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      European Climate Czar Steps Down to Take Part in Dutch Elections

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      Frans Timmermans is stepping down at a crucial time for European climate laws to become the lead candidate for a left-wing coalition in the Dutch elections in November.Frans Timmermans, the European Union’s climate chief, will leave his position in Brussels to become a candidate in coming elections in the Netherlands, the European Commission announced on Tuesday.Mr. Timmermans’s immediate departure comes as the European Union is focusing on meeting climate goals, reducing emissions on the continent as well as transitioning to clean energy.Mr. Timmermans served as the executive vice president for the European Green Deal, a set of proposals that aims to make the E.U.’s climate, energy, transport and taxation policies fit for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.Last month, European lawmakers approved a key element of the Green Deal that would require member nations to restore 20 percent of natural areas within their borders on land and at sea.“Climate change is happening even faster than feared, battering our planet with no region left unaffected,” Mr. Timmermans said in a speech in July. “Radical, immediate, and transformative action must be taken by all of us.”Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, praised Mr. Timmermans in a statement, saying he helped make strides toward “meeting the E.U.’s objectives to become the first climate neutral continent.” She also said he helped raise “the levels of climate ambition globally.”Ms. von der Leyen has appointed Maroš Šefčovič, a member of the European Commission from Slovakia, to succeed Mr. Timmermans as the executive vice president for the European Green Deal. Ms. von der Leyen also temporarily assigned the responsibility for climate action policy to Mr. Šefčovič, until the appointment of a new member of the commission of Dutch nationality, according to an announcement.Maros Sefcovic will succeed Mr. Timmermans as the executive vice-president for the European Green Deal.Tt News Agency, via ReutersOn Tuesday, Mr. Timmermans became the lead candidate for a left-wing alliance of the Green Party and the Labor Party, which are forming one bloc in the Netherlands’s parliamentary elections scheduled for Nov. 22. In that role, Mr. Timmermans could possibly become the Dutch prime minister. Members of the two parties overwhelmingly chose Mr. Timmermans as the lead candidate on Tuesday, according to Dutch media.Mr. Timmermans was scheduled to address members of the left-wing parties on Tuesday night as leader for the first time, according to the parties.“He is the right person to face the big challenges we stand for: protecting social security, tackle the climate crisis and restore trust in politics,” Attje Kuiken, the leader of the Dutch Labor Party in the House of Representatives, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Ms. Kuiken has, like multiple other politicians since the government collapsed last month, announced her departure from Dutch politics.It’s not Mr. Timmermans’s first foray into Dutch politics. He has served as a member of Parliament for the Dutch Labor Party, as well as minister of foreign affairs from 2012 to 2014.The Green Deal has angered farmers on the continent, including in Mr. Timmermans’s native Netherlands. Last year, Dutch farmers protested against new goals and an announcement that some of them would have to shutter their farms to reach the E.U.’s climate goals, saying that they felt disproportionately targeted.The Dutch government collapsed in July after the parties in its ruling coalition failed to reach an agreement on migration policy. Other issues had been adding stress to the fractured coalition, including climate goals that aim to drastically reduce nitrogen emissions in the country, goals that have been partially set by the European Union.The Netherlands will soon have its first new prime minister since 2010, when Mark Rutte came into power. Mr. Rutte decided not to run again and said he would leave politics once a new coalition is in place after the November elections.Mr. Rutte’s departure from Dutch politics raised questions for the Netherlands, as well as the European Union, where Mr. Rutte found a stage to advance his country’s agenda: rules-based free trade and commerce, fiscal prudence, liberal social values.Who will take Mr. Rutte’s place as prime minister uncertain. The Farmer Citizen Movement, a Dutch pro-farming party that swept local elections in March, has been ahead in the polls, an indication of people’s dissatisfaction with mainstream political parties.On Sunday, Pieter Omtzigt, a popular Dutch politician who has been critical of Mr. Rutte, announced the creation of his new party, New Social Contract. A Dutch poll from this summer predicted that Mr. Omtzigt’s party could win as many as 46 seats in the Netherlands’s 150-member House of Representatives. More

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      These Aren’t the Darkest Years in American History, but They Are Among the Weirdest

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      Bret Stephens: Before we get to Donald Trump’s indictment in Georgia or the upcoming G.O.P. debate, I want to take note of the appalling tragedy in Hawaii. The images from Maui are just heartbreaking. But I also get a sense that heartbreak will soon turn to outrage as we learn more about the cascade of policy failures that led to the disaster.Gail Collins: Maui is going to be hard for any of us to forget. Or, in some cases, forgive. There are certainly a heck of a lot of serious questions about whether the folks who were supposed to be responsible did their jobs.Bret: There’s a story in The Wall Street Journal that made me want to scream. It seems Hawaiian Electric knew four years ago that it needed to do more to keep power lines from emitting sparks, but it invested only $245,000 to try to do something about it. The state and private owners let old dams fall into disrepair and then allowed for them to be destroyed rather than restoring them, leading to less stored water and more dry land. And then there was the emergency chief who decided not to sound warning sirens. At least he had the good sense to resign.Gail: But let’s look at the way bigger issue, Bret. The weather’s been awful in all sorts of scary ways this summer, all around the planet. Pretty clear it’s because of global warming. You ready to rally around a big push toward environmental revolution?Bret: I’m opposed on principle to all big revolutions, Gail, beginning with the French. But I am in favor of 10,000 evolutions to deal with the climate. In Maui’s case, a push for more solar power plus reforestation of grasslands could have made a difference in managing the fire. I also think simple solutions can do a lot to help — like getting the federal government to finance states and utilities to cover the costs of burying power lines.Gail: Yep. Plus some more effortful projects to address climate change, like President Biden’s crusade to promote electric cars and an evolution away from coal and oil for heat.Bret: The more I read about the vast mineral inputs for electric cars — about 900 pounds of nickel, aluminum, cobalt and other minerals per car battery — the more I wonder about their wisdom. If you don’t believe me, just read Mr. Bean! (Or at least Rowan Atkinson, who studied electrical engineering at Oxford before his career took a … turn.) He made a solid environmental case in The Guardian for keeping your old gas-burning car instead of switching to electric.But I’m a big believer in adopting next-gen nuclear power to produce a larger share of our electric power needs. And I’m with you on moving away from coal.Gail: Hey, if we’ve found a point of consensus, let’s grab it and move on. After all, we’re on the cusp of a Republican presidential debate.Bret: With Trump as the apparent no-show. As a raw political calculation, I guess this makes sense given his commanding lead in the Republican primary polls, a lead that only seems to grow with each successive indictment.Gail: Yeah, I