New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has called out the “dark money machine” that is attacking him through the media over his investigation into whether ExxonMobil committed fraud by deceiving its shareholders and the public about climate change.

Schneiderman launched his probe into ExxonMobil in November 2015 after investigations by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times found that Exxon officials knew about the science of climate change decades ago but continued to fund climate denial groups for many years. California Attorney General Kamala Harris and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey have since followed suit and also launched investigations of Exxon.

During an October 19 forum on public integrity, Schneiderman explained that fossil fuel front groups are “directing a disinformation campaign aimed at bolstering Exxon’s case,” Politico reported. Schneiderman specifically called out Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the Heritage Foundation, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), all of which are conservative organizations that have been heavily funded by fossil fuel industry interests, including Exxon. He also identified how these and other front groups pursue a media strategy, stating that they seemed to have “pulled a lever on the dark money machine,” and “60 or 70 op-ed columns or editorials” appeared attacking Schneiderman’s investigation. He added: “The challenge is, in most media markets in the country, all people have heard is the other side of the argument because [the conservative groups’] infrastructure is so remarkable.”

Indeed, several of the nation's most widely read newspapers have provided a platform for fossil fuel front groups to deceptively defend Exxon. As of September 1, The Wall Street Journal had published 21 opinion pieces in less than a year criticizing government entities for investigating Exxon, including an op-ed written by CEI lawyers and a column that falsely claimed AFP has “never received a dime from Exxon.” The Washington Post also published an op-ed by officials from CEI, syndicated columns by George Will and Robert Samuelson, and a letter by the Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. von Spakovsky, all of which falsely claimed that the attorneys generals’ investigations violate Exxon’s First Amendment rights. And contributors at USA Today and Bloomberg View also peddled the false claim that the attorneys general are threatening Exxon’s right to free speech. (As Schneiderman noted, “The First Amendment is not designed to protect three-card monte dealers. … You can’t commit fraud and argue, ‘Oh, I’m exercising my First Amendment rights.'”)

Other conservative media outlets have also provided space for CEI and the Heritage Foundation to defend Exxon and other oil companies that may have purposely misled the public on climate change to protect their profits, including the National Review, Townhall, and The Washington Times (on many occasions).

Image at the top from Flickr user Azi Paybarah with a Creative Commons license.

There were roughly 190 questions (including follow-ups) asked to the candidates during the presidential and vice presidential debates this year, and not one of them was about climate change. This stunning media failure has rightly drawn the attention of journalists, environmental groups, and at least one U.S. senator.

But it’s also important to recognize that the climate silence we have witnessed on the national stage is not unique to the presidential election. Media Matters’ debate scorecard is tracking climate change questions in 18 of the most closely contested Senate and governors’ races across the country, and the results so far are troubling. We’ve found that just eight of the 37 debates held in these races through October 20 included questions about climate change. That's 22 percent.

Climate change was not addressed in the Senate debate or any of the three governors’ debates in North Carolina, a state that was recently devastated by Hurricane Matthew, which featured record-breaking rainfall and flooding that scientists have linked to global warming. It was also ignored in the Senate debate in Arizona, which was recently identified as the western state that is most at risk from increased wildfires as a result of climate change, and in both governors’ debates in West Virginia, which suffered through flooding over the summer that was made worse by global warming.

There have also been zero climate change questions in Senate or governors’ debates in Missouri, Montana, and Nevada, which are all among the states that are least prepared to deal with emerging climate-related threats, according to a report card produced by Climate Central and ICF International.

The eight debates that have included climate change questions occurred in seven states: Florida (Senate), Indiana (Senate), New Hampshire (Senate), Ohio (Senate), Pennsylvania (Senate), Wisconsin (Senate), and Vermont (in two debates for governor).

In more than half of these states, the climate questions were asked because voters spoke up and requested them. In Wisconsin, the climate question was submitted by a citizen via Twitter. In Vermont, the moderator asked a climate question submitted by a voter on Facebook. In Ohio, an audience member asked the climate question. And in Indiana, the climate question, while flawed, was submitted by a voter to the Indiana Debate Commission.

