Environmental Advocates Want Climate Change Questions In Presidential Debates

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

August 27, 2012 | 2:57 PM

McCain And Obama Square Off In First Presidential Debate

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Barack Obama, John McCain and Jim Lehrer talk after the first 2008 presidential debate

The Hill reports on environmental advocates’ efforts to work climate change questions into this fall’s presidential debates:

The League of Conservation Voters has launched a petition drive pressing the moderator of the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer of PBS, to ask about the topic. The first debate is Oct. 3.
“We urge you to ask President Obama and Gov. Romney how they will confront the greatest challenge of our generation — climate change,” states the online petition, launched Wednesday.

What would President Obama and Governor Romney have to say about the issue? Here’s FuelFix’s summary of the two presidential candidates’ alternative energy platforms:

Romney wants to ease regulations that he says have blocked alternative energy as well as development of traditional fossil fuels. He supports the renewable fuel standard and said he backs “eliminating regulatory barriers” that stand in the way of diversifying the electrical grid as well as the transportation sector.
While touting his energy plan Thursday, Romney told a crowd of supporters that the government shouldn’t be in the business of “picking winners and losers” _ a reference to tax incentives and grants aimed at alternative energy producers.
Under the Obama administration, federal regulators for the first time have approved an offshore wind farm that would be built along the Massachusetts coast. The administration also points to government approvals of 16 commercial-scale solar facilities and five wind projects on public lands.