have to admit that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of possible gain for him in debating people who are way, way behind him in the polls and give them a chance to point out all his multitudinous defects.And I believe I speak for at least 90 percent of the population when I say posting a prerecorded interview with Tucker Carlson is not an acceptable substitute.Bret: I’m still going to watch the debate out of lurid fascination. I’m guessing this will devolve mainly into an argument between Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy, with Ron DeSantis spending the time darting between them like a cornered lizard that doesn’t know where to turn. Christie will make the case for why Republicans need to turn against Trump, and Ramaswamy will make the case for why they need to favor him. That’s by way of Ramaswamy ultimately becoming Trump’s veep pick.Gail: You think so? Would that be a good idea? Strategically speaking that is — I can’t imagine you think Ramaswamy would lift the quality of the ticket.Bret: I met Ramaswamy a couple of years ago, when he was pitching a book on corporations going “woke.” He came to my house for lunch, where I made him a credible ratatouille. At the time, I was sympathetic to his message and impressed by his smarts. I’ve become a lot less sympathetic as he’s essentially promised to give Vladimir Putin what he wants in Ukraine, consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a potential running mate and reopen the investigation into 9/11. That said, his youth, wealth, verbal acuity, anti-woke message and minority background kinda makes him perfect for Donald, no?Gail: Nah, I don’t think our former president wants anybody that … interesting. Remember, this is the man who made Mike Pence his No. 2 back when he actually needed more attention.Bret: You may be right. In that case, it’s Tim Scott for veep.Gail: By the way, I like your prediction about DeSantis looking like a cornered lizard in this debate. Seems he’s the one who’s got the most to lose — he really does need to show potential Republican backers that he isn’t a dope. That’d be a challenge under any circumstances, but especially when he’s up against someone as capable of crushing the opposition as Christie.Bret: Our news-side colleagues Jonathan Swan, Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman had a great scoop last week about memos from a pro-DeSantis PAC urging their man to “take a sledgehammer” to Ramaswamy and “defend Donald Trump” in response to Christie’s attacks. It’s terrible advice, since attacking Ramaswamy will only help elevate him as a serious contender while further diminishing DeSantis’s claim to be the best and most viable alternative to Trump.Gail: My dream scenario, by the way, is for Christie to take the debate crown, then go on to campaign in New Hampshire. If it looks like he could actually win there, sooner or later Trump is going to have to pay him some more attention, right? Just out of pure ego?Bret: Presumably by harping on his weight, as if Trump is a poster boy for SlimFast. I think Christie probably enjoys those attacks, because he parries them so skillfully and it consolidates his position as the only real Republican alternative to Trump. Something that might come in handy on the slight chance that Trump goes to prison.Gail: Amazing we’ve gotten this far without mentioning that the man we all regard as the very, very likely Republican nominee for president is facing multitudinous criminal indictments in Georgia, New York, Florida and at the federal level.Bret: Ninety-one counts in all. You could almost take ’em down and pass ’em around like bottles of beer on the wall.Gail: So far, many of his supporters seem pretty eager to accept his claims that everything is just an anti-Trump political conspiracy. Can that last? It’s still about a year until the Republican presidential nominating convention in Milwaukee. I can’t help feeling that something will come up that even his fans will find impossible to ignore.Bret: Gail, the truest thing Trump ever said is that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his base would stick with him. The proper way to understand his appeal isn’t by studying normal voter behavior. It’s by studying cults. In a cult, the leader is always, simultaneously, a savior of his people and a victim of a vast and shadowy conspiracy. Unfortunately, all of these prosecutions, however merited, do more to reinforce than undermine the thinking of his followers.The only thing that can truly defeat Trump is a thumping electoral defeat. My biggest worry about President Biden is that he is so much more vulnerable politically than many Democrats seem to realize.Gail: Bret, it’s sort of inspiring that you’re the one of us most worried about getting Biden re-elected. Presuming his health holds up, I’m pretty confident. Here’s a man whose biggest political drawback is being boring. Which doesn’t look all that bad when he’s compared with a guy whose biggest defects go beyond the 91 counts arrayed against him. Biden’s been a much, much better president than Trump was. I wish he wasn’t running again, because of the age issue. But as we’ve discussed, Trump is only three years younger and seems to be in much worse physical shape.Bret: I wish I were as sanguine, but my forebears inclined me to fret.Gail: Just for diversion, make believe that Trump drops out of the race. For any of a million reasonable reasons. The other options in his party look pretty appalling to me. Do you think you’d still wind up voting for Joe Biden or would you feel free to go back to your Republican roots?Bret: The only Republicans in the current field I could definitely vote for are Christie and Nikki Haley. Otherwise, I’ll be pulling the lever for Joe and lighting votive candles every night for his health.Gail: OK, one more quick “What if?” Suppose Biden dropped out of the race right now. Who would you vote for, Trump or Kamala Harris?Bret: Gail, I would never, ever vote for Trump. Then again, if that winds up being the choice, God help us.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      With National Monument Designation, Biden Tries to Balance Electoral Realities

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      The president has highlighted his climate actions as a way to spur domestic energy production and create blue-collar jobs, while nodding to environmental activists and tribal leaders.The president designated nearly a million acres of land in Red Butte, Ariz., as a national monument.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAfter spending most of his appearance near the Grand Canyon describing how his fifth national monument designation would preserve sagebrush, bighorn sheep and 450 kinds of birds, President Biden said on Tuesday that protecting the land long held sacred by Native American leaders was not just a matter of the environment.“By creating this monument, we’re setting aside new spaces for families to bike, hunt, fish and camp, growing the tourism economy,” Mr. Biden said as he declared nearly a million acres near the Grand Canyon as a national monument, with the 300-million-year-old “majestic red cliffs” serving as his backdrop.“Preserving these lands is good not only for Arizona, but for the planet,” he said. “It’s good for the economy.”Mr. Biden has often framed his climate investments as a means to spur domestic energy production, one that would create thousands of jobs for blue-collar workers. But when he traveled to Arizona to announce a permanent ban on uranium mining in the area, he also nodded to other crucial constituencies: environmental activists and tribal leaders who have pressed the White House to make good on its ambitious campaign promises to protect the environment and ancestral homelands.The White House has presented Mr. Biden’s sales pitch for legislation aimed at cutting planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, the Inflation Reduction Act, as a job-growth machine to appeal to the middle class. But the administration knows that those who care about protecting the environment and preserving lands stripped from tribal nations are crucial voters, particularly in the battleground state of Arizona.The balancing act was reflected during Mr. Biden’s visit to the mountainous range of Red Butte near the Grand Canyon, where he spoke of job creation while also acknowledging environmental activists and tribal leaders.Indigenous people, Mr. Biden said, “fought for decades to be able to return to these lands to protect these lands from mining and development to clear them of contamination to preserve their shared legacy.”The Biden administration has argued that the Grand Canyon region contains just about 1.3 percent of the country’s uranium reserves.