Trump accused of lying as he denies saying climate change is a hoax, while Clinton pledges more support for clean energy
The two Presidential candidates in the US election race clashed last night over their stance on climate change, during a heated televised debate which saw Trump deny he ever labelled climate change a "hoax", despite repeated tweets and statements from the businessman questioning the scientific consensus on climate change.
While Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton reiterated her pledge to provide more support for clean energy - including the deployment of half a billion more solar panels across the country and more funding for a "modern electric grid" - Republican candidate Trump distanced himself from previous claims that global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese.
"I did not. I did not. I do not say that," he told Clinton, despite a widely shared tweet sent by him in 2012 describing global warming as being "created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive".
More recently, Trump gave an interview this summer in which he described himself as "not a big believer in manmade climate change", adding that while there "could be some impact" from a changing climate he did not "believe it's a devastating impact".
"I would say it goes up, it goes down, and I think it's very much like this over the years," he told the Miami Herald. "We'll see what happens. I mean, we'll see what happens... Certainly, climate has changed."
During the course of a chaotic and wide-ranging debate, the two candidates touched on environmental issues on several occasions. Clinton opened the debate by highlighting the role clean energy investment could play in the US economic recovery, building on a key theme of President Obama's second term.
"I want us to invest in you," she said. "I want us to invest in your future. That means jobs in infrastructure, in advanced manufacturing, innovation and technology, clean, renewable energy, and small business, because most of the new jobs will come from small business."
Later Clinton set out her plans to build on President Obama's climate policies, promising America could deliver clean energy to power every home. "We can deploy a half a billion more solar panels," she said. "We can have enough clean energy to power every home. We can build a new modern electric grid. That's a lot of jobs; that's a lot of new economic activity."
But Trump hit back with a reference to the 2011 Solyndra scandal, which saw the US solar start-up collapse, leaving taxpayers liable for a £535m federal loan.
"She talks about solar panels," he said. "We invested in a solar company, our country. That was a disaster. They lost plenty of money on that one."
The Republican nominee then went on to label the US' current energy policy a "disaster". "Now, look, I'm a great believer in all forms of energy, but we're putting a lot of people out of work," he said. "Our energy policies are a disaster. Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt. You can't do what you're looking to do with $20tr in debt."
Later in the debate, Trump claimed nuclear disarmament poses a greater threat to the world than global warming. "The single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons, not global warming, like you think and your - your president thinks," he said.
Following an ill-tempered debate that early polls suggested Clinton had won comfortably, fact-checkers rushed to assess both candidates performance, quickly seizing on Trump's verifiably false claim he did not regard manmade climate change as a hoax.
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