Latest / HEATED / Why aren’t Democrats talking about climate?
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_01: The midterm elections are less than a week away,
- 0:02SPEAKER_01: and there's a lot riding on the results,
- 0:05SPEAKER_01: including how much more damage Donald Trump can do to the climate.
- 0:10SPEAKER_01: Control of Congress and governor's offices will help determine
- 0:14SPEAKER_01: whether fossil fuel companies ever face accountability for overheating the planet,
- 0:18SPEAKER_01: whether renewable energy gets built or further delayed.
- 0:22SPEAKER_01: And how communities prepare for and recover from climate disasters.
- 0:26SPEAKER_01: But for how important this election is going to be for climate change?
- 0:30SPEAKER_01: The issue itself isn't actually getting that much airtime.
- 0:34SPEAKER_01: Here's Trump's Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum.
- 0:37SPEAKER_00: You don't hear the word climate change as much as you did two years ago,
- 0:40SPEAKER_00: because that whole thing, the legs have been knocked out of under that movement.
- 0:43SPEAKER_01: He's certainly right that we're hearing about climate change less this election cycle.
- 0:48SPEAKER_01: But it's not so much that the legs have been knocked out from under the movement,
- 0:53SPEAKER_01: so much as Democrats have actively chosen to sit down.
- 0:58SPEAKER_01: Over the last two years,
- 1:00SPEAKER_01: influential Democratic strategists
- 1:01SPEAKER_01: and think tanks have been explicitly telling candidates to stop talking
- 1:06SPEAKER_01: about climate change and focus on affordability instead,
- 1:10SPEAKER_01: as if those things were two separate issues.
- 1:13SPEAKER_01: And some Democratic candidates are now even going out of their way to praise
- 1:18SPEAKER_01: the fossil fuel industry.
- 1:19SPEAKER_01: Here's Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Tallarico.
- 1:22SPEAKER_00: I support our oil and gas industry.
- 1:24SPEAKER_00: I had family members who worked in the industry.
- 1:27SPEAKER_00: I went to public schools here in Texas funded by the oil and gas industry.
- 1:32SPEAKER_00: And what I'm opposing is greenhouse emissions.
- 1:35SPEAKER_00: And there's ways that we can support our oil and gas
- 1:37SPEAKER_00: So we can both grow our Texas energy industry and protect our planet.
- 1:52SPEAKER_01: Yes, you heard that right.
- 1:54SPEAKER_01: That was a Democrat praising ExxonMobil's climate leadership and oil-funded schools.
- 2:00SPEAKER_01: But I digress.
- 2:01SPEAKER_01: Who exactly convinced Democrats that ignoring climate change was a winning strategy?
- 2:06SPEAKER_01: Does the evidence actually back that up?
- 2:09SPEAKER_01: And what is that silence costing the rest of us?
- 2:13SPEAKER_01: Today, my producer Tracy Wolf and I are digging into the strategy known as climate hushing.
- 2:19SPEAKER_01: We'll hear from an expert about who's pushing it,
- 2:21SPEAKER_01: examine the polling used to justify it,
- 2:24SPEAKER_01: and look at how it's playing out on the campaign trail right now.
- 2:28SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Heated, a show about climate change and the forces standing in the way of action.
- 2:33SPEAKER_01: I'm Emily Atkin.
- 2:35SPEAKER_01: This season, we're debunking some of the worst climate myths plaguing society today.
- 2:40SPEAKER_01: Today's bad idea?
- 2:42SPEAKER_01: Democrats should ignore climate change.
- 2:44[music]
- 2:50SPEAKER_01: So, Tracy, how are you feeling about this election?
- 2:55SPEAKER_02: Well, I know this is like your Super Bowl.
- 2:57SPEAKER_02: You are such a political junkie at heart.
- 2:59SPEAKER_02: That's how you got into this business.
- 3:00SPEAKER_02: But I will admit, this is my first time not covering an election for a network in a while.