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe White House hopes Mr. Biden’s message is received by not just Native Americans but also young and climate-conscious voters, many of whom have yet to be fired up by his economy-first message.About 71 percent of Americans say they have heard “little” or “nothing at all” about the Inflation Reduction Act one year after it was signed, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. And most Americans — 57 percent — disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of climate change, according to the poll. Recent polls also show that voter sentiment on the economy continues to drive the president’s negative approval ratings.Mr. Biden has been inconsistent in his efforts to protect federal lands and waters. This year he approved the Willow project, a large oil-drilling development in the pristine Arctic wilderness. The administration also approved more oil and gas permits in its first two years than President Donald J. Trump did in his, and agreed to a series of compromises in the Inflation Reduction Act, Mr. Biden’s signature climate law, to allow offshore oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Cook Inlet.“It’s a pick-your-battle environment,” said Joel Clement, a former policy director at the Interior Department.Mr. Clement, who is now a senior program officer at the Lemelson Foundation, a philanthropic group funding work on climate change, said he believed the Biden administration was intent on protecting Indigenous lands and culture, and also on blocking as much fossil fuel production as it could.But, he said, “The calculus revolves around how much damage they can weather from the right on each of these things.”The Biden administration needs to amp up its climate change messaging as campaign season heats up, said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which has conducted surveys on Americans’ climate opinions since 2007.While the message about jobs and the economy might be a winning strategy in a general election, Mr. Leiserowitz said Mr. Biden’s base of climate-focused voters wanted to see the president use the bully pulpit to talk more about replacing fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.“They have more teachable moments to talk about climate change with the American people than any other president in history because we are getting hit every day by another two-by-four of climate extremes on steroids,” Mr. Leiserowitz said.Mr. Biden leaned into that message on Tuesday, describing his efforts to combat the effects of climate change, including investing $720 million for Native American communities to ease the impact of droughts and rising sea levels. Standing before an Arizona delegation as well as tribal leaders donning traditional attire, Mr. Biden framed the Inflation Reduction Act as the biggest investment in climate conservation and environmental justice on record.But his announcement also highlighted the risks Mr. Biden faces as he seeks to conserve lands while also promoting the expansion of clean energy. Uranium is a fuel most widely used for nuclear plants, a key source of energy that does not produce carbon dioxide emissions.As countries work to curb planet-warming greenhouse gasses, competition for uranium is expected to increase, according to experts. The United States imports the majority of its uranium, from Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia and Russia.Paul Goranson, the chief executive of enCore Energy, which has mining claims in the Grand Canyon area, said the uranium found there is of a higher grade than in other parts of the United States. Cutting off that supply, he said, will keep the United States reliant on imports, which could have an impact on national security and hurt the Biden administration’s ability to develop zero-emissions energy sources to fight climate change.“It seems the timing is a bit inconsistent with the president’s objectives for clean energy,” Mr. Goranson said. “It doesn’t seem to be aligning with his stated clean energy targets.”The Biden administration has argued that the Grand Canyon region contains just about 1.3 percent of the country’s uranium reserves. Environmental groups also noted that because the area was under a 20-year moratorium imposed during the Obama administration, no mining would have occurred for at least a decade anyway.Republicans blasted Mr. Biden’s decision this week. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a supporter of nuclear energy, accused the president of “supporting our enemies” by blocking uranium production. American companies currently pay around $1 billion a year to Russia’s state-owned nuclear agency to buy uranium.The White House’s balancing act of framing its agenda as a boon to domestic investment and job growth, as well as a way to combat climate change and advance environmental justice, will continue throughout the re-election campaign, according to senior White House officials. After Mr. Biden was endorsed by the four largest environmental groups in the United States in June, the president celebrated days later at a rally for union workers.“The investment isn’t only going to help us save the planet, it’s going to create jobs — lots of jobs, tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs,” Mr. Biden reminded A.F.L.-C.I.O. members at the rally in Philadelphia.That strategy was evident on Tuesday. As Mr. Biden talked about the importance of protecting the country’s natural wonders, Vice President Kamala Harris joined Labor Department officials in Philadelphia to speak to construction workers about efforts to raise their wages.And after the event at the Grand Canyon, Mr. Biden traveled to Albuquerque, where he will describe how his signature climate and clean energy bill also creates manufacturing jobs in the clean energy sector.A group gathered to see President Biden.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesJohn Leshy, a public lands expert who served in the Interior Department during the Clinton and the Carter administrations, said trade-offs between developing renewable energy to fight climate change and conserving and protecting public lands will only increase in the years to come.“We’ve got a catastrophe in the offing if we don’t move rapidly to decarbonize,” Mr. Leshy said. “I don’t think that means opening up the Grand Canyon to uranium mining everywhere, but in some situations it does mean we’re going to have to grit our teeth” to allow for more minerals development, he said.For Carletta Tilousi, a member of the Havasupai Tribe, Mr. Biden’s monument designation means that her ancestors “are finally going to be feeling rested.”“A lot of these areas are in places where there were once gathering sites of tribal people and many years ago, hundred years ago, where our ancestors once roamed and we still roam today here,” she said. “But I believe those areas are very important to our existence.” More

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      A Republican 2024 Climate Strategy: More Drilling, Less Clean Energy

