorough reviews of Arizona’s big chip plants at TSMC, Intel
Trump’s statement about chip manufacturing not happening domestically because of Democratic leadership ignores what is happening near Phoenix. Speaking about the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to bring chip manufacturing and packaging back to the U.S. using incentives from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., told Wiles that Arizona “was better prepared than any other state to take advantage of it.”
But both the Trump and Biden-Harris camps seem to be ignoring the climate impacts of this move. In a desert environment that has already faced substantial water cuts in recent years thanks to a megadrought that forced renegotiations of Arizona’s allotment from the Colorado River, welcoming new foreign facilities that require huge amounts of water is not a climate-mindful decision. With power outages also increasingly threatening lives during summer heat waves for residents reliant on air conditioning, straining the electricity grid and forcing a continued reliance on gas-fired power plants also undermines climate action to shift to renewables.
Groundwater pumping in Arizona by alfalfa growers based in Saudi Arabia received huge local pushback in recent years, prompting Gov. Katie Hobbs to cancel leases to Fondomonte Arizona over the last year. But the same outrage has yet to find its way to the Taiwanese chip manufacturers. Semiconductors are often touted as an essential component of future climate and energy-saving solutions. The question remains whether the impacts to communities living near these facilities in the meantime are worth that tradeoff.
More: Phoenix is not prepared for a simultaneous heat wave and blackout, new research shows
HARRIS: “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.”
This climate statement is 100% true.
Trump famously did call climate change a hoax, specifically one perpetuated by the Chinese. He has also falsely claimed that wind mills, a climate solution, cause cancer, and ignored reports from his own government scientists about the risks posed by atmospheric warming.
This delay in climate action has directly contributed to worse “natural” disasters. American taxpayers, who have also seen homeowner insurance rates skyrocket as a result, pay the bill.
Scientists have indeed repeatedly shared information about how the technology and capabilities for rapid solutions already exist, mostly in the form of a clean energy transition. And young people do deeply care about this issue, as they will be the ones left to pick up the pieces.
TRUMP: “I have nothing to do with Project 2025.”
Early in the debate, Harris warned listeners of a “detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again.” Trump countered with this dismissal.
On the surface, this statement is true. Trump was not directly involved in Project 2025. The 922-page document, however, is a conservative policy playbook the authors call a “presidential transition project” that was put together largely by members of his administration. Many of these people may be likely to join a future Trump administration.
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If put back into power, these people, backed by the Heritage Foundation, would seek to dismantle public weather monitoring by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, as just one example of a goal that would not only remove practical weather forecasting services from the public sphere but would stymie efforts to study and address climate change.
While in office, Trump rolled back around 100 environmental regulations and dismantled parts of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Project 2025 expands that agenda by outlining plans to pare down the Department of the Interior to allow for more oil exploration, disrupt Bureau of Land Management operations by forcing another relocations of its employees, reduce support for farmers and forestry as well as repeal the Antiquities Act and other land conservation measures that also support biodiversity and wildlife.
Speaking to The Arizona Republic in August, David Kieve, president of Environmental Defense Fund Action, shared the impacts he thought Project 2025 would have specifically for Arizonans. Top on the list were that it would short-circuit the benefits the Inflation Reduction Act has brought Arizona’s clean energy industry, and it would undermine recent efforts to revise groundwater management and protections.
“Project 2025 doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you understand that this is a road map written by polluters to benefit polluters. It will not benefit Arizonans,” Kieve said. “It won’t benefit Arizona’s economy, which is growing thanks to the pro-climate legislation that President Biden and Vice President Harris have passed and are working to enact. And it will return Arizona to a system where whoever has the deepest straw can drink as much as they want, which will lead to catastrophe and ruin and halt the progress on groundwater management made in Arizona in recent years.”
Bottom line: For climate voters, Harris is the winner
While Harris’ debate answers on climate topics leave something to be desired for climate voters, the difference between her and Trump on what many consider humanity’s greatest-ever existential crisis is vast.
Even though the Harris campaign has been mysteriously silent on climate issues compared to the Biden-Harris administration making this a central talking point, Harris’ track record as a prosecutor of polluters and her active role in Biden’s clean energy agenda suggest she would be stronger on climate than perhaps she is letting on.
Evidence suggests that Trump, on the other hand, would continue to roll back environmental protections for the benefit of polluting industries while ignoring warnings from hundreds of national and international climate scientists. The debate content last Tuesday night only made all of this more clear.
Joan Meiners is the climate news and storytelling reporter at The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Before becoming a journalist, she completed a doctorate in ecology. Follow Joan on Twitter at @beecycles or email her at joan.meiners@arizonarepublic.com. Read more of her coverage at environment.azcentral.com.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Debate brought out differences on climate between Harris, Trump
