2019 Town Hall: on Energy & Oil

Amy Klobuchar: Our mission: solve climate crisis, without harming economy

KLOBUCHAR: The timing is to make this our mission, like landing on the moon, or the Civil Rights movement where our country came together and said we're going to solve something. And when do you that, you get the new technology and the new results. I was being honest, I don't think we can phase it out in a few years. To me that's like 2 or 3 or 4 years. Right? You have to do it over a period of time, you have to be aware of where people are working and how are you going to do this in a way that keeps our economy going and keeps our economy strong. There is an old Ojibway saying that "great leaders should make decisions not for this generation but for seven generations from now." [We should] put that money into R&D and work with the private sector, perfect the storage for energy, the sooner we can do this, the better.

Amy Klobuchar: No all-out ban on fracking; we need a transition

KLOBUCHAR: Because I see natural gas as a transitional fuel. It is better than oil, but it's not nearly as good as wind and solar. However, you have situations where you have dangerous fracking that shouldn't be happening. So as president in my first 100 days, I will review every fracking permit there is and decide which ones should be allowed to be continued and which ones are too dangerous. Then you go from there. And as you put a price on carbon, you will see less of this going on--because once you put rules of the road in place, it's going to become less economically feasible for that kind of fuel. I remember only a few years ago we were celebrating work of the Obama administration for natural gas-fueled buses. Why? It was better than the old kind of buses. So you have to see this as a transition as we move ahead to a better and cleaner environment.

Andrew Yang: Stop subsidizing fossil fuel industries; support carbon tax

YANG: The big picture is, we subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. And so now everyone is, like, "where's the money?" We know where the money is. We put hundreds of billions into the fossil fuel industry. We're still subsidizing it to this day, and now it's time to take some of that money and channel it to the needs of the American people. We need to get with the program, wake up to the reality around us and let you know that you're not on your own. This is not a "you" problem, this is an "us" problem. And what do sophisticated, advanced societies do when it's an us problem? We put some of our collective resources to work and we solve the problems on the ground.

Q: Would you eliminate some subsidies for fossil fuel or subsidies?

YANG: I'd get rid of them all. Why would you leave any of them?

Beto O`Rourke: Net zero greenhouse emissions on public lands

O'ROURKE: Day one, re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement. On that same day, make sure that we lead the world in going well beyond the Paris Climate Agreement. Ensure that we regulate and enforce reduced greenhouse gas emissions from methane, and then get to net zero on public lands by ensuring we have no new oil and gas leases on federally protected lands and offshore areas that are now being drilled today. Those three steps are a great place to start and a good pace to set. And then we follow that up by making sure that we have legally enforceable standards every single year over which no polluter can emit. We make sure that we get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, earlier if we can. And then we protect the most vulnerable communities, those who are on the front lines of climate change and pollution, making sure that we ensure that there's environmental justice in this country.

Beto O`Rourke: Price carbon via cap-and-trade, not carbon tax

O'ROURKE: We should certainly price carbon. I think the best possible path to do that is through a cap-and-trade system. There would be allowances granted or sold to polluters, not just in the energy sector but in transportation as well as our industrial sector--cement, steel, the chemicals that we produce. There would be a set number of allowances that would decrease every single year. Because the clock is running, we have a little more than 10 years left. We don't have time to experiment. So I think that is the best possible path to ensure that there's a price for carbon and pollution in our economy.

Q: Just to be clear, do you support a carbon tax? Yes or no?

O'ROURKE: No. I think that cap-and-trade is the best possible path. I think that's the best way to send the pricing signal to ensure that there is a legally enforceable limit. And so that's the path that I'm going to choose.

Beto O`Rourke: El Paso and other southern cities will become uninhabitable

My son Henry, who's 8 years old, when I was talking to him the other night, he asked me, "Dad, if you win and you become president, we get to live in El Paso right?" And I said, "No, if we win, the way this works we would live in Washington DC" But he knew because I had told him about the warming that we face, that our community will be uninhabitable, not sustain human life, along this current trajectory, unless something dramatically and fundamentally changes. So the people of El Paso-- and the desert Southwest and the lower 9th Ward in New Orleans--are counting on all of us right now to stand up and be counted and do the right thing to ensure that we do not warm a degree and a half Celsius over those pre-industrial revolution levels.

Cory Booker: Zero carbon by 2030 requires nuclear as part of the blend

BOOKER: So this is where study and science is really important. So let's deal with the facts and the data. When I was mayor of the city of Newark, I used to have strong people come in with strong opinions & strong emotions. I used to say, "in God we trust, but everybody else bring me data." And we need to look at the numbers right now. So my plan says that we need to be at a zero carbon electricity by 2030. That's 10 years from the time that I will win the presidency of the United States of America. And right now, nuclear is more than 50% of our non-carbon causing energy. So people who think that we can get there without nuclear being part of the blend just aren't looking at the facts.

Cory Booker: GOP is only party on earth that denies climate change

BOOKER: Let's understand the reality we're in right now is young Republicans, millennial Republicans are really with us. I'm not one of these people that wants to vilify an entire party. The reality is the people that need to be vilified are Republicans in Congress who are the only major political party on the planet Earth whose leadership denies the science of climate change--remember in Europe, there are right wing parties, left wing parties [and all believe in climate change]. The battle we have right now is the obstruction that is going on by the Congressional Republican Party. And what is important, is that this is as much a cultural battle as it is a political battle, which is letting folks know who aren't with us.

