It's Official - Presidential Election Cycle Will Now End With No Mention Of Climate Policy At All

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CNN's Candy Crowley, the debate moderator, later told Slate there had been questions from the audience about climate change, but she thought the economy was the priority. "Climate change, I had that question," she was quoted as saying. "All you climate change people. We just, you know, again, we knew that the economy was still the main thing."

Ed. - Thanks, Candy. Thanks a lot. Nice job there. Glad you've been paying attention.

Her remarks set off a furious debate about the costs of climate change – including the $1bn price tag for each of more than a dozen extreme storms since 2011 and in the decades ahead. By Monday night, the debate about "climate silence" was in full voice. Al Gore weighed in, tweeting during the course of the debate: "Where is global warming in this debate? Climate change is an urgent foreign policy issue."

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Administration officials, including Obama, began to avoid the very mention of climate change threats, opting instead to frame the issue in terms of the economic opportunities created by clean energy industries such as solar and wind power. Romney, meanwhile, responded to the rise of the Tea Party by backtracking on his earlier support for climate action as governor of Massachusetts. He also called for phasing out subsidies for the wind industry.

By the time of the Republican convention, Romney was using climate change as a laugh line, a way of tagging Obama with grandiosity for his 2008 election promise to help heal the planet. Obama hit back in his convention speech, pledging to reduce the emissions which cause global warming. "Climate change is not a hoax," he said. "More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They are a threat to our children's future. And in this election you can do something about it." As a number of commentators noted at the time, it was Obama's most high-profile mention of climate change in months, if not years.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/23/us-president-debates-climate-change?newsfeed=true