Only two Senate candidates in eight battleground states mention climate online
Most Americans feel unease or alarm about the climate crisis and, in both red and blue states, want to know how political leaders are going to fix it, the Guardian reported. But in midterm election campaigns across the U.S., candidates have responded to that desire with near silence. Three weeks before the midterms, the unfolding climate crisis, and the imperative to transition to cleaner, less volatile forms of energy, has been starkly absent on campaign trails, with what the Guardian described as a widespread climate omerta even among previously pro-green Democrats.
The omission is measurable on candidate websites. Among all Democratic and Republican candidates in the eight battleground states that will determine control of the U.S. Senate — Alaska, Georgia, Maine, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — none mention “climate” on their campaign websites other than El-Sayed and Talarico, the Guardian found.
The disconnect comes during a year in which the U.S. endured a record hot summer, a year after deadly flash floods swept central Texas, and soaring costs equating to roughly $2,000 per household in extra energy and mortgage payments — costs the Guardian linked to the country’s dependence on a fossil fuel supply scrambled by Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran.
The silence runs against what voters say they want. Three times as many voters in the eight swing states want politicians to spend more time talking about the climate crisis than those who want to hear less about it, a large Environmental Voter Project survey from last month found, with majorities in each state saying they are more likely to vote for a candidate who prioritizes a transition to clean energy.
“The climate hushers are dead wrong – voters want to hear more about climate change, not less, and they will reward politicians who are strong climate leaders,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, executive director of the Environmental Voter Project, which conducted the poll. “Politicians should always tailor their message to their district but it’s pure fiction to say that talking about climate change will lose you votes.”
“In fact, it’s a huge vote-winner, even with independents in red states who favor fairly aggressive climate action by a four-to-one margin,” Stinnett added. “There’s this idea that climate has become a curse word and you shouldn’t say it. That’s just wrong.”
The data indicates a mainstream position among U.S. voters is concern about climate change and support for a prompt switch away from fossil fuels, the Guardian reported. More Americans are starting to link their rising living costs with fossil fuels and climate-driven disasters, too, despite a dwindling interest in political and media circles to mention such connections.
“The norm has shifted, yet so many politicians seem stuck in a 1990s world where clean energy and climate change are radical, fringe things that only environmentalists think about,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, an expert in climate communication at Yale University. “This climate-hushing strategy, which has been adopted by many politicians, is not a logical response to where voters are.” Yale’s own polling has found a majority of Americans remain worried about global heating despite the electoral success of Donald Trump, who has called climate science “a hoax,” the Guardian noted.
The polling found especially strong support for clean-energy candidates in major oil-and-gas-producing states. In Texas, 54% of voters said they would be more likely to vote for a pro-renewables candidate, compared with 19% who said they would be less likely, with more Texans expressing a favorable view of solar and wind energy than of oil. In Alaska, 63% of voters said they would back a campaign that prioritizes the transition to clean energy.
Despite the polling, Republicans have sought to paint Talarico as an eco-extremist bent on shutting down the oil and gas industry, the Guardian reported. Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued Republican candidate, has called his opponent “Tofu Talarico” and an enemy of the fossil fuel sector. At a rally this month, Trump said about Talarico: “In Texas, he talks about: ‘I’m a vaygan [sic], I’m a vaygan.’ He’s a vaygan meaning he likes lettuce.” The Guardian noted that the president mispronounced the word “vegan” and that Talarico is not a vegan. Trump added: “And now he goes to every barbecue available. He then throws up immediately after eating the steak. Throwing up all over the place.”
The Trump administration, which has moved to eliminate any limits on greenhouse gas pollution while bolstering the fossil fuel industry, considers the climate issue to be in full retreat, the Guardian reported. “You don’t hear the word ‘climate change’ as much as you did two years ago, because the legs have been knocked out from under that movement,” Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, claimed last week.
