Just need to complain about the media. Specifically a cnn story today entitled "climate crisis" which describes the plight of 25% of the world's population living in high water stressed countries. It then goes on to note the vast majority of these places suffering unheard of and unanticipated water stress. You then find out that 13 of the 16 countries so listed are located in northern Africa and the middle east. Or in other words the 45 degree upward angle of poulation in northern Africa over the last 60 years has nothing to do with water stress in the most notorious desert landscapes on earth, it's actually climate change. Hell, even if it is it's so stupid to make that argument to people who already think most climate professionals are only out to justify their income. Of course, this is from cnn not a press release of concerned scientists, but that just makes the whole issue seem even more manufactured. Again - stop with the end of the world talk, it isn't going to convert one more adult. And if 2030 is the real deadline where the world falls apart then why try to program the kids so hard?

 As a practical consideration, america can only be a global leader in comabting climate change if we remain a global leader period. Sacrificing american interests in a good faith effort to encourage other nations to do the same could easily make us an example of why countries shouldnt pursue such agendas. Even more practical should be the understanding that imposing burdensome regulations, or enacting ANY trying agenda, without the overwhelming support of the population will encourage politicians to score points attacking it. The worst approach is to engage in a global treaty, then back out the second we have a new election. 

 So my advice to everybody who is convinced there is a coming global catastrophe which threatens humanity is to stop expecting anybody else to bear the cost of your fear. Stop trying to impress people with the dire predictions of disaster. Stop trying to convince people that the weather was somehow not terrible at times in the past. If think we shouldnt burn coal for power, create the effective alternative. Maybe support the public control of utilities, and thus remove the profit motive which stands against all regulations. More than anything remember this, as an american, most of us were raised not to surrender to terrorism, and your doomsday scenarios(which all require us to sacrifice to prevent) come of as blatant attempts to make nebulous fears motivate us to surrender to your experiments. Maybe if you were just the tiniest bit skeptical of the constant worst case scenarios being pushed you would be more relatable.

 I disagree, at least about the global warming statement, I am on the fence about the role of government still. I think if we look at some basic elements of the situation we can answer a few of your concerns. First, global warming has been a scientific issue from well before al gore made a movie about it, simple logic should tell you that a powerpoint presentation does not recieve thar kind of marketing and attention if nobody already cares about the topic. Additionally, reliable global temperature data probably hasnt existed until the 60s, I havent checked, but figure good gauges cant have been around for more than a century and global politics would have discouraged that level of cooperation. I bet the climate fanatics agree with you about gore though. I am sure they wish their message didnt have to come from a guy whose mansion uses more energy than a hundred normal people. Further, I disagree that the free market is the best way, or any way, to accomplish clean energy goals. Left unregulated their is zero financial motivation to transition to renewable energy. The fact is that no matter how much someone wants clean energy, they will still buy what is for sale, especially if the providers are going to make it costly to install solar panels, and governments and HOAs make it illegal to install wind generators, and battery costs are prohibitive anyway, severely limiting the utility of such devices. The real revolution is energy efficiency. LED bulbs, and improved weather insulation technologies for houses make huge differences and hybrid engine tech should be the standard for all new cars, since they want $30,000 anyway. To close, I point to your own advice in support of my belief that there is no free market motivation for clean energy, just a desire for more money in our pockets, which is the entire reason why captalism is an inherently immoral system divorced from any societal objectives beyond the making and spending of money. But I agree with the notion that since we as a society are ruled by capitalism, we have an obligation as moral individuals to not arbitrarily impose negative conditions on our society which already requires a certain number of poor people to support the wealth building of others, and increasing the cost of one of the 3 largest bills most people have, without measurable benefit of any kind, is the same as telling everyone in the country they will now make 50 cents an hour less, or more if they dont work full time.

 Predebate there are lots of circumstances to balance. The main conflict is between the ideals of pure capitalism and the fears of global catastrophe.  While there is an argument to made that the epa has been used as a political weapon, one could also ask who stands to make the most money during environmental upheaval, for now we will assume noble intent from both sides of the argument. The EPAs main problem is its own doomsday scenarios. The extreme predictions that get tossed around have little effect on most people. Capitalism does not concern itself with anything except cost and gain. The current attitude of moral surrender to capitalist ideals is already made clear in the way we argue over the value of food stamps, how unwilling we are to provide healthcare without cost, or housing of any kind. So how surprising is it that huge numbers of people are completely unwilling to sacrifice anything to save the people on the coasts, or the communities in the midwest, or anyone anywhere? Without the anchor of profit motivated behaviour, we could easily adopt any form of environmental reform with no danger of ruined lives. The debate over a universal basic income suddenly applies to global warming, though I stand by my comments that money is not the solution to the perceived issues. As long as we are going to allow people to die and suffer because they are poor we have ZERO business adopting any policies that increase the number of people put in those situations. If the world burns up like a match makes no difference to the moral obligation of society to not victimize its citizens arbitrarily. So we either all keep fighting over dollars or we work together in the fields, and the world may or may not go to hell as a result.  The last bit is a perfectly human response to undeserved praise and reward. The fact is nobody wants to put up with a bunch of smug aholes walking around claiming all the credit for our continued existence. Lol.