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      Project 2025, a conservative “battle plan” for the next Republican president, would stop attempts to cut the pollution that is heating the planet and encourage more emissions.During a summer of scorching heat that has broken records and forced Americans to confront the reality of climate change, conservatives are laying the groundwork for future Republican administration that would dismantle efforts to slow global warming.The move is part of a sweeping strategy dubbed Project 2025 that Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank organizing the effort, has called a “battle plan” for the first 180 days of a future Republican presidency.The climate and energy provisions would be among the most severe swings away from current federal policies.The plan calls for shredding regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels — the burning of which is the chief cause of planetary warming.The New York Times asked the leading Republican presidential candidates whether they support the Project 2025 strategy but none of the campaigns responded. Still, several of the architects are veterans of the Trump administration, and their recommendations match positions held by former President Donald J. Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination.The $22 million project also includes personnel lists and a transition strategy in the event a Republican wins the 2024 election. The nearly 1,000-page plan, which would reshape the executive branch to place more power into the president’s hands, outlines changes for nearly every agency across the government.The Heritage Foundation worked on the plan with dozens of conservative groups ranging from the Heartland Institute, which has denied climate science, to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which says “climate change does not endanger the survival of civilization or the habitability of the planet.”Mr. Dans said the Heritage Foundation delivered the blueprint to every Republican presidential hopeful. While polls have found that young Republicans are worried about global warming, Mr. Dans said the feedback he has received confirms the blueprint reflects where the majority of party leaders stand.“We have gotten very good reception from this,” he said. “This is a plotting of points of where the conservative movement sits at this time.”Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, in April.Leigh Vogel for The New York TimesThere is a pronounced partisan split in the country when it comes to climate change, surveys have shown. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted last month found that while 56 percent of respondents called climate change a major threat — including a majority of independents and nearly 90 percent of Democrats — about 70 percent of Republicans said global warming was either a minor threat or no threat at all.Project 2025 does not offer any proposals for curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously heating the planet and which scientists have said must be sharply and quickly reduced to avoid the most catastrophic impacts.Asked what the country should do to combat climate change, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation’s energy and climate center, said “I really hadn’t thought about it in those terms” and then offered that Americans should use more natural gas.Natural gas produces half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal when burned. But gas facilities frequently leak methane, a greenhouse gas that is much more powerful than carbon dioxide in the short term and has emerged as a growing concern among climate scientists.The blueprint said the next Republican president would help repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 law that is offering $370 billion for wind, solar, nuclear, green hydrogen and electric vehicle technology, with most of the new investments taking place in Republican-led states.The plan calls for shuttering a Department of Energy office that has $400 billion in loan authority to help emerging green technologies. It would make it more difficult for solar, wind and other renewable power — the fastest growing energy source in the United States — to be added to the grid. Climate change would no longer be considered an issue worthy of discussion on the National Security Council, and allied nations would be encouraged to buy and use more fossil fuels rather than renewable energy.In July, Phoenix experienced a record-breaking streak of above-100-degree days. Ash Ponders for The New York TimesThe blueprint throws open the door to drilling inside the pristine Arctic wilderness, promises legal protections for energy companies that kill birds while extracting oil and gas and declares the federal government has an “obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources” on America’s public lands.Notably, it also would restart a quest for something climate denialists have long considered their holy grail: reversal of a 2009 scientific finding at the Environmental Protection Agency that says carbon dioxide emissions are a danger to public health.Erasing that finding, conservatives have long believed, would essentially strip the federal government of the right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from most sources.In interviews, Mr. Dans and three of the top authors of the report agreed that the climate is changing. But they insisted that scientists are debating the extent to which human activity is responsible.On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists around the world agree that the burning of oil, gas and coal since the Industrial Age has led to an increase of the average global temperature of 1.2 degrees Celsius, or 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit.The plan calls on the government to stop trying to make automobiles more fuel efficient and to block states from adopting California’s stringent automobile pollution standards.Ms. Furchtgott-Roth said any measures the United States would take to cut carbon would be undermined by rising emissions in countries like China, currently the planet’s biggest polluter. It would be impossible to convince China, to cut its emissions, she said.Mandy Gunasekara was chief of staff at the E.P.A. during the Trump administration and considers herself the force behind Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord. She led the section outlining plans for that agency, and said that regarding whether carbon emissions pose a danger to human health “there’s a misconception that any of the science is a settled issue.”The plan does not offer any proposals for curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously heating the planet.Leigh Vogel for The New York TimesBernard L. McNamee is a former Trump administration official who has worked as an adviser to fossil fuel companies as well as for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which spreads misinformation about climate change. He wrote the section of the strategy covering the Department of Energy, which said the national laboratories have been too focused on climate change and renewable energy. In an interview, Mr. McNamee said he believes the role of the agency is to make sure energy is affordable and reliable.Mr. Dans said a mandate of Project 2025 is to “investigate whether the dimensions of climate change exist and what can actually be done.” As for the influence of burning fossil fuels, he said, “I think the science is still out on that quite frankly.”In actuality, it is not.The top scientists in the United States concluded in an exhaustive study produced during the Trump administration that humans — the cars we drive, the power plants we operate, the forests we destroy — are to blame. “There is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence,” scientists wrote.Climate advocates said the Republican strategy would take the country in the wrong direction even as heat waves, drought and wildfires worsen because of emissions.“This agenda would be laughable if the consequences of it weren’t so dire,” said Christy Goldfuss, chief policy impact officer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.Republicans who have called for their party to accept climate change said they were disappointed by the blueprint and worried about the direction of the party.“I think its out-of-touch Beltway silliness and it’s not meeting Americans where they are,” said Sarah Hunt, president of the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, which works with Republican state officials on energy needs.Firefighters battling the Agua Fire in Soledad Canyon near Agua Dulce, Calif., last month.David Swanson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesShe called efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which is pouring money and jobs overwhelmingly into red states, particularly impractical.