- 3:06SPEAKER_02: And normally my head is trying to figure out how do we get climate into all of
- 3:09SPEAKER_02: the election coverage.
- 3:10SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I don't really see a lane for it this year.
- 3:13SPEAKER_02: And I'm curious, do you see the same thing?
- 3:15SPEAKER_01: Well, I will say after so many election season after election season being so deep
- 3:21SPEAKER_01: into it, I'm a little less deep into it than I've been in other years.
- 3:24SPEAKER_01: And that's partially for my own Mental health.
- 3:28SPEAKER_01: But also because you're right,
- 3:30SPEAKER_01: I'm not getting the same level of coverage and excitement from my peers that I have
- 3:37SPEAKER_01: in previous races.
- 3:39SPEAKER_01: And while I think there are some really interesting climate focused races
- 3:42SPEAKER_01: and ballot initiatives in general,
- 3:44SPEAKER_01: this election has not been as climate focused as the other ones.
- 3:48SPEAKER_01: I remember in 2019,
- 3:49SPEAKER_01: I organized a whole climate focused debate for Democratic primary candidates
- 3:54SPEAKER_01: for president.
- 3:55SPEAKER_01: Now, that didn't wind up happening.
- 3:56SPEAKER_01: CNN wound up holding their own eight-hour climate town hall.
- 4:01SPEAKER_01: Eight hours?
- 4:02SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 4:03SPEAKER_01: It was one of the first things I ever covered for heated, actually.
- 4:06SPEAKER_01: It was eight hours of—actually,
- 4:08SPEAKER_01: I think it might have been seven, but at that point, like, what's the difference?
- 4:12SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think that's a great example of just generally it was bigger back then.
- 4:16SPEAKER_02: The idea of an eight-hour climate debate on a major news network is mind-blowing
- 4:21SPEAKER_02: in today's current political atmosphere.
- 4:24SPEAKER_02: But why do you think it's not a focus?
- 4:26SPEAKER_02: It's wild when we have seen all of these crazy climate extremes this year,
- 4:31SPEAKER_02: from the glacial collapse and flash floods of Nepal that killed thousands of people,
- 4:35SPEAKER_02: those deadly heat waves across the globe this summer,
- 4:39SPEAKER_02: And there's a pretty good chance that 2026 could become the warmest year in record,
- 4:42SPEAKER_02: especially for the United States.
- 4:43SPEAKER_02: So why is this something that we're not talking about right now?
- 4:46SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there are a bunch of reasons.
- 4:48SPEAKER_01: But one of the primary reasons is that Democrats have been explicitly told by some
- 4:52SPEAKER_01: of their biggest funders, advisors and think tanks to shut up about climate change.
- 4:58SPEAKER_02: Well, that's crazy to me because this is the one issue that Democrats can own top to bottom.
- 5:02SPEAKER_02: So why in the world would they want to stifle themselves on such a big issue?
- 5:07SPEAKER_02: I mean, who is telling them to shut up?
- 5:09SPEAKER_01: Well, to explain that,
- 5:11SPEAKER_01: I talked to Aaron Regenberg,
- 5:13SPEAKER_01: who directs the Climate Accountability Project at Public Citizen.
- 5:17SPEAKER_01: He wrote this really great article for the Boston Review called Why Climate Politics Can't Wake.
- 5:22SPEAKER_01: It was sort of dissecting and analyzing what's going on.
- 5:25SPEAKER_01: And he said that in order to understand why we're seeing so much climate hushing,
- 5:30SPEAKER_01: as they call it,
- 5:31SPEAKER_01: we have to go back to the 2024 election and the postmortem of Kamala Harris's loss.
- 5:37SPEAKER_03: We just started hearing a lot of people saying that we're losing
- 5:40SPEAKER_03: because Democrats are talking too much about climate change.
- 5:43SPEAKER_03: There was this big sort of narrative struggle happening within
- 5:46SPEAKER_03: the Democratic Party apparatus in that moment to sort of explain what happened
- 5:50SPEAKER_03: and who's to blame.
