Comments
ELECTION 2024 - As families mourned the deaths of hundreds of people from Hurricane Helene and Floridians began to take stock of the damage done by Hurricane Milton on Thursday, climate advocates called on major news networks to hold a town hall focused on the growing threat of extreme weather—and demand answers from the two major presidential candidates regarding what they plan to do about it.
Campaigners with the Sunrise Movement in Florida and North Carolina said CNN, ABC, NBC, or CBS should host a "Hurricane Town Hall" with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump in the latter state before early voting starts there on October 17.
Manu Ivan, an 18-year-old Sunrise member from Orlando, Florida, noted that—as his group demanded—in the vice presidential debate earlier this month, CBS moderators asked Republican candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Democratic contender Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota how they would confront the climate emergency.
"We deserve the opportunity to hear from Harris and Trump about what they will do to take on Big Oil and fight for people like me who are scared about what our state will look like when I'm older," said Ivan.
Sunrise said the town hall would present an opportunity for questions about Trump's promise to oil executives earlier this year that he would swiftly unravel climate progress made by President Joe Biden and expand drilling if the industry donated $1 billion to his campaign.
Advocates also have concerns about Project 2025's proposal to dismantle the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service.
"Americans deserve to know the truth: Donald Trump sold out Asheville, North Carolina and plans to sell out the rest of us for his own political gain," said the group, referring to the city that faced devastating flooding from Hurricane Helene.
The group said the town hall would also allow media networks to "set the record straight on disaster response and fact-check Donald Trump's dangerous lies about the Biden-Harris disaster response," after the Republican nominee spread baseless claims that Harris spent Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding on housing for undocumented immigrants and that Biden ignored Republican-controlled states' calls for help.
"Media networks need to do their jobs and host a hurricane town hall," said Shiva Rajbhandari, a 20-year-old North Carolina student. "In just the last two weeks, millions of people have been affected and thousands have lost their homes, loved ones, and livelihoods. I'm sick of seeing death count headlines and pretending like this is just an act of God. The climate crisis is here, it's caused by Big Oil, and the American people deserve to know what our future president will do to keep us safe and hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its crimes against humanity."
Climate campaigners have expressed doubt that Harris would be a "climate president," following her promises at the presidential debate in September that she would allow fracking to continue and her comments boasting about the country's "largest increase in domestic oil production in history."
But advocates have said the prospect of pushing a Harris administration to act on the clear evidence of the climate emergency is preferable to pushing Trump and Vance, who have called the climate crisis a "hoax" and "weird science."
The Sunrise Movement on Thursday circulated an open letter to its supporters asking networks to host a hurricane town hall, to allow "Vice President Harris and former President Trump to explain to the American people what they will do to stop the climate crisis."
"Without bold climate action from the federal government, all of our communities risk being wiped away," the letter reads. "Our leaders must answer to those who have lost everything."
(Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams where this article was first published.)