The "For the Motion" panel mentioned a little about the struggles Germany has had from an over-reliance on solar for their high energy prices.  Carl Pope mentioned "Germany adopted a very inflexible and poorly designed way of encouraging solar."  Is the inflexible German plan to encourage solar what you are referring to?

Why is it ALL about the dragging anchors of the US, Canada, and Australia?  What does per capita CO2 emissions have to do with solving GLOBAL climate change besides shifting blame to other countries as the affects of climate change get worse?  Nobody in Bangladesh gives a crap how clean the air is in Stockholm.  Why not, in the words of Secretary McConnell, Sweden stops "breaking their arms from patting themselves on the back" and invest in CCUS for outdated coal power plants in developing countries to truly effect global change?

I agree.  But my question is...What about International collaboration to develop CCUS techonology?!?The US might not need all of the "dirty old coal plants" currently operating and still be a global leader in CCUS technology.  Can't we close some of the outdated plants to meet the Clean Power Plan mandate and keep the rest of the plants open for R&D of CCUS?  Can't international dirty old coal plants contribute to the CCUS R&D in the US similar to scientific international collaboration works to develop new technology such as medicine?  I'm curious to know more information about how R&D and global deployment of  catalytic converters  happened.    

Whether or not the EPA's plan of action is the most economic way of tackling climate change is up for debate.  What their plan *is* doing is helping the US act as a leader in the global effort to combat climate change.  This is perhaps the most important role we have to play at this moment in time.

Global warming is a scare tactic, if it were proven science I would believe we should deal with it gradually but where were the scientists before the Al Gore campaign saying it's an issue? Why since Gore has it been a hot topic political issue? The same guy who has made millions and continues to be a hypocrite.  It just another way for govt to control how we live and go about our own lives.  We need to wake up and see that govt is a business without competition, a monopoly using propaganda to take more money and more power away from us until we are at the point of desperation and have to beg on our knees to the elite.  Clean energy is what people want and what I want, the greatest engine to accomplish that is through the free market by competition and incentives, until then let us use what is most available to us and lower the prices of gas to help our country's transportation and pockets 

Arguments of the team arguing for the motion are typical of the opposition to regulation of the energy sector, specifically in the way they avoid and obscure the real issue at hand. For example, the "For" team argued that most CO2 emissions are coming from countries like India and China and that we cannot expect the rest of the world, especially the developing countries, to be able to adopt cleaner technologies and bear the associated costs. However, for some reason the debaters did not mention that one the main reasons we see countries like India and China emit huge amounts of CO2 is not because they are unable or unwilling to adopt cleaner technologies (although surely this is also a major factor) but because our huge corporations, taking advantage of de-regulation and free market, are exporting their dirtiest production there, precisely because in those countries environmental regulation is much more advantageous to their business. Let us not kid ourselves - the reason there is such big opposition to environmental regulation is because our energy sector is focused on maximizing shareholder profits. Without strict regulation, the invisible hand of the market will do its magic to lead to an environmental disaster. The "For" team also did not talk about how many millions of jobs, communities, new infrastructures, technologies, etc. cleaner initiatives can actually create. Unfortunately, neither did the "Against" team. I would have liked to hear these numbers...speaking of cost-benefit analysis. My second point is that the "For" team insisted that regulation will prevent the high-emission energy sector from coming up with better and cleaner technologies. I beg to differ. It is precisely because of regulation that new technologies will be developed. Without regulation no profit-making business will find it viable to invest huge amounts of money into renewables or other, cleaner technologies. If regulation is put in place, companies will be forced to compete and to invest in R&D to come up with better, cleaner solutions as a matter of survival. At the moment, their survival depends on proving to their shareholders that they can maintain a 100% reserve-replacement ratio - bad news for the environment. Every economist knows that free, deregulated market cannot be relied upon to provide public goods, or so-called positive externalities, such as clean air, because the whole premise goes against their main reason for existence which is maximizing shareholder value. Thirdly, there was an argument that this is not EPA's job, that business will be affected and assets will have to be retired prematurely. I tend to agree with the "Against" team that EPA's main focus should be going after the polluters. This IS EPA's job. Surely, their business will be affected, but why is it that today it is us, the general public, that is affected and has to bear the polluters' costs? Isn't it logical that the polluter has to pay for the pollution it produces? Legal talk, discussions on whether it is unconstitutional abuse of power is obscuring the matter at hand. At the end of the day, the ultimate cost of not reducing CO2 emissions is the health of our entire planet. I think the cost-benefit analysis is pretty clear.

