A recent New York Times piece suggested that Democrats should stop talking about climate change, sparking predictable Fox News alerts about “the end of the climate change hoax.”
While I agree there are some setting where the climate discussion is not going to win points, polls do show that Americans are increasingly freaked out by a planet that is speaking more plainly every day.
Key is, know your audience.
UPDATE:
My qualifier is that I am on the front line of deployment for clean energy, and the allies I have are often conservative Republican farmers and landowners, who do not accept human caused climate change, even though they want clean energy, and get why it’s important for a number of reasons.
So I don’t have a purity test to screen those I am working with, and I don’t make it a priority to change their minds on the science as long as they are with me on the solutions.
At the moment, I might add, it is still a pitched township by township battle, but we are winning, just not quickly enough, yet.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on X:
Top 10 reasons why Democrats need to talk about climate change now:
In some states, the top economic issue is the home insurance meltdown. Start with a big cost, add a huge increase, and you get big cost impact on families.
Behind the cost impact is huge hassle factor, as insurers abandon customers and whole markets, and families suddenly face massive “get new insurance” problems.
Insurance meltdown cascades into mortgage markets and property values. Florida, first and worst into this mess, now leads the country in lost residential property value.
The economic pain, bad already, will widen and worsen. One warning is a $25 trillion hit to global real estate markets. That’s Crash-level stuff.
The connection to climate change is obvious. 92% of Texans are concerned about home insurance cost; 66% see the link to “climate-driven extreme weather.”
In Florida, 46% of Trump voters (yes, Trump voters!) see the link between their insurance meltdown and “climate change.” The public gets it. We push on an open door.
Insurance meltdowns happen “gradually, then all at once.” When “all at once” hits (and it will), Democrats will want to have built a sturdy foundation of honesty and credibility to contrast with Republican and fossil-fuel lies.
Be prepared, is the motto. Truth-teller is the role. Which means telling it.
Electricity costs are slamming Americans, as a result of a not-so-covert Trump plan to stall or block inexpensive clean energy.
Every blocked kilowatt of clean energy comes instead from fossil fuel. Customers’ rates go WAY up, and all that extra cost families pay goes to (cue drumroll) Trump’s corrupt fossil fuel donors. It’s on purpose.
It’s easy to prove that clean is cheaper: grids run the least expensive power first, and what they run first is clean power. When that runs out, they go up their “generation stack” to more-expensive fossil fuel units.
(Add enough clean power to the grid, and those big polluting units don’t run at all — because they cost too much.)
Or you can look at power contracts like Revolution Wind’s, whose offshore wind power by contract comes on our grid at 9 cents per kWh, into a grid that averages 18 cents per kWh.
My four-year-old grandchild knows that 9 is less than 18, but Trumpsters lie about this constantly. BTW: People don’t like liars.
Fossil fuel’s climate denial fraud operation and dark money corruption operation are villains right out of Central Casting (cue the moustache twirl).
We shouldn’t leave the villains out of the story. Every story is better with a villain, and these are first-class villains. We would do well to talk loudly about the villainy.
Many Americans think Democrats are “weak” and “don’t fight.”
If we want to shed those labels, the best way to do that is to wage a big ol’ fight; better still against bad ol’ villains; better still if the fight is against fraud and corruption to protect families from being swindled.
Last, but definitely not least: It’s fun as hell to fight the bad guys!! So let’s saddle up for a big ol’ fight.
New York Times:
Sam Forstag, a Democrat running for Congress in Montana, is in many ways a familiar kind of progressive: He is a union worker calling for taxing the rich and expanding Medicare for all Americans.
But there’s one topic he appears to avoid, in his platform and in public forums. When asked recently about the growing threat of wildfires and drought in the West, he discussed a terrible ski season and record-high temperatures but did not name the climate crisis directly.
The Democratic U.S. House candidates Trey Martin, a union ironworker in Oklahoma, and Chris Reichard, an electrician and veteran running in Missouri, are also steering somewhat clear of what was once a centerpiece of many progressive political campaigns. Even in a blue district in Minnesota, Kaela Berg, a Democratic state legislator who works as a flight attendant, mentions climate change only briefly on her congressional campaign website, linking it to bringing down energy costs.
For the past several months, Democratic elites have been debatinghow much to talk about climate change, if at all — in part because these new candidates have narrowed their focus to energy affordability to win back the working class. It is a striking shift from a few years ago, when many Democratic politicians thought the promise of a Green New Deal would build a coalition based on green jobs and fighting inequality.
