Candidates warn of ‘irreparable damage’ in marathon town hall but can’t agree on how aggressively to tackle problem

Democrats vying for president revealed a fundamental split over how aggressively the US should tackle climate change in a seven-hour town hall meeting on Wednesday.

Bernie Sanders painted an apocalyptic future wreaked by the climate crisis and pledged to wage war on the fossil fuel industry. A high-energy Elizabeth Warren urged optimism for building a better America and the former vice-president Joe Biden, who has a pitched a more moderate proposal, said he would push other nations to recommit to stronger action.

Sanders said without radical change the world will be uninhabitable. “The damage to the world will be irreparable,” the Vermont senator said, adding that he is proposing “the largest, most comprehensive climate plan presented by any presidential candidate in the history of the United States”.

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With many questions focused on what candidates would ask Americans to sacrifice, Elizabeth Warren pushed back on the framing. Asked if the government should tell people what kind of lightbulbs they can have, the Massachusetts senator quipped: “Oh come on, give me a break!”

“There are a lot of ways that we try to change our energy consumption and our pollution,” she said. “Some of it is with lightbulbs, some of it is on straws, some of it – dang – is on cheeseburgers.”

But most of the responsibility lies with industry, not individuals, she said, adding “this is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants us to talk about”.

Biden meanwhile pitched himself as the candidate who could lead negotiations with the diplomatic might of the US. He said his first step as president would be to call an international meeting to strengthen the Paris climate agreement.

“We should be organizing the world, demanding change, we need a diplomat-in-chief,” Biden said. “Look what’s happening now in the Amazon, what’s going on? Nothing.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Massive fires have burned through the Amazon rainforest in recent weeks. Photograph: Lucas Landau/Reuters

Biden, who critics say has one of the less progressive climate plans, also got grilled on his plans to attend a fundraiser hosted by the founder of a natural gas company. He claimed the supporter is not a corporate executive.

Where Biden would invest $1.7tn to fight climate change, Warren proposed $10tn and Sanders would put forward $16.3tn, setting them widely apart.

The Democrats faced questions on whether their proposals would ban fracking for natural gas, prohibit exports of oil, gas and coal, change nutritional guidelines to limit meat consumption and transition to all electric vehicles.

Their answers – and reactions to them – foreshadowed the fight ahead with conservatives and industry regardless of who becomes the next president.

Donald Trump in a thread on Twitter charged that Democrat plans “will raise your energy bill and prices at the pump”. The fossil fuels industry, through the oil trade group the American Petroleum Institute and the American Energy Alliance, said the plans would hurt poor Americans.

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“Tonight, while American families worry about making ends meet, the Democrats running for president will be working hard to outbid each other on who can raise electricity and gasoline prices the highest, and the fastest,” the alliance said in an emailed statement.

The event was perhaps the longest stretch of primetime television ever dedicated to climate change, held after the Democratic National Committee refused to sanction an official climate debate between candidates and amid unprecedented pressure from young activists and the Democratic voting base to tackle the climate crisis.

On Wednesday, a list of demands was released by a coalition of youth-led groups whose lodestar is Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager and activist who sparked a global wave of walkouts by school students over the climate crisis. Thunberg arrived in New York last week, after crossing the Atlantic in a solar-powered yacht for an upcoming UN climate summit.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bernie Sanders has pledged to put forward $16.3tn. Photograph: Cj Gunther/EPA

According to Yale University polling, the climate emergency is now the second most important voting issue for Democrats, behind healthcare. Among all voting Americans, nearly seven in 10 are worried about climate change, the highest ever recorded level of concern. There are strong bipartisan majorities in favour of setting pollution limits on industry, businesses, cars and trucks.

Donald Trump, who is dismantling rules aimed at lowering planet-warming gases, attacked the Democratic candidates for proposing unrealistic, costly plans. “The Democrats’ destructive “environmental” proposals will raise your energy bill and prices at the pump,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Don’t the Democrats care about fighting American poverty?”

Trump’s campaign quickly took the opportunity to post a clip of California senator Kamala Harris saying she would ban plastic straws alongside an ad for Trump-branded straws.

But some young conservatives have raised concerns that Republican intransigence over the climate crisis will cost the party a generation of voters. Recent Newsy-Ipsos polling found that 59% of millennial and Generation Z Republicans support the Green New Deal.

“There are a lot of young people who are conservative and believe in climate change … They will not vote for a Republican if they’re voting on this issue,” said Benjamin Backer, founder of the American Conservation Coalition, which proposes action on the climate crisis. “And I think that’s a problem with the lack of involvement from the Republican Party on this issue for the past 10 years.”