“Obviously as conservatives we’re concerned about fiscal responsibility, but if you look at what Republican voters think, a lot of Republicans in red states show strong support for provisions of the I.R.A.,” Ms. Hunt said.Representative John Curtis, Republican of Utah, who launched a conservative climate caucus, called it “vital that Republicans engage in supporting good energy and climate policy.”Without directly commenting on the G.O.P. blueprint, Mr. Curtis said “I look forward to seeing the solutions put forward by the various presidential candidates and hope there is a robust debate of ideas to ensure we have reliable, affordable and clean energy.”Benji Backer, executive chairman and founder of the American Conservation Coalition, a group of young Republicans who want climate action, said he felt Project 2025 was wrongheaded.“If they were smart about this issue they would have taken approach that said ‘the Biden administration has done things in a way they don’t agree with but here’s our vision’,” he said. “Instead they remove it from being a priority.”He noted climate change is a real concern among young Republicans. By a nearly two-to-one margin, polls have found, Republicans aged 18 to 39 years old are more likely to agree that “human activity contributes a great deal to climate change,” and that the federal government has a role to play in curbing it.Of Project 2025, he said, “This sort of approach on climate is not acceptable to the next generation.” More

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      Climate Activists and Steve King Unlikely Allies in Iowa Pipeline Fight

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      Liberal environmentalists and conservative landowners, led by the former congressman Steve King, are pressuring Republican candidates to oppose three Midwestern pipelines.Emma Schmidt, a lifelong environmental activist in Rockwell City, Iowa, had long searched for potent allies in her fight against a massive carbon dioxide pipeline planned for her state.But she never expected to find herself at former Representative Steve King’s house, making her case as she stared up at a pistol in the paw of a taxidermied raccoon in his home office.That meeting in June between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican who lost his seat in Congress in 2020 after incendiary racist comments was the beginning of a left-right alliance that is trying to push the debate of the pipeline to the forefront of the heated G.O.P. presidential caucuses.“We’re putting in a whole lot of money into pipelines that are not necessary, that bulldoze their way through some of the richest farmlands in the world, to sequester CO2,” said an incredulous Mr. King on Tuesday.Steve King, a former member of Congress who lost his seat after a series of racist comments, is an unlikely ally for liberal climate activists in Iowa. Joshua Lott/Getty ImagesThe $4.5 billion Summit, $3 billion Navigator and $630 million Wolf Carbon pipelines may not be front and center next month at the first Republican presidential debate. They probably won’t be featured in super PAC advertising or mentioned during Fox News appearances. But the pipelines capture a national debate with local consequences, and they will give candidates a chance to showcase their understanding of Iowa, the first state to weigh in on the Republican nominating fight — if they can navigate the issue.The Summit, Navigator and Wolf pipelines, fueled by federal tax credits embraced by both parties, would draw carbon dioxide from the factories that turn Iowa corn into ethanol. They would snake through 3,300 miles of farmland in Iowa and other Midwestern states, then pump the planet-warming gas into the bedrock beneath Illinois and North Dakota. And they are pitched as a climate protection measure, though some experts and environmentalists say it is only a partial solution at best.Earlier this month, an Iowa woman seemed to stump the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, when she asked how he would “help us in Iowa save our farmland from the CO2 pipelines.”Mr. Trump stammered that he was “working on that” and that he “had a plan to totally, uh, it’s such a ridiculous situation,” before reassuring the crowd, “if we win, that’s going to be taken care of.”The moment has been laughed off as a show of Mr. Trump’s ability to bluster his way through anything, but the issue is tricky: Several of the Republican candidates have cast doubt on the established climate science and would seem disinclined to back a project aimed at reducing carbon emissions. But opposing the pipeline also means opposing Iowa’s all-important ethanol industry.The state’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, has avoided taking a public position. Opponents believe she supports the deal, which is backed by some of her biggest political contributors, including Bruce Rastetter, founder of the Summit Agricultural Group. Ms. Reynolds’s office did not respond to requests for comment.The state’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, has avoided taking a public position on the pipeline, which is backed by one of her biggest political contributors. Kelsey Kremer/The Des Moines Register, via Associated PressPowerful figures from both parties have signed with the pipeline companies, including Terry Branstad, Ms. Reynolds’s predecessor, and Jess Vilsack, the son of another former Iowa governor and the current Democratic secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack. Agriculture giants like John Deere and A.D.M. have invested in the efforts.Presidential candidates have tried to skirt the issue; most campaigns declined to comment, including Mr. Trump’s. But campaign aides said this week that they knew a time for choosing was coming. The first public hearings on the Summit pipeline will begin on Aug. 22 in Fort Dodge, Iowa.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expecting questions later this week in a swing through the state, according to people familiar with the campaign.The left-right alliance is giving voice to Iowa landowners infuriated by the prospect that their land could be seized by eminent domain for the pipelines. Tim Baughman, who farms 330 acres with his sister in Crawford County, Iowa, brought his anti-pipeline sign to a Vivek Ramaswamy event in Dennison, eliciting a promise from the Republican entrepreneur to oppose the projects.“I’m fighting this to the end,” vowed Dan Wahl, who grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa on 160 acres near Spirit Lake, Iowa, and recently chased Summit surveyors off his land.The left-right alliance is giving voice to Iowa landowners concerned about the prospect that their land could be seized by eminent domain for the pipelines. Walker Pickering for The New York TimesSupporters — including agribusiness conglomerates and oil and gas tycoons — see the projects as a way to persuade liberal states like California it is possible to both continue ethanol production and fight global warming. If it works, so-called carbon capture and sequestration, the practice of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, could be expanded to oil and gas, extending the life of the fossil fuel economy.Dean Ferguson, president of the Canada-based Wolf Carbon Solutions’s American subsidiary, said in a statement that he was hopeful that the pipeline planned from Iowa to Illinois would be built through voluntary easements.“Our approach is to build lasting relationships with landowners, so we can work together for years to come,” he said.In a statement, Summit Carbon Solutions said 75 percent of Iowa landowners along the project route had signed voluntary easements “and more are signing every day.”To opponents, the pipelines are dangerous, taxpayer-subsidized boondoggles that will destroy farmland and do nothing to curb global warming. A carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured in tiny Satartia, Miss., in 2020, sending 40 people to the hospital, forcing the evacuation of more than 300 others and releasing more than 31,000 barrels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.