The lesson from both the presidential debates and these Senate and governors’ debates is clear: If voters want to hear about climate change, they’ll need to continue to press moderators to ask about it and continue to take advantage of opportunities to make their voices heard.

Presidential debate season is officially over, and critical policy questions that directly impact millions of Americans remain unasked just 19 days before the election.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump met last night in Las Vegas, Nevada for the final presidential debate, which was likely the last chance for the candidates to discuss specific policy issues face-to-face before November 8. Just as in the previous two presidential debates this year, moderator Chris Wallace chose to focus questions on a handful of familiar topics. Even within the context of six pre-announced debate topics, Wallace could have asked questions on major policy issues that deserve thoughtful and substantive prime-time discussion from the presidential candidates, like affordable health care, climate change, or tax plans.

But that didn’t happen. When debate discussions did manage to turn to policy specifics on critical topics like reproductive rights or gun violence prevention, Wallace didn’t ask necessary follow-up questions or offer clarifications on the facts. (Prior to the debate, Wallace announced his intention to be a debate timekeeper rather than fact-checker.)

All in all, last night’s debate largely covered the same ground as the previous two debates, both in topics discussed and in tone. If any of the three debates had focused more aggressively on what’s truly at stake -- what voters have said they wanted asked, what people actually believe is most important for their own families and communities -- the questions in this debate cycle would have looked very different. And the answers could speak for themselves.

Let’s explore just how hard the moderators dropped the ball.

This year, the United States began the process of resettling its first climate refugees. A bipartisan group of top military experts warned that climate change presents a “strategically-significant risk to U.S. national security and international security.” While Clinton wants to build on President Obama’s climate change accomplishments, Trump wants to “cancel” the historic Paris climate agreement, “rescind” the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan, and dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency -- and he’s even called global warming a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

Moderators did not ask a single question about the effects of climate change in any of the three presidential debates or the vice presidential debate.

Several tragic mass shootings -- including the single deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, at the LGBT nightclub Pulse in Orlando, FL, in June -- have shaken the nation since the beginning of the election season. Gun deaths in the United States, both in instances of mass shootings and in more common day-to-day violence, vastly outnumber gun deaths in other Western democracies -- so much so that the American Medical Association has declared gun violence a public health crisis. And Americans are overwhelmingly ready for lawmakers to take action. Seventy-two percent of voters say gun policy is “very important” in determining their vote this year, and an astonishing 90 percent of voters -- representing both Democrats and Republicans -- think that strengthening background check requirements for firearm purchases is a good place to start, as does Clinton. Trump recently told the National Rifle Association -- which has endorsed him  -- that he opposes expanding background checks. 

Moderators failed to ask a single question about specific policies for gun violence prevention in the first two presidential debates, and they failed to ask a question about background check policies specifically in any debate. In the final debate, Wallace asked about gun policies in the context of the Supreme Court’s 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision about the scope of the Second Amendment, but he failed to follow up when Trump skirted questions about the case and about his specific positions on several gun policies like his opposition to an assault weapons ban and his oft-repeated false claim that "gun-free" zones are responsible for public mass shootings. The entire exchange lasted just under five minutes.

Though seven in 10 Americans support legal abortion and one in three American women report having had an abortion procedure, states have enacted 288 anti-choice laws since 2010. These laws are creating a crisis by preventing women from low-income families -- many already parents who are struggling to keep families afloat -- from receiving the health care services they need. Some evidence even suggests greater numbers of women are contemplating dangerous self-induced abortions due to a lack of access to care. Trump has espoused support for these types of restrictive laws, and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R), wants to “send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history.”

But moderators did not ask a question about the candidates’ stances on reproductive rights until the final debate -- when Chris Wallace asked about Roe v. Wade. Again, Trump repeatedly lied about abortion policy, and the misinformation was left hanging as Wallace pivoted to a new topic after about five minutes of discussion.

