Green Politics: Trust in established science and research

Clinton believes the United States should be investing more in scientific research and discovery. In response to a questionnaire by ScienceDebate, Clinton stated that “federal funding of basic research amounts to less than one percent of annual federal spending, yet it is an investment that pays big dividends.” The Democratic presidential candidate also plans to foster collaborative scientific research programs for the government and universities.

The Paris Agreement, an international effort to address the human impacts on climate change and the state of the planet signed in April of this year, has also been praised by Clinton. In a statement released after the Agreement, Clinton stated that she sees the international deal as a “historic step forward in meeting one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century—the global crisis of climate change.”

Although 97 percent of climatologists in the scientific community have reached the conclusion that human activity directly relates to climate change and rising global temperatures, Trump appears to think otherwise. The Republican presidential candidate has dismissed climate change as a “concept… created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive” in a November 2012 tweet.

Trump has also expressed his disapproval of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and plans to decrease funding for the government program, stating that “what they do is a disgrace.” The Trump campaign also plans to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a 2015 movement introduced to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, and has announced that climate change is “far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue.”