On the debate stage, Andrew Yang claimed that it was probably too late to avert the climate crisis, and we need to focus on moving people to higher ground. This flew in the face of candidacies like Jay Inslee and Elizabeth Warren, which assert that the climate crisis is a solvable problem that can be addressed by decisive American action and ingenuity. Even so, Yang’s climate plan doesn’t lack for ambition. It calls for massive geoengineering projects, reforestation, and a carbon tax and dividend among other things. These were all things that a damning Atlantic article frustratingly failed to mention. I am certainly sympathetic to the author’s line of reasoning. Even if Yang thinks that we are too late to stop climate change, he should have said something about his proposals to do something about it. As Elizabeth Warren so eloquently stated, it’s not your job to be the pessimist in the room during these debates. And his attempt to tie in UBI felt a bit forced and half-hearted. “Sure, our coastlines are going to be underwater, but at least you have 1,000 more dollars!”

But sometimes I wonder if Democrats are in denial about climate change almost as much as Republicans. While many Republicans don’t believe climate change will have very bad effects at all, many Democrats seem to believe that climate change will only have very bad effects if Republicans continue to oppose their agenda. The two outlooks combine to form a perspective that sets the American people up for disappointment. Like Yang said, the United States is only 15% of global emissions. It’s not guaranteed that we’ll be able to do anything about it. When this is taken with the fact that a lot of climate change is already “baked in” due to the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, the future looks pretty bleak even if the US rolls out the perfect climate plan.

Which it won’t. Bernie Sanders is fervently anti-nuclear, even when it means a rise in carbon emissions. Elizabeth Warren has failed to support a carbon tax, which is the simplest way to discourage carbon emissions. And even climate crusader Jay Inslee (though he backs conservation efforts) has not made concerted reforestation efforts part of his policy platform, even though trees are still the most effective form of reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. Is it wrong to expect that the world will fail to mitigate climate change’s worst effects? Surely Democrats need to be talking about a Plan B. How will we respond to a world that is 2 degrees Celsius hotter? If nothing else, I appreciate Yang’s answer for telling it like it is. He’s not promising the American people something that is mostly out of his control.

In short, I do think Yang’s climate answer was a mistake in that it failed to effectively communicate the values of the campaign. But I also think it’s a jumping-off point for an important conversation we need to be having.

–Cam