1. Global leaders meet in Paris to cut emissions at climate change talks
2. Nearly 200 nations close to agreement on global warming at climate change talks
3. Fracking reduces carbon emissions
4. Attacking free speech on climate change

Even before Al Gore allowed his inner circle to leak the news that he’s considering a 2016 run for the Democratic nomination for president, the election has taken on a green tinge. President Obama calls climate change our biggest national security threat, and Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders loyally repeat this line.

Now, U.S. News & World Report is calling 2016 the “Climate Change Election.”

“For as long as Americans have voted and pundits have bloviated, each presidential election cycle has seemed The Most Important in All History,” the magazine contends. “Next year, though, may truly – actually, seriously – be different, if climate scientists are right. The next candidate Americans send to the Oval Office, experts say, may also be the very last who can avert catastrophe from climate change.”

The magazine goes straight to Michael Mann, the researcher and rabble-rouser whose “hockey stick” graph (and accompanying theory) has long been debunked.

“This will be a make-or-break presidency as far as our ability to avert a climate change catastrophe,” he says.

So this is the claim: If voters don’t choose the right candidate, we could all be doomed.

But the claim of “this is our last chance” is wearing thin.

“For decades now, those concerned about global warming have been predicting the so-called ‘tipping point’ – the point beyond which it’ll be too late to stave off catastrophic global warming,” Michael Bastach reported for the Daily Caller in May. “It seems like every year the ‘tipping point’ is close to being reached, and that the world must get rid of fossil fuels to save the planet. That is, until we’ve passed that deadline and the next such ‘tipping point’ is predicted.”

He pointed out that eight years ago, on the eve of the 2008 election, the U.N. said essentially the same thing.

“Governments are running out of time to address climate change and to avoid the worst effects of rising temperatures, an influential U.N. panel warned yesterday,” the (London) Guardian reported. “Greater energy efficiency, renewable electricity sources and new technology to dump carbon dioxide underground can all help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the experts said. But there could be as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more.”

Four years later, a U.N. official warned that electing anyone but Barack Obama (who was seeking his second term) would doom the planet.

“It’s the last chance we have to get anything approaching 2 degrees Centigrade,” said U.N. Foundation President Tim Wirth. “If we don’t do it now, we are committing the world to a drastically different place.”

Actually, such claims go back even further. In 1989, U.N. officials warned entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Here’s the trouble with such claims – and with the current climate change debate. Doom-saying is less and less effective, the louder and more strident it gets.

The 2016 election will be about many things, not just climate change.