Candidates like Mr. Forstag have the right strategy. The kinds of policies they support — for example, public investments in infrastructure like housing and electricity — will help address climate change, but there is little reason for politicians like them to focus on the issue anymore. The candidates’ first task must be to regain credibility with working people by tackling their more immediate, material concerns.
The voters who already prioritize climate action are firmly in the Democratic camp and highly educated and affluent, or as the economist Thomas Piketty calls them, the “Brahmin left.” What candidates like Mr. Forstag, Mr. Reichard and Ms. Berg seem to understand is that for blue-collar voters, energy is an end-of-the-month issue and affordability should be the overarching policy goal. This is all the more important today, given rising electricity rates and war-fueled spikes in gasoline prices.
I get the logic here, and I basically observe this practice in the conservative areas where I operate most of the time.
That said, the current war and closure of Hormuz, and resulting energy price spikes, open up rich opportunities to talk about renewable energy, and I am hitting those hard, in particular, from a National Security perspective.
Hi, Alarmed here. I will never stop talking about climate change (and you shouldn’t either). What really gets me is that about 10 years ago, it was frowned upon to talk about climate change as a national security issue. As someone who grew up near a military base that sits at precisely 0 feet above sea level, I will forever be SMH. We don’t have forever and we have everything to lose. Dear democratic leaders, please lead on this.
There are so many theories about how to talk about climate catastrophe and they’re all bullshit. The right wing wants us to communicate it in any way that’s completely ineffective; right-of-center Democrats don’t want people upsetting the cherimoya cart, blah blah.
As David Comey said, the most effective propaganda is the truth. The best way to talk about anything is to tell the truth.
People are upset when they hear the truth about climate cataclysm, of course; because they’ve been lied to their whole lives and the truth is terrifying. The best way to do it is to have a multi-day workshop led by 2 teachers working together, with assistants; at least 1 of the teachers really knows the science of climate chaos and at least 1 is a good psychotherapist who has led support groups. As people react, their issues can be dealt with in the whole group, teaching everybody at once not just the facts, ma’am, but how to regulate their feelings about climate.
Every problem we have, including ecological problems, is a problem with relationships.
The goal can be a group of activists who decide on group and/or individual action.
The Republicans can’t propagandize by telling the truth; if they told the truth about their agenda—why they’re fomenting race hatred, gender hatred… how much money they’re stealing from the rubes*, etc—none of them would ever win another election and the party would cease to exist. Most Democrats are in the same boat, though we hope it’s at least a sail-assisted electric boat.
‘Tell the Truth’ David Comey Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists June 1975.pdf
https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/6f45cc0c/files/
uploaded/%27Tell%20the%20Truth
%27%20David%20Comey%20Bulletin
%20of%20the%20Atomic
%20Scientists%20June%201975.pdf
Had to break up the link to fit it.
* about that 1971 Powell memo…
Set up the plan for the post-Goldwater defeat long con SlowCoup that has now morphed into Plan 2025. Started the jackalpack of right wing PR and lobbying firms masquerading as think tanks.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/right-wing-influence-machine-trump?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=6230d8f1ec-Weekend+Edition+%7C+Sun.+5%2F3%2F26_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-998917937b-600570283
A RAND. Corp. study by Carter Price found that $79 trillion have been upwardly redistributed from the poorest 90% to the 1, since 1975.
Republicans can’t tell the truth about their agenda, “So they manufacture the rage, pay the influencers, bias the algorithms, fund the think tanks, bankroll right wing podcasts, radio and TV, and then coordinate and pay for the talking points in private chat groups.” Thom Hartmann
That is a fantastic link – much thanks.
I met David Comey in 1971, the year I graduated, and worked as a gopher for a legal team in the Atomic Energy Commission construction license hearing for the Midland Nuclear Plant.
The hearings were in my former Middle School, just a quick walk thru the woods behind my parents house. Mom was the prime mover behind the intervention, and at the end of each day of hearings, would provide dinner on the back porch, facing the woods.
Comey was brilliant, funny, insightful, and masterfully well informed. It was said he had a background in the CIA, spoke Russian and several other languages, and was principle of Businessmen for the Public Interest.
He was kind of the brain trust working behind attorney Myron Cherry, another brilliant bastard, as they ran rings around teams from Consumer’s Power and Dow Chemical.
I maintained some contact over succeeding years, touched base with the same team at Hearings in Bethesda, Summer of ’72, around Emergency Core Cooling systems.
Ran into him briefly in summer of 76 when I interned at the Michigan Energy Agency.
A few years later, he died on an icy road in Wisconsin, suspiciously in some ways – since the Karen Silkwood case was still fresh in mind.