“Climate change money should be spent on things that are proven to actually work,” said Jessica Mazour, the conservation program coordinator of the Sierra Club in Iowa, who is helping to unite environmental activists with conservative farmers who doubt climate change is real.The unusual alliance can be strained. Sherri Webb, 73, who owns 40 acres of farmland in Shelby County, Iowa, said she had her doubts about climate change: “I don’t believe it’s as bad as some people are thinking.” If anything, she added, she worries more about taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and away from her crops.But it was the threat of eminent domain that got her involved in the fight against the Summit pipeline. Summit Carbon Solutions says the pipeline on her land would be buried four feet deep, covered with top soil and reseeded. But her climate-friendly, no-till farm has been in her family for 123 years and hasn’t had the soil turned in decades. The pipeline digging, she said, will bring heavy diesel-powered equipment onto her property, and may cause erosion and crop loss for years. .Sherri Webb, who owns 40 acres of farmland in Shelby County, Iowa, says it was worries about losing land to eminent domain that got her involved in the fight against the pipeline. Walker Pickering for The New York TimesMs. Schmidt is fine with climate skepticism. “A key tenet for change,” she said, “is to meet people where they’re at.”Mr. King was first ousted from his committee assignments, then defeated in a primary challenge, after a series of racist comments culminated in an interview with The New York Times in which he asked, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”But Ms. Schmidt said that Mr. King, after 18 years in Congress, remained influential in conservative western Iowa.“I certainly never thought we’d be in a position to have a meeting where you have incredibly liberal socialists teaming with very right-wing QAnon believers,” she continued. “People have to open their minds a little bit, and sometimes they have to shut their mouths.”How Republican presidential candidates respond is, at this point, anyone’s guess. Despite Mr. Trump’s more recent comments, when he was president, his administration said it had no plan to stop the pipelines. In fact, a tax credit created in 2008 to incentivize carbon capture programs like Summit, Navigator and Wolf was expanded by a budget law in 2018 that Mr. Trump signed, and expanded again by a tax bill signed by Mr. Trump in 2020. The credit was expanded yet again by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.Mr. Rastetter has donated around $10,000 to Mr. Trump’s campaigns since 2016, along with the hundreds of thousands he has donated to national and state Republican interests over the past 15 years.Officials at Navigator declined to comment.Critics say Mr. Trump has every reason to oppose the pipeline now. He has called climate change a “hoax” devised by China, so the pipelines are billed as a solution to a problem he does not recognize. Even better, he could use his stated opposition to continue a feud with Ms. Reynolds, whom he has blasted for refusing to endorse him, said Jane Kleeb, a Nebraska Democrat and anti-pipeline activist who has been pressing Mr. Trump to get involved.“There’s no downside for him,” she said.When Mr. Ramaswamy, who has called climate activism a cult, was asked about the issue last month in Davenport, Iowa, he dismissed the pipelines as a solution in search of a problem.But in an interview this week, Mr. Ramaswamy did not blame economic and political interests in Iowa. They are merely responding to incentives set by the federal government, large states like California, and even climate-conscious European nations, he said.“The debate in Iowa is just collateral damage,” he said.Other candidates might have a tougher time threading that needle. The companies backing the pipelines frame them as a salvation for ethanol, which Iowa corn farmers depend on, in a world increasingly hostile to internal combustion engines. One candidate, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, does not have the luxury of silence. He has already championed the Summit pipeline, which would end in his state, telling The Bismarck Tribune in May that two carbon dioxide pipelines have operated safely in the state for years.“And then now it’s like these are the most dangerous things in the world,” he scoffed. More

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      L.G.B.T.Q. in America: ‘We Are Never Going Back to the Closet Darkness’

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      More from our inbox:How No Labels Can Help Fix U.S. PoliticsRadioactive Fallout From the Trinity TestThe Damage Caused by Climate Deniers Jamie WolfeTo the Editor:Re “The Number of L.G.B.T.Q. People Is Rising. So?,” by Jane Coaston (Opinion, July 24):Ms. Coaston’s report reveals both a fearsome and an exciting new world for the L.G.B.T. community. A world where we are seen and, mostly, accepted. This world could not be more different than most older gay Americans’ experience growing up.I recall the very day and hour, at age 6, that I knew I was gay, although I wouldn’t know what that meant for many years. On my first day of kindergarten, at recess, as I was running around the schoolyard with all the other students in my class, I stopped suddenly and said: “Wow! Boys are cool!”Seeing another gay person, or hearing any speck of validation for gay people, would seemingly never come to me in my more-conservative-than-Mississippi community in South Jersey.But we are a community now with many, many straight allies, and no matter what the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world have to say about it, we are never going back to the closet darkness.I will never again be as rare as a five-legged unicorn.We’ve come a long way, baby!Ted GallagherNew YorkTo the Editor:Re “They Checked Out Books to ‘Hide the Pride.’ It Did the Opposite” (news article, July 23):This article, about an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. protest at a San Diego library that backfired, once again emphasizes the difference between “born” and “made.” Reading about the gay “lifestyle” does not make one gay any more than reading about cowboys makes one a cowboy.Little boys as young as 4 know that they are different from their friends. As they grow older, they try to figure out why, and it finally dawns on them as they struggle to find the answer.Once they realize that girls don’t hold the same fascination for them that they do for their buddies, they must then work out what they do with this knowledge. For many it takes a lifetime.Many Americans are finally moving from condemnation to acceptance.Elizabeth KeranenBakersfield, Calif.How No Labels Can Help Fix U.S. Politics Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Joe Manchin Is Dreaming,” by Jamelle Bouie (column, nytimes.com, July 25):I am a longtime supporter of the No Labels mission. The point of No Labels is to support members of Congress who would have the audacity to sit with members of the opposing party and attempt to find common ground, to craft nuanced legislation that can pass, and to find acceptable solutions to the issues that the parties would rather campaign on than solve.The parties have been dominated in recent years by their more extreme members, with the concept of bipartisanship and compromise seen as an evil that must be banished. The Problem Solvers Caucus in the House is an outgrowth of No Labels’ efforts. It is composed of staunch Democrats and Republicans who hold their ideology precious, but realize that in a pluralistic world, a common-sense compromise to move the ball even slightly down the field is better than the vitriolic stagnation we have witnessed over the past decades.No one is pretending that partisanship is not a part of the human condition. Joe Manchin and the rest of us who support No Labels merely see a better way forward. And for that we get pilloried.Bruce GorenLos AngelesTo the Editor:Re “There’s No Escaping Trump,” by Gail Collins and Bret Stephens (The Conversation, July 