The Energy 202: Pence suggests we don’t know why the Earth is warming. We absolutely do.

Scientists, in fact, are much more certain about the causes of climate change than Pence suggests. The burning of fossil fuels and other human activity are pumping the air with heat-trapping pollution that is warming the planet. 

USA Today’s Susan Page, the debate moderator, pressed both Pence and Harris at length about climate change during what turned out to be a far more civil affair than last week’s acrimonious debate between President Trump and Joe Biden.

With his dodges, Pence was not only defying the vast majority of climate scientists, including those in his own government. Scientists from numerous federal agencies agreed in a major 2018 assessment that the effects of higher temperatures, including deadlier wildfires, hurricanes and heat waves, are already impacting the country.

He was also bucking a trend among many in his own party who increasingly acknowledge the reality of human-caused climate change — and even putting forward modest climate bills, knowing that some younger Republicans are concerned about the issue.

Even President Trump, when pressed during last week’s debate, said humans are responsible for climate change “to an extent.”

It has become more difficult for Republicans to deny the clear rise in temperatures scientists are seeing around the globe. The planet is more than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than during preindustrial times.

So Pence, who has not commented much climate change since being elected in 2016, has dropped his old talking point that “global warming is a myth.” In an op-ed two decades ago, he falsely argued the Earth “is actually cooler today than it was about 50 years ago.” 

Instead, he demurred when asked by Page about the links scientists see between climate change and events such as the historic wildfires in California record-breaking hurricane season in the Atlantic.

When Page followed up to ask if Pence believed global warming poses an “existential threat,” Pence repeated the “climate is changing,” but quickly pivoted to claiming that Joe Biden’s platform would raise taxes. 

During her own presidential run, the senator from California co-sponsored that broad proposal for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the entire U.S. economy within just 10 years.

The resolution quickly became a punching bag for Republicans who claimed, falsely, the Green New Deal would ban cows and airplanes. Biden never embraced the Green New Deal like Harris and other rivals for the party nomination, instead offering his own $2 trillion plan to fight climate change.

Pence suggested the Green New Deal and Biden’s climate plan were one and the same. “They want to bury our economy under a $2 trillion Green New Deal,” he said.

Harris ducked a question from Page about what role, if any, the Green New Deal will play in a Biden administration, instead criticizing Pence for the Trump administration’s muzzling of scientists over the past four years. 

“Do you know, this administration took the word science off the website? And then took the phrase climate change off the website?” Harris said. “This — we have seen a pattern with this administration which is they don’t believe in science.”

Pence claimed, falsely, that Biden wants a nationwide ban on that controversial oil and gas extraction technique. “They want to abolish fossil fuels and ban fracking, which would cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs all across the heartland,” he said. 

He added that the boom in fracking helped the United States cut its carbon dioxide emissions, even though the Trump administration has slashed regulations from oil and gas drilling meant to prevent the release of methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas.

While Biden’s climate change plan is ambitious compared to past Democratic nominees’ proposals, he has refused to call for a ban on fracking, which has earned the ire of environmentalists for its effects on drinking water but is economically important in the swing state of Pennsylvania. 

“I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking,” Harris said. “That is a fact.”

But Biden’s position still put his running mate in a tough spot since it stands in stark contrast to what she said last year during the Democratic primary.

“There’s no question,” Harris said in September, “I’m in favor of banning fracking.” 

The office would be led by a climate “czar” who would coordinate efforts to combat global warming, and its purview would stretch beyond that of the EPA, Bloomberg News reports.

“Among the candidates being discussed to head the operation are former Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped broker the landmark Paris climate accord, and Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington who ran for the Democratic nomination on climate issues, according to the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss nonpublic deliberations. John Podesta, President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff, has also been mentioned,” Bloomberg reports.

A new office, which could be created through executive fiat, could signal that climate change is a top priority for the administration, although it could alienate some people worried about growing the size of the federal government or about federal regulations. 

The agency is considering cutting off funding to cities the White House has labeled as “lawless,” according to a letter sent by Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee ranking Democrat Thomas Carper (Del.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), the Hill reports.

The letter questions the agency about its implementation of a Sept. 21 White House memorandum that set forth a plan to restrict federal funding to Seattle, Portland, New York, Washington and other cities or jurisdictions the White House deems “lawless.” It adds that more than $1 billion aimed at cleaning up pollution could be at stake if the EPA restricts funds to those cities.