A mutual friend told me the story was that “all four tires blew at the same time”, which seems unlikely. I am unaware of any investigation or further information.
He was only in his late 30s at the time. A great loss.
I envy you that contact; when I read Comey’s dramatic and infuriating exposé of the Brown’s Ferry tragicomedy of errors and then this advice, he became a hero equal to H. D. Thoreau*, John Muir, David Brower, Kenneth Brower (The Starship and the Canoe), Rachel Carson, and Barry Commoner, whose presidential campaign I volunteered for (quite a shift from my first campaign, for… oops! Richard Nixon)
What I’ve read is that Comey died at 44, of cancer. Hmmmmm. Either way, what a huge loss to the environmental and progressive movements. I still feel it sometimes, and wish he were here, when dealing with liars.
I just read this yesterday, btw:
“Thoreau the Scientist…” https://cm.theconversation.com/t/r-l-tuzuiyd-pjidjcfh-c/
BTW, the reason there was never a coalition (a solarlition? a geothermalition?) formed around the Green New Deal is that DEMOCRATS killed it. Pelosi ridiculed it; the D “leadership” apparently threatened and extorted AOC and others into not pushing the issue; Democrats in Congress refused to adopt a progressive agenda, (despite—or maybe because of—overwhelming country-wide support for almost every progressive solution in the wings) right wing Democrats refused to be controlled, and like retail electricity prices are often set by the price of the most expensive source that’s being tapped at any moment, the farthest right Democrats rule the entire agenda whenever the Democrats manage to eke out a 1 or 2 vote majority, because if the party gets too progressive those feckless betrayers will jump that sail-assisted electric ship and become Republicans. (Manchin, et al)
The solution is to close the door behind them, THEN throw a party welcoming the 37 new progressives that would join and replace the blue dogs who would leave if the party adopted an actually popular populist agenda.
Yes, Elizabeth. Talking about climate change so often gets labeled (by fossil funded pressure groups) as elitist, left-wing, and coastal. Sea level rise IS coastal, but I’ve also reminded people living surprisingly far from the shore that tidal rivers get affected, too, particularly as intense flooding events are measurably increasing, to combine with a higher baseline water level. Troy, NY is over 150 miles from the ocean but is affected by tides on the Hudson.
I’ve worked in deep red states though I’m one of “those people” meaning big-city northerner. But when I point out that our naval bases depend on being just above sea level, not at or below sea level, and the additional costs that fixing that will take, some of the people who might snort about ‘global warming’ being some UN conspiracy will get a bit quieter and thoughtful. When I note that increasingly powerful storms and increasingly erratic drought/flood situations also put at risk bases in the middle of the country, they have to think about our readiness and our tax bills again.
Two from the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center, the first one very recent.
Offutt recovers and rebuilds seven years after historic flood
Published April 14, 2026
https://www.afimsc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4459733/offutt-recovers-and-rebuilds-seven-years-after-historic-flood/
Five years after Hurricane Michael, AFIMSC continues shaping Tyndall as Installation of Future
Published Oct. 18, 2023
https://www.afimsc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3560414/five-years-after-hurricane-michael-afimsc-continues-shaping-tyndall-as-installa/
agree. My qualifier is that I am on the front line of deployment for clean energy, and the allies I have are often conservative Republican farmers who do not accept human caused climate change, even though they want clean energy, and get why it’s important for a number of reasons.
So I don’t have a purity test to screen those I am working with, and I don’t make it a priority to change their minds on the science as long as they are with me on the solutions.
I’ll talk the politics for a minute. It’s generally true that Republican voters don’t want to hear about climate change and get turned off when it’s discussed. But, also true is that Democrats cede the issue, and never talk about climate change, then those same Republican voters will just take that as them having ‘won the argument’ and further convince them that climate change is a hoax or nothing to worry about.
Additionally, Republican voters and many Independents absolutely don’t trust overly polished politicians who only say palatable things to the majority (and these can be Republicans as well as Democrats). Those politicians seem completely disingenuous to them – it’s why certain Democrats who are very favored by the DNC continuously fail to gain traction in the general elections. Trump is popular with these voters for the very simple reason that he has little to no filter from what he thinks in an instant and says. They think that’s being genuine.
If a Democrat always has to edit themselves and say only the things they think the majority will like or want to hear, they’re not just wrong, and tragically so, about the seriousness of the climate change issue, but they’re not going to win points with these voters. They’re going to look evasive and shifty to them instead.
The only way to win a fight is to keep fighting until you win it. We’re trying all these different PR tactics to convince the public to act on climate change, when the easiest, and I’d argue best, tactic is to just keep relating the science as it’s known and never stop.