- 5:51SPEAKER_03: I do think that the climate hushing angle was a very convenient scapegoat for a lot
- 5:57SPEAKER_03: of people who didn't want to talk about maybe some of the other reasons
- 6:00SPEAKER_03: that we lost.
- 6:01SPEAKER_02: Okay, right.
- 6:02SPEAKER_02: So I hate kind of going back there and reliving that moment,
- 6:05SPEAKER_02: but for the sake of this podcast, we will.
- 6:08SPEAKER_02: So there were a lot of people who thought she was too woke,
- 6:11SPEAKER_02: and then there were others who didn't think she was woke enough.
- 6:13SPEAKER_02: So how did climate go from being the scapegoat issue to becoming a legit strategy for Democrats?
- 6:19SPEAKER_01: Well, to be straight up,
- 6:21SPEAKER_01: the people saying that she was too woke,
- 6:24SPEAKER_01: like too focused on these perceived lefty issues like climate change— So
- 6:29SPEAKER_01: who are these groups?
- 6:54SPEAKER_01: Okay, so one is called Third Way.
- 6:56SPEAKER_01: That is a powerful center-left D.C. think tank that's been advising Democrats for decades.
- 7:01SPEAKER_01: Even before Harris lost the election,
- 7:04SPEAKER_01: Third Way was telling Democrats to stop talking about climate.
- 7:07SPEAKER_01: They published a memo in June 2024 essentially arguing that climate is
- 7:12SPEAKER_01: a political luxury topic and they should be focusing on bills.
- 7:17SPEAKER_01: And Third Way,
- 7:17SPEAKER_01: importantly,
- 7:18SPEAKER_01: is backed by a bunch of major foundations and corporate interests,
- 7:21SPEAKER_01: including the Business Roundtable, which...
- 7:24SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
- 7:25SPEAKER_01: Okay.
- 7:28SPEAKER_01: Another one is Welcome Pack.
- 7:31SPEAKER_01: That's an interest group that supports moderate Democrats, centrist Democrats.
- 7:36SPEAKER_01: You're going to see this as a theme.
- 7:38SPEAKER_01: After the 2024 election,
- 7:39SPEAKER_01: they released this major report arguing that Democrats need essentially
- 7:44SPEAKER_01: to stop being so woke.
- 7:45SPEAKER_01: They need to focus less on issues like climate change,
- 7:47SPEAKER_01: abortion,
- 7:48SPEAKER_01: and gay and trans rights,
- 7:49SPEAKER_01: and more on things like the economy and climate immigration.
- 7:53SPEAKER_01: And just like Third Way,
- 7:54SPEAKER_01: Welcome Pack is also backed
- 7:56SPEAKER_01: by big wealthy donors like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman,
- 7:59SPEAKER_01: members of the Walmart founding Walton family, and major Wall Street investors.
- 8:04SPEAKER_01: And then the big one,
- 8:06SPEAKER_01: this was the one that got the most attention,
- 8:08SPEAKER_01: was the report from the Searchlight Institute.
- 8:11SPEAKER_01: This is a new Democratic think tank that launched in 2025 with
- 8:16SPEAKER_01: a $10 million annual budget backed by Billionaires,
- 8:20SPEAKER_01: including hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel and real estate investor Eric Laufer.
- 8:24SPEAKER_01: And literally one of the first things this group did
- 8:27SPEAKER_01: in September 2025 was publish this now infamous research memo called The First Rule
- 8:33SPEAKER_01: About Climate Change.
- 8:34SPEAKER_01: Don't say climate change.
- 8:36SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I recall reading a little bit about this.
- 8:38SPEAKER_02: I think the New York Times had a story about it, too.
- 8:40SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's pretty explicit.
- 8:43SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 8:43SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
- 8:45SPEAKER_02: Well, all right.
- 8:46SPEAKER_02: So walk me through some of those persuasive arguments that were made in all
- 8:50SPEAKER_02: of these different reports that are in favor of climate hushing.