25):I agree with Ms. Collins about No Labels running a presidential candidate, as any step taken that risks putting Donald Trump back in power is an existential risk for our democracy.However, as a longtime Democrat, I also agree with Mr. Stephens and feel as if I don’t have a political home anymore.I would love to see a socially liberal, economically moderate candidate, and nobody fits that bill these days.I think No Labels needs to do more at the grass-roots level. Put up candidates for county commissioner, school boards, state legislatures, etc., and build long-term support for congressional or presidential candidates.If No Labels plays spoiler in these races, the impacts will not be as catastrophic as electing Donald Trump.John ButlerBroomfield, Colo.Radioactive Fallout From the Trinity Test U.S. Department of DefenseTo the Editor:“Analysis Finds Fallout Spread Much Farther Than Experts Thought” (news article, July 22), about fallout from the test of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in 1945, is timely and very important. The article describes significant new findings about the extent and severity of the fallout but overlooks a few key issues.A 2019 article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists presents evidence of a dramatic increase in infant mortality in areas of New Mexico in the months after the Trinity test, although infant mortality in the state had otherwise declined steadily from 1940 to 1960.My own research documents scores of investigations into the Trinity fallout (perhaps 40 studies) over the decades by various U.S. agencies and groups. Many were classified as secret and others were simply quietly buried and received little acknowledgment, but they document scientists’ concerns about residual radioactivity from the Trinity test in the soil, plants and trees in New Mexico.Let us hope that this renewed publicity will help refocus attention on the long overlooked Trinity downwinders.Janet Farrell BrodiePacific Palisades, Calif.The writer is emerita professor of history at Claremont Graduate University and the author of “The First Atomic Bomb: The Trinity Site in New Mexico.”The Damage Caused by Climate Deniers Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:As we all witness the massive destruction to our planet and the hundreds of billions of dollars of damage done each year as a result of climate change, and the regularity of “once in a hundred years” climate disasters, one cannot help but point the finger at those in power who either deny the truth of climate change science, such as Ted Cruz and many others, or who argue that the costs to our economy of taking necessary measures outweigh the benefits (most of the rest of the Republican Party).As to the first group, there are no words other than tell them to look at the science. As to the second group, why don’t you give some thought to the hundreds of billions of dollars of damage that are resulting each year from climate change? That, too, is a “cost” to our economy that should be part of your equation of “costs” and “benefits.”These groups are proving themselves to be little more than lap dogs for right-wing interests, political ideologues who peddle dogma and propaganda over truth, and members of a climate-denying cult who seek to prove their allegiance to the cult by promoting their grotesquely misplaced ideas.These groups are doing more damage to our country, to the world, to citizens of all states (red and blue), races and economic groups than many of the common criminals who spend decades in prison for committing crimes that cause far less damage.David S. ElkindGreenwich, Conn. More

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      British Conservatives’ Commitment to Green Policy Is Tested

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      British conservatives kept a seat in a recent election by opposing an ultralow emissions zone, and some are now questioning ambitious emissions-reduction targets.Britain, blanketed by cool, damp weather, has seemed like one of the few places in the Northern Hemisphere not sweltering this summer. Yet a fierce political debate over how to curb climate change has suddenly erupted, fueled by economic hardship and a recent election surprise.The surprise came last week in a London suburb, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where the Conservative Party held on to a vulnerable seat in Parliament in a by-election after a voter backlash against the expansion of a low-emission zone, which will penalize people who drive older, more polluting cars.The Conservatives successfully used the emission zone plan as a wedge issue to prevail in a district they were forecast to lose. It didn’t go unnoticed in the halls of Parliament, where even though lawmakers are in recess, they have managed to agitate over environmental policy for four days running.Britain’s Conservative government is now calling into question its commitment to an array of ambitious emissions-reduction targets. Tory critics say these goals would impose an unfair burden on Britons who are suffering because of a cost-of-living crisis. Uxbridge, they argued, shows there is a political price for forging ahead.With a general election looming next year, the Tories also see an opportunity to wield climate policy as a club against the opposition Labour Party, which once planned to pour 28 billion pounds, or about $36 billion, a year into green jobs and industries but scaled back its own ambitions amid the economic squeeze.On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would approach environmental policies in a “proportionate and pragmatic a way that doesn’t unnecessarily give people more hassle and more costs in their lives.”It was a strikingly circumspect statement given Britain’s self-proclaimed leadership in climate policy, which goes back to Margaret Thatcher and includes hosting the annual United Nations climate conference in 2021. And it clearly reflected the new political thinking in the aftermath of the Uxbridge vote.Government officials insist Mr. Sunak is not giving up on a ban on the sale of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2030. Britain remains committed to a benchmark goal of being a net-zero — or carbon neutral — economy by 2050, which is enshrined in law. But on Tuesday, a senior minister, Michael Gove, said he wanted to review a project to end the installation of new gas boilers in homes.Traffic at the edge of the London Ultra-Low Emission Zone this month.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockEven before Mr. Sunak’s comments, critics contended that Britain’s historically strong record on climate policy had been waning.The Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises the government, recently said Britain “has lost its clear global leadership position on climate action.” The group cited the government’s failure to use the spike in fuel prices to reduce energy demand and bolster renewables. It also noted Britain’s consent for a new coal mine, and its support for new oil and gas production in the North Sea.Last month, Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio, blaming “apathy” over the environment for his departure, though he was also a close ally of the former prime minister, Boris Johnson. In a letter to Mr. Sunak, Mr. Goldsmith wrote, “The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our prime minister, are simply uninterested.”Climate experts said Britain’s economic troubles fractured what had been a broad political consensus on the need for aggressive action. The schism isn’t just between the two main parties: Even within the Conservative and Labour parties, there are fissures between those who continue to call for far-reaching goals and those who want to scale back those ambitions.