“We have learned that EPA, in its internal meetings related to the policy, has begun to identify funding sources that could be subject to the directive, some of which are vital for the provision of safe drinking water and the remediation of contamination,” the senators wrote. “Setting aside the legally questionable and abhorrent nature of the President’s directive, EPA’s implementation thereof could endanger human health and the environment.” 

“Oil Change U.S. was not shy to critique Joe Biden throughout the primary campaign. We pointed out where his plans fell short, and when he took advice from the wrong advisors. But we also know he’s listening — both Biden and Harris are signatories of the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, and even in the last week they’ve announced fossil fuel executives will have no place in their transition team,” Elizabeth Bast, executive director of Oil Change U.S., said in a statement released yesterday.

During last week’s presidential debate, Biden walked a tightrope when it came to environmental issues, promising sweeping measures to combat climate change, even as he disavowed the Green New Deal popular among many young and left-wing members of the party. Trump tried to seize on the tension by claiming that Biden had “lost the left” with his refusal to support the Green New Deal.

But recent endorsements suggest Biden, who unveiled a $2 trillion climate plan over the summer, has the support of many left-leaning environmental groups who supported either Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) during the party’s primary. 

The president’s oldest son, an avid hunter, said on Twitter that his father had “done more for the American Outdoorsmen than any President since Roosevelt.” In a video accompanying the tweet, Trump Jr. alludes to a major bipartisan bill to fund national parks, efforts by the Trump administration to open public lands for hunting and fishing, and money allocated for Everglades preservation in Florida.

“Apple claims in its lawsuit, filed in Canada, that Canadian recycling company GEEP violated its contract by reselling the devices, instead of shredding them,” The Post’s Reed Albergotti reports. “But the lawsuit raises new questions about the iPhone maker’s environmental practices, because Apple says it never destroys electronics that are still suitable for use.”

The lawsuit, which was filed in January but only recently came to light, claims that GEEP repaired the devices, but Apple has refused to detail the repairs or any defects in the devices. Apple is seeking about $23 million in U.S. dollars from GEEP, which has blamed the reused devices on an alleged theft by rogue employees, Albergotti writes.

“After dramatically scaling back the cleanup plan for one of the country’s most contaminated areas, critics say, the Trump administration is now preparing to sidestep any remediation at all by declaring the entire near-3,000-acre former rocket and nuclear testing site near Los Angeles a culturally significant site for Native Americans,” E&E News reports.

In a recent federal filing, NASA sought to expand the boundaries of a national historic site to encompass the entire area of its former testing site, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, which includes a cave featuring Native American pictographs. Under the terms of a 2010 cleanup agreement with California, there is an exemption for cleaning up Native American ‘artifacts.’

“In the guise of protecting Native American sites, they are trying to get out of having to restore the damaged site so it would be safe for Native Americans to go to it,” Daniel Hirsch, a retired director of the program on environmental and nuclear policy at the University of California at Santa Cruz, told E&E News.

NASA, for its part, denies that listing the site as “traditional cultural property” will affect its cleanup operations.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt issued a memo on Tuesday making it easier for Interior agencies to purchase and deploy small, U.S.-made drones. The department’s fleet of around 810 aircraft systems, most of which were produced by Chinese companies, remained grounded earlier this year over cybersecurity and domestic production concerns. Drones were still allowed to be used, however, for emergency purposes, such as fighting wildfires or search-and-rescue missions, E&E News reports.

“The world now cools off with the help of more than 3.5 billion refrigerators and air conditioners, a number that is quickly growing. But those appliances are also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. In seeking relief from the heat, humans are making the globe even hotter, compounding the demand for cooling,” our colleague Sarah Kaplan writes. 

A group of scientists from the University of California at Los Angeles wants to break that cycle. They have set up a company called SkyCool Systems that uses nanotechnology to develop a thin, mirror-like film that can radiate heat while absorbing almost none of it. 

In doing so, they’ve tapped into a core principle of physics — known as radiative cooling — that has been used for centuries by desert dwellers in North Africa, India and Iran to make ice at night, even in temperatures above freezing. People would put water out in shallow, insulated trays or pits where it would radiate more heat out into the chilly night than it picked up from the surrounding air, but until recently, it was thought that this technology would not work during the day when cooling is needed most but the sun largely cancels out any radiative cooling effect, Kaplan writes.

The material produced by SkyCool Systems has succeeded in lowering the temperatures even in the midday sun, without any electricity or fuel. The challenge will be lowering the cost to a point where it can be deployed at scale.