- 8:53SPEAKER_01: Well, I would say the one that you hear repeated the most is
- 8:55SPEAKER_01: that climate change just does not swing votes.
- 9:00SPEAKER_01: It is not a thing that swings people who are maybe in the middle.
- 9:05SPEAKER_01: And this was a major theme in all the reports.
- 9:08SPEAKER_01: But let's just for the sake of time focus on Searchlights because that one got
- 9:11SPEAKER_01: the most attention.
- 9:12SPEAKER_01: So Searchlights 2025 memo noted that 61 percent of swing voters
- 9:19SPEAKER_01: in battleground states called climate change at least a very serious problem.
- 9:24SPEAKER_01: So they care about it.
- 9:25SPEAKER_01: But only six percent called it their top issue.
- 9:30SPEAKER_01: Also, only 22 percent put it in their top three priorities at all.
- 9:37SPEAKER_01: So therefore,
- 9:38SPEAKER_01: this memo states that Democrats should be focusing on the priority issues
- 9:42SPEAKER_01: of swing voters, which are affordability, jobs and health care.
- 9:48SPEAKER_02: Just for the sake of argument here, Emily, when you go to vote, are you a single issue voter?
- 9:53SPEAKER_02: Do you only vote for a candidate because of one issue?
- 9:56SPEAKER_02: I'm just asking.
- 9:57SPEAKER_02: No, I don't.
- 9:57SPEAKER_02: No, really?
- 9:58SPEAKER_02: Me neither.
- 9:58SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
- 10:00SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, all right.
- 10:01SPEAKER_02: In theory,
- 10:01SPEAKER_02: this all sounds reasonable,
- 10:03SPEAKER_02: but just
- 10:03SPEAKER_02: because climate isn't your top issue doesn't mean it shouldn't influence your vote,
- 10:07SPEAKER_02: correct?
- 10:08SPEAKER_02: Correct.
- 10:09SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 10:10SPEAKER_01: And like just because you rank health care number one or climate number four,
- 10:14SPEAKER_01: it doesn't mean that the candidate's position on climate is irrelevant.
- 10:18SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 10:19SPEAKER_01: I mean, Aaron made this point, too.
- 10:21SPEAKER_01: He said that Searchlight's data contradicts its own findings on that point.
- 10:27SPEAKER_03: That actual data found that 76% of these battleground swing state voters think that
- 10:36SPEAKER_03: the Democratic Party is either somewhat or completely in step with them
- 10:41SPEAKER_03: on issues related to climate change,
- 10:42SPEAKER_03: compared to only 16% who say Democrats are out of step.
- 10:46SPEAKER_03: And then when you look at the folks who say it is out of step,
- 10:50SPEAKER_03: And you ask why do you think it's out of step?
- 10:52SPEAKER_03: The number one reason that voters give is they say
- 10:54SPEAKER_03: that Democrats are not fighting hard enough or need to do more on climate change.
- 10:59SPEAKER_01: So basically what he's saying is that most
- 11:01SPEAKER_01: of these battleground swing state voters do not agree with Republicans
- 11:05SPEAKER_01: about climate change.
- 11:07SPEAKER_01: And the ones that don't like what Democrats are doing on climate change,
- 11:10SPEAKER_01: they actually want Democrats to be doing more.
- 11:14SPEAKER_01: To be doing more?
- 11:14SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 11:15SPEAKER_01: Well, and which makes sense if you actually are aware of climate science.
- 11:19SPEAKER_01: You want politicians to be doing what's in line with the science.
- 11:23SPEAKER_01: Even Democrats aren't.
- 11:25SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 11:26SPEAKER_01: So the fact that Democrats aren't talking
- 11:29SPEAKER_01: about climate change is this huge missed opportunity to set themselves apart
- 11:34SPEAKER_01: from Republicans and remind battleground voters that, hey,
- 11:37SPEAKER_01: I'm actually fighting for this issue that you care about while the other guy isn't.
- 11:41SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I will say, in relation to this, this is not the only data that supports this.