How about tax policies? Tax rates are a critical issue that directly affect all Americans, and the candidates’ respective tax policy proposals could not differ more. Clinton’s plan would benefit low- and middle-income families most and hike tax rates only for the wealthiest earners and for corporations. Trump’s plan has been called “a multitrillion-dollar gift to the rich” that “screws the middle class,” and has been panned even by conservative economists and The Wall Street Journal. One analysis concluded that Clinton’s plan  “trims deficits,” while Trump’s plan could add $6.2 trillion to the national debt. These numbers directly impact  the short-term and long-term financial health of families and communities, and 84 percent of voters say the economy is “very important” in deciding their vote in 2016.

Substantive questions about the candidates’ specific tax plans were missing from the debates, though Trump still managed to lie about his tax proposals on several occasions. When the candidates mentioned their tax plans briefly in the final debate when asked about the economy, Wallace again lived up to his promise not to fact-check.

A record number of anti-LGBT bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year, and LGBT students face significantly more violence than their peers, but the debates did not include a single question about policy positions related to LGBT equality.

About 70 percent of today’s college graduates leave school with student loans, and more than 43 million Americans currently have student debt. This economic squeeze is changing how Americans plan their families, buy homes, and spend their money. Clinton has responded by making college affordability a signature issue of her campaign, while Trump’s newly described plan could “explode the student debt crisis.” Neither candidate was asked to address this issue either.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world -- we account for 5 percent of the world’s population but a whopping 25 percent of the world’s prison population. Inmate organizers recently launched what could be the nation’s largest prison strike to draw attention to deplorable prison conditions. The majority of Americans want to see changes to a federal prison system they believe is “too large, too expensive, and too often incarcerating the wrong people.” Moderators didn’t ask about criminal justice reform policies at all.

The presidential debates instead largely focused on statements made on the campaign trail, whichever offensive comments Trump had made most recently, and -- again, always -- Hillary Clinton’s email use as secretary of state. Viewers might now  know a lot about these topics  -- or at least what each candidate has to say about them -- while still having very little information on the candidates’ starkly contrasting policy positions on issues with direct and immediate consequences to citizens’ daily lives.

Americans relied on moderators to raise the questions they think about every day, to help them understand how the next president can help ensure that their families are safe, secure, and set up to thrive. It’s a shame the debates did not deliver. 

In an October 19 editorial, USA Today criticized the “powerful fossil fuel lobby” for standing in the way of addressing climate change by “underwrit[ing] organizations that challenge the science and confuse the public.” Yet at the same time, USA Today provided a forum for precisely that sort of climate confusion by publishing its editorial alongside a falsehood-filled op-ed by the head of a fossil fuel industry front group.

In its editorial, which expressed dismay at the lack of climate change discussion in the presidential debates, USA Today cited fossil fuel industry front groups as one of the “obstacles” to addressing climate change:

[A]s with pension promises to public employees, today’s politicians will be long gone when the worst effects manifest themselves. The powerful fossil fuel lobby resists change; it underwrites organizations that challenge the science and confuse the public. And no individual city, state or nation can solve the climate problem; that will take a global effort in which individual countries have economic incentives to cheat on their emissions-reduction pledges.

Given all these obstacles, the progress of the past year has been remarkable.

But as is often the case, USA Today published this editorial -- which it describes as “our view” -- alongside an “opposing view,” a practice that has frequently resulted in USA Today publishing scientifically inaccurate claims about climate science that could confuse its readers. And this instance was no different.

In this case, the “opposing view” was written by Alex Epstein, whom USA Today identified as “president and founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, a for-profit think tank that has clients in the fossil fuel industry.” That disclosure of Epstein’s fossil fuel ties is commendable, but it does not excuse publishing an op-ed containing false claims about climate science.

In the op-ed, Epstein claimed that political candidates who “think carefully about the magnitude of man-made warming and compare it with the unique benefits of fossil fuels” will conclude that “man-made warming is mild and manageable, not runaway and catastrophic.”

