Julian Castro in 2019 Town Hall

On Energy & Oil: 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.

On Energy & Oil: 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.

On Environment: Backed fracking as mayor; leave bans to each community

CASTRO: She's right. When I was mayor of San Antonio, I did believe that there were opportunities to be had in fracking that was going on in South Texas. Back then, almost a decade ago, we had been saying that natural gas was a bridge fuel. We're coming to the end of the bridge. And my plan calls for moving toward clean, renewable, zero emission energy in the years to come. That's what I would focus on.

Q: So just to clarify on fracking, if you were president, would you ban fracking?

CASTRO: Look, I support local communities and states that want to ban fracking. I have not called for an immediate ban on fracking. hat I am doing is moving us away from fracking and natural gas and investing in wind energy, solar energy, other renewables to get us to net zero by 2045.

On Environment: Reinstate private right to sue polluters

CASTROI connect the dots to places like Flint, Michigan, and I know that too often it's people who are poor, and communities of color, who take the brunt. And so my plan actually calls for new civil rights legislation to be able to address environmental injustice, including making sure that there's a to make a claim. I want to vest that power back in the people so that when we can show a disparate impact of certain practices of companies, of polluters that everyday Americans are able to file suit to try and get some sort of recourse.

On Environment: PAW: connect the dots for Protecting Animals and Wildlife

CASTRO: We actually need to undo the damage that this administration has done and then expand the lands that we're protecting in our country. We can do that. A few weeks ago, I put out something that we called PAW, Protecting Animals and Wildlife. And I have to be honest with y'all, some people when they heard that, were like, what? You're putting out a plan to protect animals and wildlife? It's not usually something that a lot of presidential candidates do. But again, we need to connect the dots. I've connected the dots of actually preserving more of our lands both for the benefit of wildlife and for our benefit to combat climate change. And so we would go back and reclassify places like Bear's Ear and other land that this administration has gone backward on, and then look for other land that we can also protect and preserve. And we need to do it. We need to do it and we can do it.