| September 15th, 2012 Put climate change up for debate! | Tell Jim Lehrer to put climate change on the agenda for the first Presidential debate. | It’s time to make climate change a serious topic of debate this election cycle. The hottest summer in recent history may be giving way to cooler weather, but the presidential election is just heating up. The first presidential debate is only two weeks away, but we’ve yet to have a serious conversation from our candidates on climate change. The American public deserves a serious debate over the best way to address this pressing challenge, not a behind-the-times dispute over whether or not climate change is even real or not. You can change that by demanding the first debate moderator, PBS’s Jim Lehrer, put climate change up for debate on October 3. In case you didn’t hear, Mitt Romney thinks climate change is a joke. During the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, Romney told the crowd, “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet,” pausing in the middle for the audience to laugh at the “ridiculousness” of the comment. Mitt Romney and his speech writers may not have gotten the memo, but there is nothing funny about the threat of climate change. President Obama rightly condemned Romney’s flippancy in his own speech at the Democratic National Convention, declaring that “climate change is not a hoax.” He continued, "More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And in this election, you can do something about it." President Obama’s statements raise the level of discussion on the issue, affirming that climate change is a serious issue worthy of campaign time. However, besides his speech before the DNC, President Obama has still barely uttered the words “climate change” on the campaign trail this election cycle, let alone offered a serious plan for how his second term would deal with this concern. With the election just a couple of months away, now is the time to take action by demanding a serious debate on climate change this fall. One thing President Obama got right is that you have the power to bring climate change into the limelight this election cycle. There will be four presidential and vice-presidential debates this October. Debate moderators have a lot of control over the questions they ask the candidates. Tell the moderators you expect how to best combat climate change to be up for debate this fall. Tell the Presidential debate moderators now that you want them to initiate serious debate on climate change, starting with PBS’s NewsHour host Jim Lehrer, who will host the first debate on October 3. | 
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