- 11:47SPEAKER_02: There was a polling data from August 2026 from the Environmental Voter Project
- 11:51SPEAKER_02: that found that 59% of battleground voters want more climate talk.
- 11:57SPEAKER_02: Only 17% wanted less.
- 12:00SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting because they also asked these same respondents who,
- 12:04SPEAKER_02: What else would you like to hear less of?
- 12:06SPEAKER_02: And 23 percent wanted less talk on immigration.
- 12:08SPEAKER_02: 28 percent wanted to hear less about abortion.
- 12:11SPEAKER_02: So I thought that was super interesting that people want to hear more about climate,
- 12:16SPEAKER_02: less about these other issues that we often perceive as these are
- 12:18SPEAKER_02: the top reasons why people go out and vote.
- 12:21SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious,
- 12:22SPEAKER_02: were there any other persuasive arguments in the Searchlight memo
- 12:24SPEAKER_02: for why climate hushing is a winning strategy?
- 12:27SPEAKER_01: Well, jumping off from their finding that climate change wasn't a top priority
- 12:31SPEAKER_01: for swing voters,
- 12:32SPEAKER_01: they also found that voters sometimes think that the climate threat feels distant
- 12:38SPEAKER_01: from their everyday lives.
- 12:40SPEAKER_01: So according to their polling,
- 12:41SPEAKER_01: only 17 percent
- 12:43SPEAKER_01: of battleground swing state voters think climate change is currently affecting their
- 12:47SPEAKER_01: families a great deal.
- 12:49SPEAKER_01: So their argument is that focusing on climate change will feel out of touch
- 12:55SPEAKER_01: and insensitive when so many more urgent things are on voters' plates.
- 13:01SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 13:01SPEAKER_02: And I get it.
- 13:02SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of things that are urgent and concerning today.
- 13:05SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
- 13:07SPEAKER_02: I feel the crush of rising energy prices and unaffordability and concerns
- 13:12SPEAKER_02: over health care.
- 13:13SPEAKER_02: But I struggle to understand this is As I know it,
- 13:16SPEAKER_02: all of those things are directly related to climate and climate change.
- 13:21SPEAKER_02: Dang, dang, dang.
- 13:22SPEAKER_02: I thought this was interesting.
- 13:23SPEAKER_02: A study out of MIT this April found
- 13:25SPEAKER_02: that climate change is actually already costing U.S.
- 13:28SPEAKER_02: households between $400 and $900 a year on climate.
- 13:32SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
- 13:47SPEAKER_02: I have to buy face masks because the wildfires are getting so bad that I can't go outside.
- 14:08SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing.
- 14:09SPEAKER_01: Democrats can use campaigning to make those connections for voters who don't understand them.
- 14:15SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's necessarily obvious that climate change is one of the reasons
- 14:19SPEAKER_01: that life is becoming more unaffordable in the U.S., right?
- 14:23SPEAKER_01: Especially if you're so dug into the reality of your day-to-day.
- 14:27SPEAKER_01: But Democrats can use campaigning to educate people about that.
- 14:32SPEAKER_01: And if voters do understand that connection...
- 14:35SPEAKER_01: It can be a winning issue.
- 14:37SPEAKER_01: Here's Aaron again.
- 14:38SPEAKER_03: The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication recently put out their 2026 report
- 14:43SPEAKER_03: and they found large majorities of voters think climate change is causing cost
- 14:49SPEAKER_03: of living to increase.
- 14:50SPEAKER_03: I found 66 percent of voters think that climate change is increasing their home utility bills.
- 14:56SPEAKER_03: Over 60% think it's increasing their groceries.
- 14:58SPEAKER_03: And the support for climate action is similarly very high.
- 15:01SPEAKER_03: The Yale surveys found 58% of voters saying that climate action should be
- 15:07SPEAKER_03: a high priority for the president or Congress.
- 15:09SPEAKER_03: Same percentage saying they'd prefer to vote for a candidate who supports action
- 15:13SPEAKER_03: on climate,
- 15:14SPEAKER_03: compared to only 14% who say they'd prefer a candidate who opposes climate action.
