2019 Town Hall: on Technology

Andrew Yang: Apply geoengineering fixes, but ALSO reduce carbon emissions

YANG: Geoengineering is not the primary approach at all; we have to reduce emissions first and foremost. And if you look at my plan, of the $5 trillion, like a fraction of one of the trillions is looking at geoengineering. We have to get the best of emissions as the primary driver of climate change. Geoengineering, I just want us to think a very, very big picture of what's happening. Imagine a country like China 25 years from now who is going to be bearing the brunt of climate change. They're not very consultative, so you can imagine them doing something that affects us and the rest of the world, spraying sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. So, we need to face facts about the scope of the challenge and lead globally. So, I would convene a geoengineering summit and get countries from around the world to make sure that we don't have rogue actors just going off on their own.

Joe Biden: High-speed rail & mass transit would remove millions of cars

BIDEN: I think we should, depending on what it is they're exporting for what they're replacing. Everything is incremental. For example, about transportation. I've been pushing really hard for mass transit and for rail. We can take millions of vehicles off the road if we had high-speed rail. I've been a champion of that for the last 25 years. We know the corridors where we could do that. It would literally take millions of vehicles off the road. But you have to have a rail system that makes people say, "if I get on that rail, I will get there as fast as I would have gotten had I driven and I can afford to do it relative to the cost of my driving." There's a direct correlation. This is something I spent the bulk of my career on, trying to save Amtrak and other things like transportation. But my point is, we can begin to change the arc in a significant way, [by] investing in the science and the technology and the changes that are available.

Kamala Harris: All electric cars and school buses by 2045

HARRIS: I'm not saying there won't be any change but part of my perspective on this is I've actually seen what's possible when leaders lead. I've seen how in California we put in place some of the toughest, smartest laws and required changes in behavior and we saw outcomes. And I don't think anybody who has lived in California over all those years would say there was any drastic change to their lifestyle. Yes, they may say "well, I'm now driving a car that I can't really hear sometimes." You know, that Prius, right?

Q: S

Pete Buttigieg: Can't solve problem by air travel ban; focus on fast trains

BUTTIGIEG: Look, I'm interested in decarbonizing the fuel that goes into air travel. I also don't believe we're going to abolish air travel. But we do need to do more to provide alternatives to air travel. I think about the train system, in a country that views itself as the greatest, most modern, the most sophisticated in the world. How is it that we have such an inferior train system when trains are a lot easier to power on a green basis because they run on electricity?

I'm not even asking for asking for Japanese-level trains. Just give me like Italian-level trains and we would be way ahead of where we are right now, but that's going to require policy choices and investment. And if anybody says we shouldn't subsidize trains--think about just how many ways we subsidize driving which is among the most carbon intensive things we could be doing.