Cory Booker: Ban fracking, and no new oil leases, on public land

BOOKER: Absolutely yes. I will ban offshore drilling. Why? Because where have these leases, we know they drill, they spill. Ask Alaska. Ask California. Ask the Gulf Coast. Destroying the environment. If my goal is to get our electricity zero carbon emission, that means phasing off of fossil fuels. To get to net zero carbon emissions by 2045 for our whole nation, we have to get off of fossil fuels. So why would I allow new leases? But this is not just offshore drilling. This is things like fracking on public lands--

Q: That was my next question. Would you ban fracking?

BOOKER: Right away on public lands. Absolutely yes.

Q: Just on public lands?

BOOKER: No, no. Let me finish. We will transition off of fossil fuels, natural gas, coal, oil. We must transition off so that those things are something of the past and the innovations and the breakthroughs in technologies lead us into a future where we dealt with [methods like fracking].

Joe Biden: Undo what Trump has done, from CAFE to other standards

BIDEN: First of all, we have to turn back all of the changes that the president has made, from CAFE standards to moving in a direction that we deal with providing people who get displaced opportunities to have jobs. Whole range of things. I would see to a standard that we provide efficiency for appliances, that saves billions of gallons of gasoline--$500 billion in savings and two billion metric tons of CO2 going into the air. We should do it across the board. I propose we have 500,000 charging stations in the new green economy. We should own the electric vehicle market. I think we should raise the CAFE standards, bring them back to where they were. It goes on from there. But the bottom line is, to set in place standards that cannot be walked away from when the next president does what Trump tries to do.

Joe Biden: Limit fracking at state level, but disallow new drilling

BIDEN: I think the way we deal with state lands is we have less latitude, what we say we can and cannot do. I've argued against any more oil drilling or gas drilling on federal lands. I think we should be looking at what exists now [on state lands] and making a judgement whether or not those wells are dangerous, and what we can do from there by trying to change the attitude of the governors and the state legislatures. I don't think we could pass national legislation, to say all fracking that's going on now ends, unless you can show there's some physical security need or worried about explosions, or physical safety from earthquakes. But I would not allow any more.

Q: So to be clear, you would not call for a ban statewide on fracking or nationwide? You said stop new oil and gas drilling on federal lands? BIDEN: Yes.

Julian Castro: The ice caps are melting; the Amazon is on fire

Hurricane Dorian that's about to hit landfall. These hurricanes are happening more frequently and they're happening with greater intensity. It seems like these floods, that they call 500-year floods, are happening every other year now.

We see the arctic ice caps that are melting, the Amazon on fire. So we don't need climate scientists to tell us what we see with our own eyes.

When I see these things, when I hear about them, what I think of are my own two children, who are 10 and 4. And there's a resolve to make sure that our children inherit a planet that is healthy, where they're going to breathe clean air and drink clean water.

Julian Castro: People First, Planet First: net-zero by 2045

CASTRO: My first executive order will be to rejoin the Paris climate accord so that we lead again on sustainability. But it's actually what comes next after that that is the most important, a series of other executive actions and legislation. Just yesterday I put out a plan called, People First, Planet First. We would make investments to get the United States to net zero by 2045. We would incentivize wind energy production, solar energy production, invest in renewables. We would challenge the rest of the world at latest to get to net zero by 2050. We would institute a carbon pollution fee to help make the investments that we need to make. We would also take executive orders, for instance, prohibiting fossil fuel exploration, permitting of it and extraction on federal lands.

Pete Buttigieg: Set up climate action plan as South Bend Mayor

BUTTIGIEG: We are under way on a climate action plan. We committed joining with cities around the world to live up to the Paris commitments, even if the national governments are failing to do it. And right now we have built the capacity to assess what's happening with greenhouse gases in our city and act on it. We have undertaken energy savings contracts to make our buildings more energy efficient, set up electric vehicle charging points. And we're doing it because we're living in a country where our national government has failed. Now, having said all that, the reality is, cities can't do it alone. This is going to require action at every level of government and beyond government. We are only going to be able to tackle the climate issue when this amounts to a major national project that enlists the abilities of the public sector, the private sector, the academic sector, and rural America.

Pete Buttigieg: Polluters pay carbon tax; redistribute it to those affected

BUTTIGIEG: Absolutely. It's one of the reasons why I've proposed that we assess a carbon tax. And I know you're not supposed to use the T word when you're in politics, but we might as well call this what it is. There is a harm being done, and in the same way that we have taxed cigarettes, we're going to have to tax carbon. Now, the difference with my plan is that I propose that we rebate all of the revenue we collect right back out to the American people on a progressive basis, so that low- and middle-income Americans are made more than whole. I'm proposing that the carbon tax is something whose incidence is on the polluters, not on the American people, especially lower-income people.

Pete Buttigieg: No more intermediate steps: de-carbonize industry by 2050

BUTTIGEIG: We've got to make sure we have the right kind of incentives for that. Expand the tax credits, set them up in the right way and make sure eventually that we are requiring that emissions fall to zero in American auto production. By the way, when we do that the companies can respond, the American auto industry is capable of great innovation but we've got to set up the left and right boundaries for that. Carbon taxing is part of that. Regulations are part of that.

Q: What about coal being removed from the economy in 10 years?

BUTTIGEIG: We envision that taking longer but I will say that we've got to do it as quickly as humanly possible because we see the consequences are upon us. Our vision includes de-carbonizing industry on a net basis completely by 2050, but intermediate steps from making sure our light vehicles and then our heavy vehicles and then our power grid are each in turn eventually turning into zero emissions.