Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Thursday said he was just “telling it like it is” when he suggested at Wednesday’s debate that it was way too late to solve the climate crisis and that people should start looking for higher ground.

“My campaign is built around telling it like it is,” he said on CNN. “I wish I could, say, ‘hey, if we get our [act] together, were going to reverse climate change, everything is going to be as it is for us, for our kids,’ but that’s not what the science is saying.”

Mr. Yang had said at Wednesday’s debate that “we are 10 years too late.”

“We need to do everything we can to start moving the climate in the right direction, but we also need to start moving our people to higher ground,” he said. “And the best way to do that is to put economic resources into your hands so you can protect yourself and your families.”

On Thursday, Mr. Yang also characterized the debate as something of a show, saying most Americans could have predicted where attacks were going to come from and that “we’re like characters in a play and we have to follow it.”

“No candidate ever attacked someone below them in the polls,” he said. “It’s not like people were throwing rocks at Michael Bennet.

“I’m still making a very positive case [to] the American people,” Mr. Yang said. “I would relish [the] day when I become such a big deal that other candidates start throwing rocks at me.”

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