“Harris wiped the floor with Trump.” At least that’s how today’s Washington Post kicked off a discussion among in-house columnists. But for voters who prioritize Planet Earth for present and future generations, the 2024 presidential election is a classic example of seeking the lesser of two evils. Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump is a student—much less a champion—of sustainability. They probably think “limits to growth” pertains to poll results or crowd size.
If sustainability was the key criterion for electoral success, beating either one of these candidates would be a very low bar. Given the miniscule altitude of their respective bars, it is astounding how much lower one of them manages to sit. I am reminded of a metaphor (slightly modified for present purposes), “Why, he was so low, he couldn’t kiss a snake with a stepladder.”
Yes, one candidate is the most extreme, recklessly pro-growth candidate in American history. The other is a moderate, fence-riding candidate on issues of growth, climate, and protecting Earth for posterity. No matter what happens, then, the U.S. doesn’t seem destined for an ecologically economic victory in November.
Let’s have a closer look at some of the highlights—and lowlights—of the “dumpster fire” in Philadelphia. Perhaps we can think of some pointers for candidates and moderators, present and future.
The Economy: Same Thing Only Different?
The economy was mentioned 24 times during the debate. As usual in presidential politics, nothing else received as much attention. Abortion was mentioned 21 times and the word “border” came up 20 times. Security—be it national, border, or social—got 13 mentions. Energy was addressed 9 times. Health care, 8 times. Guns, 5.
If anything, the emphasis on the economy is underestimated by the number of “economy” utterances. “Economics” and “economists” came up often enough to put the figure at 34 instances of the “econ” syllables. Furthermore, jobs were mentioned 14 times, tariffs 12 times, and inflation 11. Several of the points about the border, too, were brought in primarily for their economic implications.
Yet, a closer analysis reveals something quite distinctive, relative to prior debates. The phrase “economic growth” was never used! In fact, neither “grow” nor “growth” was used a single time in a macroeconomic context. This is nearly unprecedented in the presidential debates of recent decades.
A more typical example was the 2016 debate between Hillary Clinton and Trump in Las Vegas. There, economic growth came up 20 times, and not with the slightest agnosticism. Clinton averred that “my plan is based on growing the economy,” while Trump claimed, “We’re going to grow the economy. It’s going to grow at a record rate of growth.” Similarly, economic growth came up 24 times in the 2012 debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney in Hempstead, New York. A quick perusal of past debates going back through the 1990s shows that “the economy, stupid” was nearly synonymous with the push for GDP growth.
Based on Tuesday’s spectacle, can we conclude that Harris and Trump have intentionally eschewed the pro-growth rhetoric? Hardly. Yet neither can we assume that limits to growth have had no effect on the body politic, the long arms of which are Harris and Trump.
Surely the dots are being connected, little by little, between a growing economy and profound challenges such as climate change, water shortages, and particularly portentous pollution problems like forever chemicals. Even if these cognitive connections reside largely in the subconsciousness of citizens, they are far from irrelevant. As political scientists Milton Lodge and Charles Taber pointed out, “unconscious thought underlies all political deliberation.”
So, there’s no call for celebration here, but to the extent that the paucity of “economic growth” in the debate is a reflection of an evolving subconsciousness of limits to growth, it’s progress we’ll take.
Growth Lurks Between the Lines
While there is probably some real progress in overcoming the obsession with “economic growth” in such explicit terms, a pro-growth position still lurks behind every corner. The position might be formal, as it remains (more or less) in Democratic and Republican Party platforms. But, just as with the subconscious awareness of limits to growth among a growing cohort of citizens, pro-growthmanship may come from a persistent subconscious habit. This habit would be most developed among politicians, especially older ones. Oldsters like Trump have deeper habits, by sheer passage of time. Also, they cut their political teeth in the decades of “it’s the economy.”
The knee-jerk, pro-growth habit is also prominent among political operatives at large. The growth agenda is a big tent uniting functionaries as far-flung as congressional staffers, economic advisors, agency directors, Supreme Court justices, political reporters, and debate moderators.
Subconscious pro-growthmanship manifests in many ways, on many issues. It tends to break or deny the connections between the dots. Instead of climate change, water shortages, and pollution problems being recognized as caused or exacerbated by economic growth, they are perceived as problems to be solved by growth. At best, they’d be considered disconnected problems awaiting technological solutions, with no relevance whatsoever to growth.
What else would explain the near-nothingness about climate change to come out of the debate? The topic was kept off the table until the very last question, posed by Linsey Davis. She finally asked, almost apologetically, “We have another issue that we’d like to get to that’s important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters, and that’s climate change. President Trump, with regard to the environment, you say that we have to have clean air and clean water. Vice President Harris, you call climate change an existential threat. The question to you both tonight is what would you do to fight climate change?”
It was Harris’s turn to reply first, and her answer was a mushy mix of factoids, anecdotes, and accusations against Trump. The most helpful statement was a simple one: “What we know is that it is very real.” But when it came to solutions, Harris’s acknowledgment of climate change was eclipsed by a shocking display of cognitive dissonance. She boasted, “I am proud that as vice president over the last four years we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels.” It brought to mind President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address, where he embraced fracked gas for its potential to create jobs and grow the economy, characterizing it as a “bridge fuel” toward “cleaner energy.”
The reality is that increasing domestic gas production is hardly a problem-solving response to the “existential threat” (Harris’s own words in an earlier interview) of climate change. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Madam Vice President. You can’t solve the climate crisis by throwing fossil-fueled money at it. You left us wondering if you truly understand that generating a trillion dollars most certainly entailed those “historic levels” of domestic gas production—and other fossil fuels for that matter.
