Tonight’s Presidential Debate: Will Candidates Address Climate Change?

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The rise in global warming pollution—in the form of carbon
dioxide emissions—is happening faster than expected. Tonight is the perfect
time for our
next president to address the need to cut emissions by two percent per year
and move to a clean energy and green job economy. People produced so many carbon-based pollutants in 2007 that
our atmosphere could soon fit under the “worst case scenario” category once
outlined by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.

The current concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide
(CO2) is the highest during the last 650,000 years, and probably during the
last 20 million years, according to the Global
Carbon Project. Carbon
dioxide emissions increased by 3 percent from 2006 to 2007, new numbers
considered surprising to many who thought an economic downturn would slow
energy consumption.

China is
the world’s greatest emitter, but the United States follows in second, the
Associated Press reported. Though some nations slightly decreased CO2 output,
the U.S. pumped out more in 2007.

With this newly released information detailing our
unsustainable fossil fuel use, will Barack Obama or John McCain address the
imperative to get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Watch the town
hall style debate tonight at 9 PM Eastern on any major broadcast network
and see if our next president addresses global warming.