The argument that these regulations can only yield less than one percent remission of the global CO2 emissions is morally bancrupt. The same is said here in Sweden and our TOTAL CO2 emissions are less than 0.1 percent of the global. Does that mean we can turn a blind eye and give the rest of the world our middle finger? The key word here is "per capita", not once used in this debate. The USA has horrible per capita emissions. (In fact just about any environmental issue is worse than Sweden´s  and the USA bosts about x4 times as much CO2 per capita. Because WE REGULATE.)And this constant talk about "American leadership" doesn´t land well when, from a european perspective, it´s all about dragging the anchors of the US, Canada and Australia along for something to ever happen.

I just joined this board and am shocked by the limited perspective of the suggested research. I'd recommend that serious consideration be accorded the views of Dr. William Happer (Princeton) on the maturity of activist climate science, Dr. Richard Lindzen (MIT) on the characterization of feedbacks by the IPCC, Dr. Judith Curry's testimony on climate science before Congress, and the reporting about how expensive the transition to renewables has become for consumers in Great Britain and Germany by the GWPF.org. The scientific debate didn't end because Al Gore said so. Now that our middle class has become aware that their economic prospects are to be sacrificed on the green cross, it has just begun. Meanwhile China, India, Turkey and many others who are taking our manufacturing jobs are building a coal fired power plant a week, so the environment is not being saved, but the West's high value manufacturing jobs are all at risk. I may be a 1%er, but I think serving the greatest good for the greatest number should include our middle class, all 100 million of whom are voters. Good subject for a full ranging debate...   

I've followed this debate closely since 1988. Catastrophic climate change is the biggest hoax and scam in history. The Clean Power Plan is simply a wealth redistribution plan--both domestic and international.

The debate is all fine and good, but the really telling thing is the way the coal industry has lied, cheated, made commitments and not kept them.  I listen to what they say in the debate, but I don't know why I bother.  A debate presupposes real facts and some kind of honesty, and what we get more and more is spin, misleading statements and outright lies from any source of money-making operations - and those operations are increasingly owned and paying for more of the same, a trend that is antithetical to democracy and the very idea of these debates.

The Clean Power Plan leaves it to states and markets to decide the best ways to meet emissions targets, whether with solar, storage, or other approaches.

That won't solve the problem."

Study after study has shown that Clean Power Plan can be met with minimal impact on electric reliability and cost. In fact, its year 2030 emissions are already close to being met, while power prices have barely budged.

Why aren't the "against" side arguing that higher regulation on coal would result in less coal, more solar, and thus more research into energy storage? Once we have harnessed energy storage, solar will CLEARLY be the most cost effective option.

r we still debating about climate change..

Hi Elena -- Thank you for letting us know about your voting experience. Please try again now. The error has been fixed. We hope you join us tonight for the live debate right here on this page at 6PM ET.  Thanks!

The real debate here is not whether climate change exists.  No one says it doesn't; that's a strawman argument.  The debate is about the alarmist agenda, which says: (1) Climate change will or may be catastrophic; (2) Human activity is mostly to blame; (3) We can solve the problem by such means as reducing our energy use; and most especially (4) There are no easier, cheaper, and faster means we can use to solve the problem (for instance, https://reason.com/archives/1997/11/01/climate-controls ).All four of these propositions are at least debatable, and I don't believe any of them.  What's more, I believe a real catastrophe (economic collapse, possibly leading to the collapse of civilization and the death of billions of humans) is very likely to result if the alarmists continue to get their way.  I also believe that at least the leaders of the green movement *want* exactly that catastrophe to take place, as quoted on http://green-agenda.com .Even barring catastrophe, though, EPA's policies have a huge cost in human lives.  In particular, its gas mileage requirements force people into smaller cars where thousands die each year in accidents they would have survived.  And there's no upside, because our air is clean enough already.  It's time to shut the EPA down.

I received this email today. and have been asked to vote.  I voted.  But then I was informed I couldn't vote until after the debate which doesn't happen until 7 September.  This site is supposed to be about intelligence, but it doesn't seem all that smart to me.  So I lied.,  I said I had watched the debate online.  The computer didn't know the difference.It was the only way to vote on a subject about which I am passionate.  I think you ought to change your policy.  I don't need to hear a debate to know that climate change is the most crucial issue of our time and that any attempt to prevent action to address it in the strongest possible way is profoundly immoral.

Why does the site ask for ouur pre-debate vote and then prohibit us fromvoting before watching a debate that has not even been held yet?

Hi Katie,You will be able to watch the debate live on this page on 9/7 at 6pm EST.

Hi - is this available via stream?  How do we get the information?