Obama, Romney and Lehrer omit climate change from presidential debate

President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney faced off Wednesday night in the first debate of the general election. Though the debate was billed as addressing domestic policy, it covered a narrow range of topics, mainly taxes, health care and energy. There was no mention of reproductive rights, LGBT rights, immigration or the Supreme Court. Fact checkers later highlighted a number of inaccurate and misleading statements from Romney, including repeating long disproved claims about a “government takeover of healthcare” and denying his own plan to cut taxes for the wealthy. The candidates also sparred over subsidies for both fossil fuels and renewable energy sources, but neither mentioned climate change once. This glaring omission comes during a year of both extreme weather and extreme resistance, as environmental advocates carry out protest actions outside the debates and in the path of oil pipelines. FSRN’s Alice Ollstein has more.