Four questions every candidate should answer on climate change

For The Hill’s Congress blog, I have a piece looking at the role climate change is playing in this year’s midterm elections. Unfortunately for the health of the American political debate, questions about climate change and what to do about it only scratch the surface regarding the complexities of the issues. With that in mind, I propose four questions that every candidate for political office should answer about climate change, addressing the science behind it, the threat it poses, how to handle international efforts to reduce the emissions causing it, and the methods we should be using here at home. Allowing candidates to further dodge the issue maybe benefit them, but it does voters no good:

As much as I—and other climate-change-conscious-voters—would love it if this were not a pressing and potentially catastrophic issue, that’s not the case. Climate change is coming. Asking candidates (as well as our elected representatives) serious questions about how they plan to tackle it is a duty not only to ourselves, but to future generations of Americans.

You can read the entire piece over at The Hill.

Tags: climate change, congress, 2014 elections, the hill