Democrats are largely avoiding climate change on the campaign trail ahead of this year’s election, marking a sharp shift from 2022, when many candidates highlighted Congress’s major clean-energy legislation. With inflation and the cost of living ranking higher among voters’ concerns, Democratic candidates in states such as Texas and Alaska are emphasizing fossil-fuel jobs and energy costs instead, even as climate-related ballot measures remain before voters and global temperatures continue to rise.
Before the 2022 midterm elections, many Democrats tried to make global warming a campaign issue, shining a spotlight on the major clean-energy bill that Congress passed that summer. This year, however, many Democratic candidates are avoiding climate change, evidence of a significant shift within the party.
There has recently been little discussion among Democrats of rising global temperatures, sea-level rise and worsening wildfires. The party has fielded Senate candidates who actively support their states’ fossil-fuel industries, including James Talarico of Texas and Mary Peltola of Alaska. Even Democratic governors in blue states, including New York’s Kathy Hochul and Massachusetts’ Maura Healey, are again supporting expanded natural-gas supplies to reduce costs.
Many elected Democrats still say they want to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Some, however, say they are unwilling to emphasize the issue while Americans are more focused on rising prices and inflation. Recent polling shows that voters consider climate change a problem, but it tends to rank low on their list of priorities. The economy ranks as the top issue for voters.
“Climate change has become a huge concern for voters, and in many ways it’s become a symbol of the cultural elitism that people associate with the Democratic Party,” said Adam Jentleson, a veteran Democratic operative who now runs the Searchlight Institute think tank. That has encouraged Democrats to talk less about climate.
“What we found in our polling is that when you list it as a priority, people immediately start thinking that you’re trying to make things more expensive for them and limit their choices as consumers,” Jentleson said. “It also takes away from your focus on other issues and makes it much more advantageous to focus on the cost of living.”
A different electoral strategy
In the last election, many Democrats hoped that focusing on climate change would help motivate young voters. But it did not work. In 2024, two years after the party passed the largest climate bill in U.S. history, young people turned away from the Democratic Party and supported the election of Donald J. Trump, who calls global warming a hoax and is openly hostile to renewable energy.
This year, Democrats are competing for the Senate majority in many states that voted for Trump. It is difficult to win elections in places such as Alaska and Texas without supporting oil and gas, which are major industries and sources of employment in both states.
For example, in 2022, Talarico, then a state representative, pledged not to accept donations from fossil-fuel companies. He has since changed his approach. In a campaign advertisement last month, he said he would “fight for the good-paying oil and gas jobs that power our economy.”
Neither Talarico nor Peltola has faced much backlash from environmental groups, which generally favor Democrats over Republicans. Peltola’s score from the League of Conservation Voters is low, but at 73 percent it is still higher than the scores of all current Senate Republicans. The group’s evaluation of Peltola contrasts with its evaluation of her Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan, which is 8 percent.
Climate change has not completely disappeared from this year’s election. A long list of state ballot initiatives and local referendums will affect energy and environmental policy.
In California, voters will decide whether to streamline the state’s environmental review of projects such as homes and water systems, a change with potentially far-reaching effects. Colorado voters are deciding whether to recognize natural-gas rights in the state constitution. Massachusetts residents will vote on whether to establish a “Nature for All” fund.
Some experts believe climate change will eventually become a major political issue again, particularly as global temperatures continue to rise.
Connecting climate to everyday costs
Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has urged politicians to keep talking about climate. She argues that doing so does not have to make voting more expensive, but says politicians should connect climate policy to issues that voters care about immediately, including rising electricity bills and expensive gasoline.
“If you’re talking about data centers, if you’re talking about clean air, if you’re talking about making energy affordable, these are all ways to really talk about climate change,” Stokes said. Stokes writes about the rise and fall of the 2022 climate-change law in her recent book, The Carbon Wave. “Different issues have cycles of attention, and depending on the climate, they will come back to attention again.”
From the sky to the clouds
America’s data-center boom is pushing high-tech companies into the unexpected realm of aircraft boneyards. Several companies are removing engines from old jets and converting them into generators to supply power to data centers. The approach is a quick workaround that provides electricity immediately, but it produces more pollution than traditional gas-fired generators. Environmentalists describe it as a step backward.
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Source: www.nytimes.com