When climate change is discussed, especially in the political sphere, it doesn’t take long for the word “existential” to start getting tossed around. This tends to frame the matter in the far-off yet-to-come—if we don’t act now, things will be bad later. But for many communities, especially those inhabited by people of color and Indigenous citizens, climate change is not an issue of the future. It is an issue right now.

In what simultaneously served as both the most pleasant surprise and the most familiar disappointment of Thursday’s Democratic debate, moderator Tim Alberta of Politico posed a fairly straightforward climate policy question: With the understanding that curbing all carbon emissions at this point will only stave off the worst effects of climate change, would the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination support the use of federal funds to relocate American families and businesses away from cities and towns made uninhabitable by environmental factors?



Alberta first tossed the question to Senator Amy Klobuchar, and in the span of 10 seconds, the presidential hopeful from Minnesota stumbled. “I very much hope we will not have to relocate entire cities, but we will probably have to relocate some individual residents,” Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar at least knew well enough to cite a sad viral video from the devastating Paradise fire and quote an Ojibwe saying, recounting how “great leaders make decisions not for this generation but seven generations from now.” For those who pay attention to such things, it’s worth noting that Klobuchar’s broken this line out before. Is it an Ojibwe saying? Or is it Iroquois? Or Seneca? Or is that beside the point when Klobuchar has yet to take a solid position on Enbridge’s Line 3 tar-sands oil pipeline that will cut through the land of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and snake within miles of three other tribal nations? Who’s to say?

Klobuchar wasn’t alone in her sidestepping of the relocation issue. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders—who in his first remarks during the debate went out of his way to critique the updated North American trade deal passed by the House for not staking out a position on climate change as it is affected by international trade—also offered a subpar response to Alberta’s question. Sanders attempted to turn the tables on the moderators, which, given the droll level of questioning in these affairs, is typically an easy task. But he fell into the same trap as Klobuchar, claiming that Alberta’s question “misses the mark,” because climate change “is not an issue of relocating people in towns. The issue now is whether we save the planet for our children and grandchildren.”