Mexico’s likely next president is a scientist. Politics has her mostly quiet on climate threats

By DORANY PINEDA and SUMAN NAISHADHAM
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Sea-level rise and increasingly ferocious storms are eroding thousands of miles of Mexico’s coastline. Drought is draining reservoirs dry and creating severe water shortages. Deadly heat is straining people and crops. But the leading presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum isn’t making climate a central part of her campaign ahead of the June 2 election. This despite the fact that she is an environmental scientist and a co-author of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. That is because as many countries move away from the burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas, Sheinbaum’s mentor and popular leader, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has moved his country in the opposite direction.