But Epstein’s claim that global warming is “mild and manageable” directly contradicts the findings of the world’s leading climate scientists. For example, NASA says that “small changes in temperature correspond to enormous changes in the environment,” and notes that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that “the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time." Similarly, the National Climate Assessment states that climate change impacts “are expected to become increasingly disruptive across the nation throughout this century and beyond,” and that there is “mounting evidence that harm to the nation will increase substantially in the future unless global emissions of heat-trapping gases are greatly reduced.”

According to Epstein, one reason that the “unique benefits” of fossil fuels outweigh their impact on the climate is that wind and solar energy are “expensive.” But that’s also not true, particularly for wind. As Fortune magazine recently reported, a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance found:

Electricity generated by large wind farms is now cheap enough in many places around the world to compete effectively with electricity generated by coal and natural gas.

At the same time, solar panel farms aren’t quite low cost enough to be as competitive with fossil fuels as wind energy is. Still, the cost of electricity generated by solar panels has also come down significantly this year.

The Bloomberg New Energy Finance report further stated that wind and solar will “become the cheapest ways of producing electricity in many countries during the 2020s and in most of the world in the 2030s.” And analyses from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and investment banking firm Lazard show that wind energy is already the cheapest source of electricity in some parts of the country.

Epstein also peddled the myth that “only the fossil fuel industry” can rescue poor people around the world from “energy poverty.” The truth is that fossil fuels are not economically viable in most of the communities that suffer from a lack of electricity, and experts say distributed renewable energy sources are often a more effective way to lift the world's poor out of energy poverty.

The USA Today editorial board is correct when it writes, “Aside from the possibility that mankind will blow itself up, no issue is more important to the future of the planet than global warming.” And it's right when it pinpoints climate science denial by fossil fuel front groups as a major roadblock to dealing with the climate crisis.

The question, then, is an obvious one: Why does USA Today continue to provide a forum for these front groups to confuse the public about climate change?

In past elections, the San Antonio Express-News has endorsed House Science Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) because of his “undeniably conservative credentials.” But this year, the newspaper is refusing to endorse Smith, citing his “bullying on the issue of climate change” as behavior that “should concern all Americans.”

Smith has wrongly alleged that attorneys general investigations into ExxonMobil’s climate change deception threaten Exxon’s First Amendment rights, when in fact, as the Express-News noted, “The issue is fraud -- alleged at a state level -- and whether the corporate giant withheld information from shareholders and others.” Smith and other Republican members of the House Science Committee responded to the Exxon investigations by demanding documents from attorneys general and environmentally focused organizations, which drew criticism from legal scholars, and Smith recently expanded his subpoena campaign to include a separate investigation of Exxon by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Express-News also noted that Smith has sought to “chill” scientific inquiry by “threaten[ing] the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], Kathryn Sullivan, with criminal charges if she didn’t release emails from scientists about a certain climate change study.” Smith baselessly accused NOAA of manipulating temperature records to show a warming trend, when in reality, NOAA routinely makes adjustments to historical temperature records that are peer-reviewed and necessary to account for changes to measuring instruments and other factors.

Smith has accepted over $770,000 in career campaign contributions from the oil and gas and electric utility industries, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. He is being challenged for his congressional seat by Democrat Tom Wakely.

From the San Antonio Express-News editorial, which appeared in the newspaper’s print edition on October 18:

In elections past, we have supported U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith’s bids for re-election.

We no longer can. We offer no recommendation in this race. Smith is being challenged by Democrat Thomas Wakely and by Libertarian and Green candidates as well.

We’ve argued that Smith’s undeniably conservative credentials have been a good fit for the 21st Congressional District. However, Smith’s actions have developed more transparently this last term into an issue that goes beyond the boundaries of his district.

A particular issue is his abuse of his position as chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Specifically, it is his bullying on the issue of climate change that should concern all Americans.

[...]

Smith issued subpoenas on the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general, environmental groups, philanthropies and an attorney after the states began investigating Exxon Mobil over allegations the company buried its own global warming research in the 1970s.

