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No One Covered Climate Change At The Debate

by Cheyna Roth

During the second presidential debate, a man became a hero for all of about four days ... at least until his downfall. True, Ken Bone was eventually tossed aside when someone looked into Bone's less-than-savory Reddit history. But once upon a time, he was the only person during the second debate with the guts to talk about one important issue: climate change. Without Bone, no one mentioned climate change at the debate — not even once.

In the first debate, climate change came up for all of 82-seconds, mostly because Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton started talking about it. The second debate gave us Mr. Bone and the third debate gave us ... nothing. Climate change was not asked about by the moderator and this time neither candidate found a way to bring it up.

It's unclear why the moderators fail to bring up climate change and why such an important global issue has gotten so little attention during the few times we get to see the candidates lay out their policies next to each other. Maybe, for them, Bone's question and the few minutes of response were enough. But if Twitter is any indication of what the world wants (and face it, it totally is) the public is not okay with climate change getting the shaft.

Since the moderators failed to bring up climate change, let's take a quick look at what the candidates have to say about the issue on their websites.

Clinton has a section dedicated to her climate change plan. Clinton says she will "set bold, national goals that will be achieved within 10 years of taking office." Those plans include generating enough renewable energy to power every home in America and launching a 60-billion dollar Clean Energy Challenge. Like most of Clinton's policies and promises, her clean energy plan is thorough with multiple bullet points.

Republican nominee Donald Trump has a different approach to climate change on his website in that he doesn't really have an approach. Trump's website makes no mention of the environment or climate change. He does, however, have a section on "energy" which is about as close to an environmental plan as Trump seems to have on his website. Part of Trump's energy plan is to, "Unleash America’s $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves." Although scientists have said that clean coal isn't really a thing, it gives you some idea of Trump's environmental concerns.

Of course, when it comes to climate change, Trump will really always be known for calling it a hoax pushed by China, even though he's tried to deny having made that claim more times than one.