“This used to be an issue of across-party consensus; now it is not,” said Tom Burke, the chairman of E3G, an environmental research group. “The Tories have gone out of their way to turn it into a wedge issue, and I think that’s a mistake.”In Uxbridge, however, the strategy worked. The district, with its leafy streets and suburban homes, has one of the capital’s highest ratios of car dependency. That made plans by London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, to expand an ultra-low-emissions zone to encompass the district a potent issue for Conservatives, who opposed widening the zone.While the plan aims to improve London’s poor air quality, rather than reach net-zero targets, it was vulnerable to accusations that was piling on costs to consumers — in this case drivers of older, more polluting, vehicles.“It’s a really big impact at a time when people are concerned more generally about the cost of living,” said David Simmonds, a Conservative lawmaker in neighboring district of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. “In the short term, a lot of people who don’t have the money to buy an electric vehicle or a compliant vehicle are caught by this.”Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio.Matt Dunham/Associated PressThe surprise Conservative victory also sent alarm bells ringing within Labour. It caused tension between Mr. Khan, who insists the expansion will go ahead, and the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, who seemed to want a delay.“We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet,” Mr. Starmer said after the defeat. “We’ve got to face up to that and learn the lessons.”Even before the by-election, Labour had backtracked on its plan to invest billions a year on green industries. It blamed rising borrowing costs, which spiked during the ill-fated premiership last year of Liz Truss. Now, instead of rolling out spending in the first year of a Labour government, the party said it would phase it in.Labour’s fear was that voters would conclude the incoming government would have to raise taxes, which would give the Tories another opening. “Economic stability, financial stability, always has to come first, and it will do with Labour,” Rachel Reeves, who leads economic policy for the Labour Party, told the BBC.Such language is worlds away from a year ago, when Ed Miliband, who speaks for Labour on climate issues, told Climate Forward, a New York Times conference in London, that “the imprudent, reckless thing to do is not to make the investment.”He did, however, also argue that consumers should not carry all the burden of the transition. “The government has to collectivize some of those costs to make this transition fair,” said Mr. Miliband, a former party leader.Climate activists said Labour had made a mistake by highlighting the costs of its plan at a time of tight public finances. But given the broad public support for climate action, particularly among the young, some argue that a debate over which climate policies are the best need not end in failure for Labour.“Voters want something done,” Mr. Burke said. “They don’t want to pay the price for it but equally, they don’t want the government to say they are not doing anything about climate change.”Protesters rally against the Ultra-Low Emission Zone, or ULEZ, this month in London.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockFor all the new skepticism, climate policy is also deeply embedded in the Conservative Party. Mrs. Thatcher was one of the first world leaders to talk about the threat to the planet from greenhouse gases in 1989. A former prime minister, Theresa May, passed the net-zero pledge in 2019, and Mr. Johnson, as mayor of London, conceived the low-emission zone that boomeranged against Labour in Uxbridge, which Mr. Johnson had represented in Parliament, last week.Alice Bell, the head of climate policy at the Wellcome Trust, noted that some Tory lawmakers were rebelling against Mr. Sunak because they were worried about losing their seats by appearing to be against firm action on climate change.Extreme weather, she said, would continue to drive public opinion on climate change. While Britain’s summer has been cool, thousands of Britons have been vacationing in the scorching heat of Italy and Spain, to say nothing of those evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes in the face of deadly wildfires.“I’m wondering if we’re going to have some people coming back from holiday as climate activists,” Ms. Bell said. More

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      At No Labels Event, a Few Disagreements on Policy Seep In

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      Senator Joe Manchin III and former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. stressed that they were not a third-party presidential ticket — yet. And on issues like climate and guns, they debated their views.As the ostensibly bipartisan interest group No Labels discovered on Monday, consensus campaigning and governance is all well and good until it comes time for the details.At an event at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., the group had something of a soft launch of its potential third-party bid for the presidency when Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Jon Huntsman Jr., the former Republican governor of Utah, formally released No Labels’ policy manifesto for political compromise.The two men took pains to say they were not the bipartisan presidential ticket of a No Labels candidacy, and that no such ticket would be formed if the Republican and Democratic nominees for 2024 would just embrace their moderation — “that won’t happen if they’re not threatened,” Mr. Manchin said threateningly.On the lofty matter of cooperation and compromise, both men were all in, as were their introducers, Joseph I. Lieberman, a former Democratic senator turned independent, Benjamin Chavis, a civil rights leader and Democrat, and Pat McCrory, a former Republican governor of North Carolina.“The common-sense majority has no voice in this country,” Mr. Huntsman said. “They just watch the three-ring circus play out.”But the dream unity ticket seemed anything but unified when it came down to the nuts and bolts.One questioner from the audience raised her concerns about worsening climate change, the extreme weather that was drenching New England and Mr. Manchin’s securing of a new natural gas pipeline in his home state.To that, Mr. Manchin fell back on his personal preference, promoted in No Labels’ manifesto, for an “all of the above” energy policy that embraced renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, as well as continued production of climate-warming fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.Mr. Huntsman jumped in to propose putting “a price on carbon,” something usually done through fossil fuel emissions taxes, to curb oil, gas and coal use, proposals that Mr. Manchin, hailing from a coal and gas state, roundly rejected.Asked about gun control, the two could not even seem to agree on the relatively modest proposals in the No Labels plan: universal background checks on firearms purchases and raising the buying age for military-style semiautomatic weapons to 21 from 18.Mr. Manchin, who co-wrote a universal background check bill in 2012 only to see it die in the Senate, said “there’s a balance to be had” in curbing gun purchases. Mr. Huntsman fell back on his party’s decade-long dodge on stricter gun regulation — mental health care.They even seemed to disagree on Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Republican from Georgia. Mr. Huntsman bristled at being asked about her statement that the United States should withdraw from NATO, saying serious policymakers are too often asked questions about “the flamethrowers.” Mr. Manchin said he would not speak ill of any sitting member of Congress.“All 535 people elected to Congress want to do good,” he said.One thing both men agreed on: No Labels need not divulge the big donors that are fueling the current drive toward a possible third-party bid for the White House. Democratic opponents of the effort have accused the group of hiding a donor list that leans heavily Republican, proof, opponents say, that the drive is all about electing former President Donald J. Trump to a second term.No Labels has denied that but declined to reveal its current donors.“I don’t think it’s right or good. I think there should be transparency and accountability,” Mr. Huntsman said of the group’s decision. “But that’s not the way you play the game.”He added, “The system sucks.” More