The Issue That Dare Not Speak Its Name

By JUSTIN GILLIS

 

 

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images - No mention of climate change: people gathered at the Ehsan Center in Los Angeles to watch the final presidential campaign debate.

 

A mountain of scientific evidence points to climate change as a serious risk for the human future. The Pentagon sees it as a threat to national security. Arctic sea ice hit a record low this summer. In some low-lying countries threatened by sea level rise, evacuation planning has already begun.

Yet the presidential debates are now over, and not once did climate change surface explicitly as an issue. This campaign is the first time that has happened since 1988, and environmental groups – and environmentally minded voters – are aghast.

“By ignoring climate change, both President Obama and Governor Romney are telling the rest of the world that they do not take it seriously, and that America cannot be expected to act with the intensity and urgency needed to avert catastrophe,” Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth Action, said in a statement. “Their silence prepares a future for our children and grandchildren in which we will face deeper droughts, fiercer forest fires and killer storms, messier spills and dirtier air. America deserves better.”


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