Tim Walz said climate change is real, but boasted about high U.S. levels of oil and gas production. JD Vance called climate change “weird science.”
JD Vance and Tim Walz on Tuesday both avoided talking about the main cause of global warming that is powering the kind of violent weather that struck the Southeast this week: the burning of fossil fuels.
Mr. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, used a rhetorical flourish during his debate with Mr. Walz to raise doubts about the established science of climate change. “This idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change, well, let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument,” he said. His running mate, Donald J. Trump, has mocked global warming as “a hoax.”
But Mr. Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate who said “climate change is real” and spoke of the ravages of extreme weather, nevertheless shied away from any suggestion that the United States, the world’s biggest historic emitter of carbon dioxide, should stop burning oil, gas and coal.
He spoke instead of the economic benefits of investing in clean energy and the need for the country to adapt to climate change.
And he boasted that oil and gas production has reached record levels under the Biden administration, in addition to gains in solar, wind and other nonpolluting energy sources. “We are producing more natural gas and oil than any time we ever had,” Mr. Walz said. “We’re also producing more clean energy.”
Mr. Walz’s comments echoed a similar line that Vice President Kamala Harris used during her debate with Mr. Trump last month. “We have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels,” Ms. Harris said.