WASHINGTON — The U.S. presidential campaign has focused heavily on jobs, pushing other once high-profile issues to the side. It dismays activists who have spent decades promoting environmental issues, gay rights, gun control and other topics to the center of national attention.
Topics suffering downgrades in campaign attention include these:
CLIMATE CHANGE
Of the roughly 50,000 words spoken in this month's three presidential debates, for example, none were "climate change," ''global warming" or "greenhouse gas."
With fewer than half of Americans believing that human activity contributes to global warming, according to Pew Research, President Barack Obama talks far less about climate change than he did four years ago. When he locked up the Democratic nomination in June 2008, he said future generations would recall "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."
