Gavin Newsom: “We are in the Great implementation.”
It’s a mistake for Democratic politicians not to talk about climate change, and the reason they don’t is “because they don’t know how to talk about it”, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, said on Wednesday in an interview with the Guardian and the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.
Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting and New York Climate Week, Newsom also predicted that the midterm elections in November would bring “the end of Donald Trump’s presidency as we know it”. To prevent Trump from stealing those elections, voters must turn out in such overwhelming numbers that he “couldn’t possibly contest” the outcome. If the US president nevertheless declares a national emergency or otherwise attempts to invalidate the results, Newsom said, then “we the people have to step up. The courts have to intervene. Congress has to do its job and stand up for the rule of law.”
Commenting on Covering Climate Now and the Guardian reporting that 80% to 89% of the world’s people and 74% of Americans want their governments to take stronger climate action, Newsom condemned the “climate hushing” most Democrats have practiced since Trump returned to the White House in 2025. “I talk about [climate change] all the time,” he said. He agreed that Democrats must be “laser-focused” on voters’ affordability concerns, but the key is to “connect the dots” between those concerns and the economic impacts of extreme heat, droughts, floods, and other consequences of overheating the planet.
Britain’s new energy secretary said Wednesday that cutting energy bills is her top priority and that the UK government’s quest for more clean power has been driven by affordability concerns rather than fighting global warming.
“The sprint to clean power, by the way, wasn’t about climate, it was about affordability,” Miatta Fahnbulleh said in an interview at the Bloomberg Green summit in New York. Lowering energy bills will be a key test of her time in the job, she said.
The Labour Party campaigned in 2024 on a promise that its clean energy plans would eventually cut household bills by as much as £300 ($397) a year. Bills have instead risen since it took office. The government argues that building more homegrown renewable power will ultimately lower prices by reducing Britain’s exposure to volatile global gas markets.