words by amber x. chen and jason p. dinh
illustration by ÁSTA THRASTARDÓTTIR
After weeks of quibbling over rules and conditions, it finally happened: Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump squared off last night in their first debate, hosted by ABC.
From an empty studio in the keystone swing state of Pennsylvania, with just 55 days until Election Day, the back-and-forth was headlined by sparring over the economy, abortion, and immigration.
Aside from a question about fracking, moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis didn’t pose a climate question until the very end, about an hour and 30 minutes into the event, giving each candidate one minute—half the time allotted for other responses—to share their plans for mitigating climate change.
The New York Times, The Guardian, and other experts agree that Harris won the debate. She “owned much of the night” and “commanded the first debate,” according to the New York Times. They added that she “leverage[d] every opportunity to get under the former president’s skin.” Trump, on the other hand, spent much of the evening in a “defensive crouch.” Harris “goaded (and goaded and goaded) Trump into a debate trainwreck,” Vox wrote. Even Fox News commentator Dana Perino said Trump “took all of the bait and none of the opportunities.”
Throughout the debate, the veracity of their climate claims was a mixed bag. Trump repeatedly made false statements claiming that Harris would end fossil fuel production in the U.S. Meanwhile, Harris spoke mostly the truth, maintaining that oil and gas production has been at an all-time high, while the Biden administration has also funneled historic investments into clean energy.
Here’s everything the presidential hopefuls had to say about climate change at their first, and perhaps, only debate of the election cycle.
True. At an annual spring dinner for the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2019, Trump said, “If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75% in value. And they say the noise causes cancer.”
At a 2023 rally in South Carolina, the former President doubled down on his anti-windmill claims, asserting that they caused whale deaths.
Medical experts say they know of no links between windmill noise and cancer. Living in close proximity to coal-fired power plants, however, has been shown to increase the risk of multiple cancers, asthma, and heart disease.
True. The Biden-Harris administration has not banned fracking. As Vice President, Harris did cast the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which mandates some leasing of land for oil and gas.
Partly true, but misleading. As Attorney General of California from 2011 to 2017, Harris sued the Obama administration in 2016 for permitting fracking along the Pacific Coast. In 2019, during the Democratic presidential primary, Harris said she was in favor of a fracking ban. However, during a 2020 vice presidential debate, as a part of the Biden presidential ticket, she said, “Joe Biden will not end fracking.”
During her first sit-down interview as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, she doubled down on her 2020 position and said: “No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.”
False. Harris had made it clear that she would not ban fracking in Pennsylvania.
Moreover, it would not be in Harris’ power as President to instate a statewide fracking ban on her first day in office. This is, particularly, because most of Pennsylvania’s fracking takes place on private lands.
Partly true. As President, Trump rolled back over 100 environmental rules, among these opening up 18.6 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for fossil fuel exploration and canceling a requirement that fossil fuel companies report their methane emissions. Oil production increased while Trump was president. However, it continued increasing during the Biden administration and is now at a record high.
Yet even as production has increased, both Trump and Biden have overseen a decline in oil and gas jobs.
Partly true. The average national gasoline price roughly doubled from $2.42 per gallon in January 2021 to an all-time high of $5.03 per gallon in June 2022. It has since dropped to $3.51 per gallon as of last month.
False. U.S. oil and gas production is at an all-time high. Under the Biden administration, 1,453 new licenses on oil and gas were approved—20% more than under the Trump administration.
The Biden administration attempted to pass an executive order to halt all new oil and gas drilling on public lands and water in 2021, but this was later struck down by a federal judge.
Partly true, but misleading. The largest solar project in the United States is 4,600 acres, generating 875 megawatts, and is located in California’s Mojave Desert. However, this is an exception. The U.S. Energy Information Administration found in 2019 that most utility-scale solar power plants are 5 megawatts or smaller. Many community solar farms require much less land—like Washington D.C.’s 15-acre solar farm built on a polluted brownfield.
Solar energy does not release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, which is good for the environment as greenhouse gasses are the leading cause of climate change. However, there are environmental concerns with regards to the mining of materials to create solar panels and the disposal of them.
Partly true. Biden rejected a presidential permit for Keystone XL on his first day in office. In June 2021, the pipeline developers killed the project.
Trump did not end Nord Stream 2. Ninety percent of its construction was completed during his presidency, and he repeatedly ignored calls from Congress to use sanctions to stop the project.
Nord Stream 2, which connects Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, finished construction in 2021 during the Biden presidency, but it was not launched as Europe sought to become energy-independent from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. The nonoperational pipeline’s capacity for natural gas is tied with its predecessor, Nord Stream 1, for the biggest natural gas pipeline in Russia.
Whether Nord Stream 2 is the “biggest pipeline in the world” depends on what is being measured. It is not the world’s longest natural gas pipeline. That would be PetroChina’s West-East Gas Pipeline, which is 8,707 kilometers long compared to Nord Stream’s 1,222 kilometers. It’s also not the widest—that would be Gazprom’s Yamal-Europe Pipeline, which has a diameter of 142 centimeters compared to Nord Stream 2’s 115.3 centimeters. It does, however, have the greatest annual carrying capacity. It can carry 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, which is greater than pipelines many times its length, including the West-East pipeline (17 billion cubic meters), the GASUN Pipeline in Brazil (11 billion cubic meters), the Yamal-Europe Pipeline (33 billion cubic meters), and the Trans-Saharan Pipeline (30 billion cubic meters).
True. Trump has repeatedly referred to climate change as a hoax. On X in 2014, Trump wrote “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop.” At a speech in Hilton Head, South Carolina in 2015, Trump said, “Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the—a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, OK? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.” In 2022, he said in a speech at a Heritage Foundation conference in Florida that one of the nation’s most urgent tasks is to “defeat the climate hysteria hoax.”
True. Earth has warmed by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius since 1880. Scientists, including those on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say that 100% of global heating is caused by human activity.
True. Insurance companies have pulled out of wildfire-prone regions in California and hurricane-prone parts on the Gulf Coast. The insurance companies that remain have raised their premiums, often citing weather-related damage.
Last year, the United States experienced 28 separate billion-dollar natural disasters—the most of all time. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, weather disasters that year displaced 2.5 million Americans from their homes. Meanwhile, most home insurers raised their premiums in 2023 by over 10%.
True. It is not too late to address climate change. Polls from Pew Research show that 67% of Gen Z believe that climate change should be a top priority.
Partly true. The Inflation Reduction Act contained $369 billion, much of which is going toward investing in clean energy, including tax subsidies for solar, EV cars, and new renewable energy projects.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in July 2024 that since Biden has taken office, manufacturing employment has increased by 765,000.
True. At the Global Clean Energy Action Forum in 2022, the U.S. announced that it would contribute $21.9 billion to a $94 billion public fund for clean energy demonstrations to increase global production of clean energy technologies.
True. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor, about 128,800 jobs in motor vehicles and parts were created between January 2021 and August 2024. Trump lost about 14,200 of those jobs during his presidency.
False. Though Germany phased out nuclear energy in 2023, the country still remains a clean energy leader. Today, a majority of Germany’s energy comes from renewable sources.
In 2022, fracking was reported to be responsible for 79% of the U.S.’s natural gas production and 65% of its crude oil production. However, fracking doesn’t necessarily make a country “strong.” In fact, it can make its residents sick. Fracking has been linked to higher risks for childhood lymphoma, childhood leukemia, and asthma attacks, for example.
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Fact-Checked: Harris’ and Trump’s Climate Claims at the ABC Presidential Debate
