Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

Tonight’s presidential debate took place as wildfires rage in Nevada, Southern California, Oregon and Idaho. Louisiana is bracing for a possible hurricane. After a year of flooding and storms across the country, more than 10 percent of Americans no longer have home insurance as climate risks push the insurance industry out of vulnerable areas. Record heat waves have strained infrastructure and killed hundreds of Americans. For millions more, the ravages of climate change are already upon us.

These are all material woes—tragedies and health risks and inconveniences—that America’s two presidential candidates could use to connect with voters. Voters deserve a plan that addresses these issues. But during the debate, the climate conversation didn’t go much further than Donald Trump making occasional mentions of solar energy—warning that under Kamala Harris, the country would “go back to windmills and solar, where they’d need a whole desert to make any energy,” before adding, incongruously, “I’m a big fan of solar, by the way.” Harris, meanwhile, repeated her statement that she wouldn’t ban fracking. The moderators broached the subject, asking the two candidates, “What would you do to combat climate change?” Harris briefly mentioned that people are losing their homes and that insurance rates are rising because of extreme weather. And she insisted that “we can address this problem”—before talking about U.S. manufacturing and gas production reaching historic levels. Trump talked about tariffs on Mexican-made cars. Neither said what they would do to counter the threat of more chaotic weather.

Still, the near-total absence of climate conversation in the 2024 presidential race is divorced from the realities facing the next president. If Harris is serious about carrying on Joe Biden’s legacy, she will ultimately have to formulate a plan for what happens next, beyond implementing Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the biggest climate policy the country has ever seen. And Trump may not be worried about rising carbon emissions, but he will have to deal with the realities of climate change, whether he likes it or not. The next president will be a climate disaster president, and will likely be forced by circumstances to answer at least one climate change question. And at this point, it’s not just, “What would you do to combat climate change?” It’s, “How will you help Americans cope with its effects?”

At the moment, the American political conversation about how to address climate change is essentially at a standstill. Trump has promised at various rallies to “drill, baby, drill,” and has told oil executives that it would be a “deal” if they donated $1 billion to his campaign, given the money he would save them by rolling back taxes and environmental regulations. Harris, on the other hand, would almost certainly take at least as strong a stance on climate change as Biden, but her campaign team at least seems to have decided that these issues are not politically advantageous to bring up at live events. She has barely mentioned climate change, even though her platform has generally affirmed that she would promote environmental justice, protect public lands, and build on the IRA.

And yet this year alone, the United States has seen 20 disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage, part of a general upward trend in such devastating events. (In the 1980s, the country saw an average of fewer than four such events per year.) How the federal government plans to help communities devastated by storms, floods, and fires should now be a standard part of every debate conversation. Beyond disasters, the candidates might be asked about their plans to deal with the heat: Under the Biden administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration took steps to address the problem of workers dying in extreme heat for the first time. But the climate dangers facing all Americans go far beyond that, and will intensify over the next four years. What do the candidates have planned for them? What will happen to the ailing National Flood Insurance Program? How will firefighters, who are now routinely stretched beyond capacity, be supported? Climate chaos is an oncoming train, but there are levers to slow it down and buffer its impact. Harris’ official platform says she will build “resilience to climate disaster.” Neither Trump’s nor the GOP’s platform mentions the subject at all.

Whether either candidate would attempt to do anything to slow climate change itself is another question. Trump’s position is clear: He has already pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement and would likely do so again, blocking climate action on the international stage. Project 2025, a policy document closely associated with the Trump campaign, would dismantle federal climate science and weather forecasting departments, along with a long list of environmental policies and the mechanisms to enforce them.

Harris’ intentions are also clear: she would tackle climate change, though the details of how are vague. The U.S. recently became the world’s largest oil and gas producer, now drilling more oil than any other country in history. The country is essentially already drill-baby-drilling. This is a clear contradiction for American climate policy. What, if anything, would a Harris presidency do about it? She has already walked back her 2019 campaign promise to ban fracking, saying she would not do so if elected. (The comment, made after Trump attacked her position in Pennsylvania, a key fracking state, is one of her most definitive statements yet on anything climate-related.) She reiterated that stance during the debate, touting the country’s success as an oil producer, stressing the importance of relying on “diverse energy sources so we can become less dependent on foreign oil.”

Harris can certainly draw on the record of the Biden administration, which has passed the IRA and quietly issued updates on energy infrastructure policy, such as a recent update on solar permitting reform. But the IRA alone is not enough to meet U.S. emissions reduction goals or energy supply needs. Harris will certainly do something to further satisfy the climate policy moment, should she be elected president. But we don’t know what. Trump, meanwhile, would be a major setback for America’s climate future.

For at least some of the viewers watching tonight’s debate from gated Louisiana or burning Iowa or scorching Arizona, those questions are likely to matter most. Even if the climate crisis isn’t the top issue for most voters, it could still sway an election, according to a voter analysis of the 2020 presidential election results. And more than a third of American voters say climate is very important to them in this election. But this isn’t just a matter of how people vote in November. It’s a matter of how the next president will handle what’s coming, with greater force every year, to the country.