As for Trump… think snake and stepladder again. Harris could be a D-student of sustainability science and still hurdle the bar Trump sets by calling climate change a “hoax.” Sure, a relative handful at the political fringe still think climate change is a hoax—mostly due to blind following of Trump—but more and more Americans acknowledge climate change as the anthropogenic phenomenon it is demonstrated to be.
So What Should They Have Said?
On climate change, we can’t expect Donald Trump to come clean, even if he does understand the basics of greenhouse gas emissions and climate forcing (as anyone could). Trump displays a “malignant narcissism” that undermines and overrides his ability to care about the long-term welfare of others. You might say he applies an extreme discount rate, discounting especially the environment and various aspects of social justice.
A common theme among reporters covering the debate is that Trump left a lot of opportunities off the table because he was baited into defensiveness by Harris. Surely that was true, overall, but on the question of climate change, Harris also missed a golden opportunity. Instead of sticking with climate change for the duration of her 230-word answer, she turned the answer into a focus on “American manufacturing and opening up auto plants, not closing them like happened under Donald Trump.”
Yes, it was like Swiss cheese placed expertly on a mousetrap, and Trump fell for it in a flash. In his own, rambling, 233-word response, he never even uttered the word “climate.” The general media surely saw this as one last nail in the coffin of Trump’s debate performance. Perhaps it was, but going back to our criterion of sustainability, it backfired. Harris should have let Trump flail away about climate change, discounting it at best, calling it a hoax at worst, and generally displaying his climate ignorance. Instead of her turning the topic from climate to the economy—disappointing environmentalists in the process—she should have let him turn the topic, as he surely would have.
If Trump dares to debate Harris again, you can bet his growth obsession will come out of the woodwork. The subconscious lessening of pro-growth rhetoric hypothesized above won’t shade Trump’s true colors for long. Next time, he could come out looking like Jack Kemp, the crazed candidate who blurted in a 1996 vice presidential debate, “We should double the rate of growth, and we should double the size of the American economy!”
That’s when Harris will have a golden opportunity to call Trump out for such economic extremism. Imagine her voice calmly prosecuting Trump’s recklessness with a statement such as:
“Well, we do need to keep unemployment and inflation in check. We need a solid, reliable mix of extractive, manufacturing, and service-oriented jobs. But if we care about our kids and our grandkids, we need our economic activity to be sustainable, too. ‘Explosive’ economic growth is not sustainable at this point in history. The way you get ‘explosive’ growth today—or try to—is by pulling out all the stops. You tear up the environmental regulations, privatize our national parks, and allow polluters to trash our soils, water, and air. You ‘drill baby drill’ and burn fossil fuels at a reckless rate. You undermine the financial security provided by minimum-wage laws, workmen’s comp, and unions. You weaken the safety nets of healthcare and social security. You jeopardize our hard-won relationships with trade partners. You do all these horrendous things, and for what? To grow the GDP? I don’t think it’s worth it, and neither do my fellow Americans. Sure, GDP growth was a great thing for a long time, especially those post-war decades of the 20th century. But here we are, two and a half decades into the 21st century, and we have to take a smarter approach to the economy. It’s not about growing the GDP any more, much less ‘explosively.’ It’s about protecting our assets—natural and social assets—and it’s about conserving the resources we need for future generations. And we definitely can’t continue choking our atmosphere with greenhouse gases. That would be the stupidest economic decision possible.”
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All in Moderation
A politician can only do so much. The moderators of a presidential debate also play a key role in putting the most important issues before the candidates. If important issues have been overlooked by the campaigns, the moderators become that much more important.
Imagine if a David Muir or Linsey Davis had asked, “Mr. Trump, you are on record as promising to ‘reignite explosive economic growth.’ Yet the evidence is overwhelming that economic growth—that means a growing population and more consumption—causes environmental deterioration. And we know the environment is essential for our economic future. What is your plan to protect the environment from the harms of explosive economic growth?
Trump’s predictable response would be to deny any conflict between growth and the environment, along with his boast of protecting “the very cleanest air” and “crystal clean water.” But the astute moderator would ask Trump why, then, he rolled back the Clean Water Act so substantially in January of 2020.
Harris, then, would have a field day following up with the environmental sins of Trump. The political beauty of doing so would be to simultaneously immunize herself from present or future accusations of slow growth. From then on, having re-framed the GDP debate, her answer would come swift and easy: “It’s not just the economy, stupid. Anybody can grow the economy if they do enough damage. No, my focus is on the wellbeing of Americans. That means environmental, economic, and social wellbeing.”
From right or left, it’s hard to imagine folks disagreeing, isn’t it?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Czech is the founding president of CASSE (2003), and signed on as executive director in 2017. Czech served as the first conservation biologist in the history of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1999-2017, and concurrently as a visiting professor of natural resource economics in Virginia Tech’s National Capitol Region. He is the author of several books including Supply Shock, Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train, and The Endangered Species Act: History, Conservation Biology, and Public Policy, as well as over 50 academic journal articles. His primary contributions to ecological economics pertain to the trophic theory of money, the process of technological progress, and the political “steady state revolution.” Czech is a frequent speaker, moderator, commentator, and regular contributor to the Steady State Herald. He has a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin, an M.S. from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. Brian has been designated an “eco-champion” by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an “eco-hero” by Ecohearth, and one of the “top 100 inspirational leaders” by the Post-Growth Institute.
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