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Clinton, Trump show stark contrast on ‘climate change’

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/08/02/donald-trump-climate-change-hillary-clinton/87628818/

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are offering Americans starkly different views on global warming: Clinton sees it as an urgent concern while Trump dismisses it as a minor problem at most.

“There’s never been a bigger contrast between the two candidates and the two platforms,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of the League of Conservation Voters.

The Trump campaign issued a statement Tuesday decrying Clinton’s policy proposals on climate change as an “extreme, reckless anti-energy agenda … to appease radical donors (who) will destroy millions of jobs and force millions more into abject poverty.”

The GOP nominee said nothing about climate change in his July 21 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. But he told a rally in South Carolina in December that global warming was “a hoax, a lot of it,” a modest change from a tweet in 2013 that called global warming “bulls—.”

He’s debunked climate science even though climate is likely the most thoroughly researched area on record, said Jeremy Symons, senior adviser with the Environmental Defense Action Fund.

The Democratic nominee said in her acceptance speech Thursday, “I believe climate change is real.” Clinton said she was proud the U.S. had signed the Paris climate accord, which commits the world’s nations to slow the rise of greenhouse gases blamed for warming the climate.

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