Media mentions of the climate crisis have dropped in the past year, and the issue has slipped down the list of voters’ stated priorities as inflation has taken its toll and alarm over the Iran war and the state of U.S. democracy has surged, the Guardian reported. Candidates faced with limited cash and fractured voter attention spans have found it expedient to focus on those headline topics rather than global heating. Attitudes toward the climate crisis also continue to differ sharply by party affiliation, with Democrats still overwhelmingly the most concerned about the issue and Republicans far more likely to see it as a trivial or even non-existent problem — a split that has spurred many Democrats running in states previously won by Trump to bury any mention of climate, although some have bucked the strategy.
Several Democrats in competitive races have nonetheless moved away from the environment. Jon Ossoff, seeking to retain his Senate seat in Georgia, has ditched mentions of the environment in favor of focusing on the Iran war and inflation, the Guardian reported. El-Sayed, who previously campaigned for 100% renewable energy, told Fox News in August, “Look, I’m not going to defend the Green New Deal.” Talarico, who previously compared oil and gas to 1980s cassette tapes that are “not gonna last,” has struck a very different tone in this campaign. “I support our oil and gas industry,” Talarico, aiming for a first Democratic win in Texas in decades, said last month. “I had family members who worked in the industry. I went to public schools here in Texas, funded by the oil and gas industry.”
In Alaska, Mary Peltola, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate who has run on a tagline of “fish, family, freedom,” has called for the return of tax credits for clean energy while also demanding more oil be refined in the state and pushing for the approval of a large oil project in the Alaskan Arctic. “Increasing Alaska energy production is critical to addressing the affordability crisis, and Mary will aggressively advocate for every solution on the table – including increased oil and gas production, as well as restoring tax credits for solar, wind and hydropower projects that were cut by Dan Sullivan,” a Peltola spokesperson said, referencing her Republican opponent, who voted with other GOP lawmakers to gut Joe Biden-era legislation to boost renewables.
In Florida, Angie Nixon, a Democrat running a surprisingly competitive U.S. Senate race in a state that has become a Republican stronghold in recent years, has repeatedly mentioned her state’s vulnerability to the climate crisis during her campaign, unlike most other candidates from both parties. “Voters are concerned about the climate. Sometimes people just don’t understand how it impacts the cost of things like insurance, which is unfortunate,” Nixon said. “A lot of Florida will be under water in the next few decades and I’m worried about that. I want the world to be around for my kids. Young people really care about climate change because they know it will really affect them.”
Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator and climate advocate, has argued that his party has long had a “weak” message on the climate crisis because it simply repeats back to voters what polls tell them the most pressing issues are. His party should instead actively raise and weaponize the climate crisis, Whitehouse insists, much like how Republicans do for far more niche topics, such as trans people playing sports. “This is a story with villains – the greedy fossil fuel companies wrecking the planet and sticking Americans with the bill for the damage,” Whitehouse said. “Frustrated voters are hungry to see politicians really fighting for them, and the climate fight presents a real opportunity to show them that we are.”
For the growing cohort of Americans who have had their lives upended by extreme events such as storms, floods and wildfires — by one estimate, about a third of all people in the U.S. over the previous two years — there is scant evidence of a fight being waged on their behalf to stem the rising temperatures that worsen such calamities, the Guardian reported. At a meeting of disaster survivors in Kerrville, Texas, last week, several people who endured deadly flash floods that swept through the region last year — killing 136 people, including 28 at a riverside Christian camp for girls — expressed frustration that politicians have tuned out of their plight.
“I think that a lot of politicians couldn’t be bothered, they couldn’t be bothered by it,” said Georgia Bishop, an 18-year-old whose best friend, Felicity Jarmon, died in the floods. “They see it, they know it, they’ve heard us scream to the rooftops about it. But it just seems to be: ‘Well, this is weather, this is life.’”
A developing El Niño climate event, already one of the strongest ever recorded, is set to further accelerate extreme heat and flooding risk in parts of the U.S. in the coming months. Bishop said at this point she wouldn’t be surprised to see a snowstorm in Texas in July; the political indifference to this is, she added, “infuriating.”
The Republican and Democratic Senate candidates from the key eight battleground states — Alaska, Georgia, Maine, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — were all contacted for comment about their stance, or lack of it, on the climate crisis, the Guardian reported.