Climate change: Trump says 'it's called weather', Obama says it 'will define this century'

Extract from ABC News

By North America correspondent Michael Vincent

Updated 18 minutes ago

Photo: Mr Trump and president Obama express vastly different views on climate change. (AFP/Reuters)

Climate change does not exist. It is the greatest challenge of our time. It is about transferring US wealth to developing countries. It is about saving the planet. This is the chasm between Democrats and Republicans — it is not even a debate.

"It's our wake-up call — the alarm bells are ringing and as long as I'm president, America will lead the world to meet this threat before it's too late," Mr Obama said, before heading to Alaska to spend time with Bear Grylls, eat bear-chewed Salmon and see disappearing glaciers.
For years, the US president has put climate change at the top of his agenda and that is even with the threat now posed by Islamic State.
"For all the immediate challenges that we gather to address this week — terrorism, instability, inequality, disease — there's one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate," he told the UN last year.

Three-quarters of Americans now accept climate change

Americans do not put it that high on their agenda ("the economy, stupid"), but three-quarters of the US population now agrees climate change is a problem.
When motivating people to vote is half the battle, Democrats have used it as a powerful campaign issue.
"The scientific community is virtually unanimous: climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and we have a moral responsibility," Bernie Sanders said in the first Democrat presidential debate.
Hillary Clinton pledged to have "500 million more solar panels installed by the end of my first term and enough renewable electricity to power every home in America within 10 years", when she secured the backing of the League of Conservation Voters earlier this month.
Republicans see climate change as a motivator for their electoral base as well, but from the opposite perspective.

Photo: Mr Carson and Mr Trump jointly account for between 40 per cent to 60 per cent of the vote in Republican polls. (Reuters: Evan Semon)

"This very expensive global warming bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice," Donald Trump tweeted last year.
Now that he is leading in the race to become the Republican presidential candidate, he has toned it down only a little.
"When I hear Obama say climate change is the number one problem, it's just madness," he told Fox News.
"It's called weather, [it] changes and you have storms and you have rain and you have beautiful days," Mr Trump said when rebutting Pope Francis's plea for action on climate change to the American people.
The other front runner, Dr Ben Carson, has a similar view.
"[At] any point in time, temperatures are going up or temperatures are going down. Of course that's happening," he said.
"When that stops happening, that's when we're in big trouble."
He also said he did not want it to be political — but Americans should take care of the environment.
Mr Carson and Mr Trump jointly account for between 40 per cent to 60 per cent of the vote in polls of Republican voters.

'It's not science, it's religion'

"Climate change is not science, it's religion," Ted Cruz told conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck.
Mr Cruz also happens to be the chairman of the senate subcommittee on space, science and competitiveness.
To get another sense of how low down the list of issues this is for Republicans — it has only come up once at their four debates so far.
"So we are not going to destroy our economy. We are not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate," Marco Rubio said, during that debate.

Video: Climate change clashes in US politics (ABC News)

Some believe he will eventually get the nomination.
The US National Public Radio kept a checklist of the candidate's comments.
Most Republican presidential candidates say the climate is changing, but it is not man-made or the extent to which it is man-made is not clear.
Just six of the remaining 14 candidates have called for some form of action. None have said they would explicitly take action if elected or offered specific proposals to reduce emissions.

Obama's climate measures 'hard to reverse'

"Well if I were an international observer I would be concerned about that, but I think people following the US closely realise that the measures the president is taking now are ones that would be extraordinarily hard to reverse under even a conservative government," Nigel Purvis, former US climate change negotiator to president Bill Clinton, president George W Bush and presidential candidate Barack Obama, said.
"Just as the Republican Congress has been vowing now, for seven to eight years, to undo the president's signature health care law and hasn't been able to do so. I think that's the case in the future on climate change as well."
But it is an obvious question: If the next president is opposed to the measures Mr Obama is currently proposing, why would they, along with the Republican-controlled Congress, not attempt to repeal those measures?

It's very difficult to get anything done in Washington and sometimes that's a bad thing. But it could be a good thing in this case.

Nigel Purvis

"The direction of travel is clear, we're taking progressive action to decarbonise our economy," Mr Purvis said.
"I imagine that a Republican president would take the foot off of the accelerator and that we would move more slowly, but it would be extraordinarily more difficult given what the Supreme Court has said our laws require us to act, and given public concern about climate change for a Republican president to completely undo what President Obama has put in place.
"Look, elections matter and absolutely with a climate champion in the White House, America will do more, faster and better than under an administration that's questioning the science or being captive to special interests in the fossil fuel industry.
"But that said, the direction of travel for the United States is clear. We have already reduced our reliance on coal for electricity generation substantially.
"Those trends are being driven by economics and public health as much as they are by concerns about global climate change.
"The US Supreme Court has held that under our current law our president has an obligation to act on climate change, and in order to pull back from new climate action, congress and the president would need to change that law.

"Now it's very difficult to get anything done in Washington and sometimes that's a bad thing. But it could be a good thing in this case," he said.