Action taken in the next 1-2 presidential terms may determine the future viability of the planet.
The candidates have plans dealing with this on their web sites, but generally they speak about reducing carbon emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by the year 2050 - so long after the next president's term as to be somewhat analogous to JFK having said "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this century is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."
A debate would help focus the candidates and the nation on assessing whether the candidates' plans are adequate, and what hopeful steps we can take as a nation to rebuild our economy around clean, low-carbon energy technologies like the
ITER project, which congress inexplicably zeroed funding for in the last omnibus budget bill.
From
ScienceDebate2008