- 15:20SPEAKER_02: All right, Emily,
- 15:20SPEAKER_02: I'm going to regret asking you this, but take me back to 2024 and Kamala Harris.
- 15:26SPEAKER_02: How well did she tie climate to affordability?
- 15:32SPEAKER_01: Not very well.
- 15:33SPEAKER_01: I mean, she didn't really tie climate to anything.
- 15:38SPEAKER_01: No, no.
- 15:40SPEAKER_01: She didn't talk about climate change hardly at all,
- 15:43SPEAKER_01: which is why I find this argument that she talked about climate change too much
- 15:46SPEAKER_01: so weird.
- 15:48SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's not very much like an evidence-based strategy here.
- 15:52SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 15:53SPEAKER_01: The reason Kamala lost is that she talked about climate change too much.
- 15:56SPEAKER_01: Then you go back and you see she talked about it like three times in passing.
- 15:59SPEAKER_01: And she's not talking about the Green New Deal, right?
- 16:01SPEAKER_01: The argument that she talked too much about climate change is also weird
- 16:06SPEAKER_01: because we have seen plenty of other presidential candidates talk openly
- 16:10SPEAKER_01: about climate change and then have a lot of success.
- 16:13SPEAKER_01: Obama made clean energy a major part of his economic message in 2008.
- 16:18SPEAKER_01: Bernie Sanders made climate change one of the defining issues of his campaign.
- 16:22SPEAKER_01: He called for the massive Green New Deal in 2020, and now he didn't win, of course.
- 16:27SPEAKER_01: But, I mean, he built an enormous grassroots movement.
- 16:31SPEAKER_01: And he won several Democratic primaries.
- 16:34SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 16:35SPEAKER_02: And then we can't forget Joe Biden,
- 16:37SPEAKER_02: who in 2020 at that time also ran on a very ambitious climate platform.
- 16:42SPEAKER_02: And he won.
- 16:43SPEAKER_02: And then that became a cornerstone of his administration.
- 16:45SPEAKER_02: Yes, exactly.
- 16:47SPEAKER_02: So climate change is not the only reason why these candidates were successful in the past.
- 16:51SPEAKER_02: Obviously,
- 16:52SPEAKER_02: there's a lot of factors that determine elections,
- 16:54SPEAKER_02: but these examples also further complicate this suggestion that talking
- 16:59SPEAKER_02: about climate change is inherently bad for your political identity.
- 17:03SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
- 17:04SPEAKER_01: And my thing is that climate is such a good opportunity for Democrats to call out
- 17:10SPEAKER_01: the brazen corruption of the Trump administration.
- 17:12SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
- 17:13SPEAKER_01: I mean,
- 17:13SPEAKER_01: we've got a cabinet packed with fossil fuel industry allies and some executives,
- 17:18SPEAKER_01: former executives.
- 17:19SPEAKER_01: The energy secretary is literally a former fracking executive.
- 17:22SPEAKER_01: And they're all handing out favors to oil and gas companies
- 17:25SPEAKER_01: while ordinary Americans struggle to pay their bills.
- 17:28SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's such an obvious argument to make here about
- 17:31SPEAKER_01: who this government actually works for and how corporate greed is infiltrating
- 17:36SPEAKER_01: the government and making people's lives more expensive.
- 17:38SPEAKER_01: And Democrats are just skipping it because they think climate is too woke.
- 17:43SPEAKER_01: And Aaron felt the same way.
- 17:45SPEAKER_03: We have a corrupt administration run by and for
- 17:48SPEAKER_03: the fossil fuel industry that's taking us to war,
- 17:51SPEAKER_03: that's raising prices,
- 17:52SPEAKER_03: and that's causing catastrophes that just like,
- 17:55SPEAKER_03: you know,
- 17:56SPEAKER_03: Ruined the 4th of July for half the country through these climate disasters.