The issue is fraud — alleged at a state level — and whether the corporate giant withheld information from shareholders and others. Think Big Tobacco, which had early knowledge of the cancer dangers of its products. Smith has contended it is a First Amendment issue, the right of a company to speak its mind.

[...]

Thoughtful action is what the public has been due from Smith. But last year Smith threatened the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Kathryn Sullivan, with criminal charges if she didn’t release emails from scientists about a certain climate change study. That study refuted gospel by deniers that global warming slowed between 1998 and 2012.

Smith said he was shielding scientific inquiry. But the real effect would be to chill such efforts.

The Bloomberg View editorial board expressed bewilderment and concern that climate change has been “conspicuously absent” from the presidential debates so far this year, and called on Fox News host Chris Wallace to “make room for climate change” when he moderates the third and final presidential debate on October 19.

In an October 18 editorial headlined, “The Missing Climate Change Debate,” Bloomberg said that it is “difficult to comprehend and harder to justify” that climate change did not come up in the earlier presidential debates and is not among the topics Wallace selected for the final presidential debate. The editorial board pointed to the fact that “President Barack Obama has embarked on one climate initiative after another” and that “the past two years have been the hottest on record.” Bloomberg further noted that the approaches to the issue taken by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump “could hardly be more different.”

Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine have each brought up climate change on their own during debates, and at the second presidential debate an audience member asked Clinton and Trump about their energy policies. But debate moderators have not yet asked a single question about climate change.

Although climate change is not among the topics for the final debate, there are many climate-related questions Wallace could ask that would fit within those issue areas. As Bloomberg noted, the October 19 debate will provide a “final chance” for the candidates to discuss climate change, and “Americans deserve better than a blackout.”

From the editorial:

For a presidential campaign notable for dark warnings of the coming apocalypse, the one thing that actually could bring about an apocalypse -- climate change -- has been conspicuously absent from the debates. A final chance to raise the issue will come Wednesday, during the campaign’s last debate.

Last week, the feckless Commission on Presidential Debates announced the topics for the upcoming meeting. Fox News host Chris Wallace, the moderator, has selected six areas for discussion, including several that have been amply covered in previous debates. (“Fitness to be president,” anyone?)

Climate change is not among them. Nor was it a topic at the two previous presidential debates, nor at the vice presidential debate.

This is difficult to comprehend and harder to justify. It’s not as if it’s an unimportant or uncontroversial issue. In his seven-plus years in office, President Barack Obama has embarked on one climate initiative after another, always to strenuous (and occasionally justified) objections.

In his first term, Obama invested billions in green energy stimulus. In 2014, he negotiated an agreement on greenhouse gas reductions with China, then followed it with the Paris agreement in 2015, in which almost 200 countries pledged to limit emissions. The administration’s Clean Power Plan is the subject of bitter politics and an all-out legal assault.

Meanwhile, the past two years have been the hottest on record, and the two candidates’ approaches could hardly be more different. Hillary Clinton has promised to invest in clean energy infrastructure and to phase out greenhouse-gas pollutants. Donald Trump has promised to roll back environmental regulations, expand U.S. coal production and disregard climate science.

Too much time in the debates thus far has been spent on the tawdry and embarrassing. Partly this is inevitable -- those have been the defining characteristics of the 2016 campaign, after all -- but it needn’t be this way. Wallace should make room for climate change in the discussion. On one of the most momentous and difficult issues facing their nation and the world, Americans deserve better than a blackout.

Fox News’ Chris Wallace has selected “Debt and entitlements,” “Immigration,” “Economy,” “Supreme Court,” “Foreign hot spots,” and “Fitness to be President” as the topics for the final presidential debate, which he will moderate on October 19. But the fact that neither “the environment” nor “energy” are among the topics would not excuse Wallace if he fails to ask a question about climate change.

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing our country and the planet, and it’s far more than strictly an environmental or energy issue. As Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican Governor of New Jersey who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush, has said, climate change “has very serious implications for our country from a national security point of view, from an economic point of view and a health point of view.”

