Pence refused to concede climate change is a manmade ‘existential threat’ during the vice-presidential debate

• Vice President Mike Pence side-stepped questions and made multiple false claims about climate change during Wednesday night’s vice-presidential debate.
• “With regard to climate change, the climate is changing, but the issue is what’s the cause and what do we do about it?” Pence said, rejecting established science.
• When asked directly whether he considers climate change an “existential threat,” Pence ignored the question and quickly pivoted to a different topic.
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Vice President Mike Pence side-stepped questions and made multiple false claims about climate change during Wednesday night’s vice-presidential debate. 

“With regard to climate change, the climate is changing, but the issue is what’s the cause and what do we do about it?” Pence said, rejecting established science about the causes of manmade climate change.

“President Trump has made it clear that we’re going to continue to listen to the science.”

During his September trip to California during the state’s devastating wildfires, Trump said, “I don’t think science knows” whether the climate is changing.

“It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch,” Trump told California’s secretary for natural resources during a roundtable. 

The Trump administration has loosened or eliminated at least 100 regulations designed to reduce fossil-fuel emissions and deal with climate change. 

Pence attacked Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, for supporting a Green New Deal and pledging to re-sign the Paris Agreement, which the Trump administration controversially abandoned in 2017. Pence argued both initiatives would "crush American jobs." 

When asked directly whether he considered climate change an "existential threat," Pence ignored the question and quickly pivoted to a different topic.

"The climate is changing. We'll follow the science," Pence said. "But once again, Sen. Harris is denying the fact that they're going to raise taxes."

Pence falsely claimed, too, that a Biden-Harris administration would ban hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, a controversial form of natural-gas and oil extraction.

During her presidential bid last year, Harris said she supported banning fracking, but Biden has rejected that position. Biden has repeatedly said that his administration wouldn't ban fracking, but would end additional drilling on federal land.

—Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 8, 2020