The nonpartisan Open Debate Coalition recently launched a petition urging Wallace to ask the questions on the coalition’s website that have received the most votes from the public. A question about how the presidential candidates would address climate change currently has the fourth-most votes, trailing only two questions about guns and one about Social Security.

If Wallace refuses to ask Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump about climate change, it will mark the culmination of a stunning media failure. It would mean that presidential debate moderators failed to address climate change in two consecutive election cycles, after climate questions were asked in two presidential debates and the vice presidential debate in 2008. Even worse, it would mean that Trump avoids fielding a single debate question on climate change during the entire presidential campaign, spanning 14 primary and general election debates over the last 14 months.

Climate change has far-reaching impacts and ramifications, as Whitman explained, so there are many ways Wallace could weave it into most -- if not all -- of the topics he’s selected. Here are five questions that he could ask:

Topic: Immigration

Possible Debate Question: Studies show that climate change worsened the extreme drought in Syria that contributed to the Syrian refugee crisis, and that the effects of climate change on crop yields will drive millions of Mexicans to seek entry into the United States in the coming decades. Will you incorporate climate change into your immigration policies, and if so, how?

Topic: Economy

Possible Debate Question: A 2016 survey of 750 top economists found that climate change is now the single greatest threat to the global economy. What will you do to protect our economy from the effects of climate change?

Topic: Supreme Court

Possible Debate Question: Following a 2007 Supreme Court ruling and a scientific assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA is legally required to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change under the Clean Air Act. Will you implement the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the EPA’s emissions reduction strategy, and if not, how will your administration fulfill the Supreme Court’s mandate to cut greenhouse gas pollution?

Topic: Foreign Hot Spots

Possible Debate Question: The Pentagon has determined that climate change will “aggravate existing problems -- such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions -- that threaten domestic stability in a number of countries.” To what extent do you believe climate-related risks should be integrated into military planning?

Topic: Fitness To Be President

Possible Debate Question: The scientific community is nearly unanimous in saying that global warming is happening and caused by burning fossil fuels, yet many politicians refuse to acknowledge this is the case. Will you listen to the scientists on climate change, and do you believe that those who refuse to do so are unfit for our nation’s highest office?

Media Matters has released a media guide to the fossil fuel industry lobbyists, executives, and front groups shaping Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s energy agenda. Here are the five most outrageous statements about climate change and energy that we've seen from Trump's energy advisers so far.

Stephen Moore: Opposing Fracking “Is Like Being Against A Cure For Cancer”

During the August 1 edition of C-SPAN2's Book TV, while discussing his new book Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, Trump’s top economic adviser, Stephen Moore, stated that opposing fracking “is like being against a cure for cancer”:

Harold Hamm Points To Orlando Shooting To Claim “Every Time We Can’t Drill A Well In America, Terrorism Is Being Funded”

Trump is reportedly considering Harold Hamm, CEO of fracking giant Continental Resources, as energy secretary. During a July 20 speech supporting Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, Hamm exploited the June mass shooting at an Orlando, FL, nightclub to baselessly call for more drilling, saying, “Every time we can't drill a well in America, terrorism is being funded”:

Myron Ebell: "I'd Like To See A Lot More Funding" From Big Coal

Myron Ebell is reportedly running the Trump campaign’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team. During an interview on the August 5 edition of C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Environmental Defense Fund's Jeremy Symons confronted Ebell on his organization’s funding from coal company Murray Energy, and Ebell responded: “I'd like to see a lot more funding from all of those companies”:

Rep. Kevin Cramer: “The Idea That CO2 Is Somehow Causing Global Warming Is On Its Face Fraudulent”

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), one of Trump’s key energy advisers, is a vocal climate science denier. In audio uncovered by Hill Heat, Cramer alleged, “We know the global climate is cooling,” and declared that “the idea that CO2 is somehow causing global warming is on its face fraudulent”:

Mike Pence Raised The Fictitious “War On Coal” Five Times During The Vice Presidential Debate

The “war on coal” was manufactured by the GOP and the coal industry to attack Democrats during the 2012 election, and the phrase has remained popular among the coal industry's biggest advocates. But the phrase is misleading, as Associated Press reporter Vicki Smith has explained: "It's easier to call the geologic, market and environmental forces reshaping coal — cheap natural gas, harder-to-mine coal seams, slowing economies — some kind of political or cultural 'war' than to acknowledge the world is changing, and leaving some people behind."

During the vice presidential debate on October 4, Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, pushed the myth that the Obama administration has been waging a “war on coal” five separate times:

By any reasonable measure, climate change is a serious issue that is worthy of significant attention during the presidential debates. Yet as our debate scorecard documented, the topic was ignored by the moderators of the first presidential debate and the vice-presidential debate, further heightening the need for ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper to lead a substantial climate discussion when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump square off on October 9.

Global warming is having profound and wide-ranging impacts in the United States, and a climate question would be just as relevant to a discussion about national security, the economy, or public health as it would be to a discussion about environmental protection. And as climate scientist Michael Mann recently pointed out, climate change meets all the key criteria for a debate question:

Indeed, the stakes for climate action are high this election year, and the gulf between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on the issue is massive.

The Obama administration has taken many important steps to combat climate change, including the Clean Power Plan, which sets the first-ever federal limits on carbon pollution from power plants, and the historic international agreement to cut global emissions reached in Paris, which was recently ratified by enough countries to formally take effect. But the next president could either help these climate policies come to fruition or try to undercut them.

Clinton has said she will “[d]efend, implement, and extend” key climate policies, including the Clean Power Plan, and “deliver on the pledge President Obama made at the Paris climate conference.” Trump, meanwhile, has said he will “cancel” the Paris climate agreement, “rescind” the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan, initiate a “targeted review” of the Clean Power Plan, and dismantle the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Americans deserve to hear more detailed explanations of these proposals, and the upcoming debates provide the best and most high-profile opportunities before Election Day for that conversation to occur. But it can’t be taken for granted. In 2012, the presidential candidates were not asked about climate change in any of the general election debates. And this cycle, Trump has yet to field a single climate change question through one general election debate and 11 GOP primary debates (he skipped one).

The story is much the same throughout the country, as our scorecard shows. Through the first 21 debates in the presidential election and closely-contested Senate and governors’ races, only two debates -- in New Hampshire and Vermont -- have included questions about climate change. Like the presidential election, these races could also have climate consequences. Newly-elected senators could propose new climate legislation, or they could seek to block the EPA from limiting carbon pollution. And newly-elected governors could either work constructively with the EPA, or fight tooth and nail against implementing the Clean Power Plan.

Thankfully, it’s not too late for citizens to make their voices heard and convince moderators to ask about climate change in upcoming debates. The nonprofit and nonpartisan Open Debate Coalition notes that the ABC and CNN moderators of the next presidential debate have “agreed to consider the Top 30 questions voted up” on the coalition’s website. The following climate-related questions are currently among the top 30 vote-getters:

• "As president, What are the steps you will take to address climate change?"
• "What is your plan to combat climate change & build a green economy?"
• "Is Climate Change a national security issue? Why or why not?"
• "Will you reduce support for animal agriculture to counter climate change?"

Citizens can also request climate change questions in several Senate and governors’ debates. In Arizona, Cronkite News, the news division of Arizona PBS, has an online form for submitting questions ahead of the October 10 Senate debate. In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association told Media Matters that citizens can suggest questions on Twitter during the October 14 Senate debate, using the hashtag #wbadebate. In Ohio, WBNS-10TV is accepting video questions that may appear during its October 17 Senate debate. In Vermont, roundtable organizers will be crowdsourcing questions on Twitter in advance of the October 17 governors’ debate using the hashtag #innov802. And in Indiana, the Indiana Debate Commission has an online form for submitting questions for all of the state’s Senate and gubernatorial debates.

We’ll be continuing to update the scorecard with additional information about upcoming debates right up until Election Day -- including an update soon on whether climate change comes up at the October 9 presidential debate.