- 18:00SPEAKER_03: And on the other hand,
- 18:02SPEAKER_03: we can lay out a vision of standing up for regular people to lower energy costs
- 18:06SPEAKER_03: to make polluters pay rather than our working families.
- 18:09SPEAKER_03: The idea that we shouldn't be making those connections seems very silly.
- 18:13SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's summarize here.
- 18:15SPEAKER_02: If climate helped win past elections for Democrats and voters want to hear more
- 18:18SPEAKER_02: about it,
- 18:19SPEAKER_02: what are the candidates today doing and saying about climate on the campaign trail?
- 18:23SPEAKER_01: I would love to talk more about that.
- 18:25SPEAKER_02: And we will do it
- 18:27SPEAKER_01: after the break.
- 18:31SPEAKER_02: Hi there, I'm heated producer Tracy Wolf.
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- 18:48[music]
- 19:02SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
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- 19:03SPEAKER_02: Okay, back to the episode.
- 19:05[music]
- 19:25SPEAKER_01: All right, Tracy.
- 19:28SPEAKER_01: So when we started producing this episode,
- 19:31SPEAKER_01: I asked you to look at battleground Senate candidates and see if they were taking
- 19:38SPEAKER_01: the advice of these centrist groups to stop talking about climate change.
- 19:43SPEAKER_01: What did you find?
- 19:45SPEAKER_02: OK, well, I found a mixed bag.
- 19:48SPEAKER_02: So let's start in Georgia.
- 19:49SPEAKER_02: You know,
- 19:50SPEAKER_02: nice purple state of Georgia and John Ossoff,
- 19:53SPEAKER_02: who is seeking to retain his seat in the Senate.
- 19:56SPEAKER_02: He has completely ditched mentions of the environment and climate and energy
- 20:01SPEAKER_02: and instead is focusing on the Iran war and inflation.
- 20:04SPEAKER_02: So I did a search on his campaign website.
- 20:07SPEAKER_02: The words climate, environment and energy do not appear anywhere on that website.
- 20:12SPEAKER_02: But he does have that lovely 96% lifetime score with the League of Conservation Voters.
- 20:18SPEAKER_02: But he has definitely jettisoned those words from his vocabulary on his website.
- 20:22SPEAKER_01: So he's got this great record and he's just not talking about it?
- 20:25SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 20:26SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
- 20:26SPEAKER_02: He's not the only one.
- 20:27SPEAKER_02: So if you turn over to Ohio,
- 20:30SPEAKER_02: former Senator Sherrod Brown,
- 20:32SPEAKER_02: who is now facing off against John Husted to get a seat back there in Ohio.
- 20:37SPEAKER_02: He's also been a pretty stalwart proponent of climate policy and environmental protection.
- 20:43SPEAKER_02: Also, nothing on his website about it.
- 20:45SPEAKER_02: Then if you go down to North Carolina,
- 20:47SPEAKER_02: former Governor Rory Cooper,
- 20:49SPEAKER_02: who's running for a Senate seat there,
- 20:52SPEAKER_02: he has a bunch of stuff about energy and data centers,
- 20:56SPEAKER_02: but nothing there tied to the issue of climate and energy.
- 20:59SPEAKER_02: And I would argue that's kind of notable.
- 21:00SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 21:17SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm surprised about Sherrod Brown because I remember
- 21:20SPEAKER_01: in his 2018 re-election campaign,
- 21:23SPEAKER_01: he stood on the debate stage during his Senate race and he told voters
- 21:27SPEAKER_01: that climate change is the defining moral issue of our time.
- 21:31SPEAKER_01: And then he won.
- 21:34SPEAKER_01: And the next year,
- 21:36SPEAKER_01: he wrote an essay explicitly rejecting the idea that Democrats had
- 21:41SPEAKER_01: to abandon progressive values and climate hush to win the election.
- 21:44SPEAKER_01: And now he's doing it.
- 21:46SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm from Ohio.
- 21:47SPEAKER_02: Grew up there.
- 21:48SPEAKER_02: It's such a wacky place.
- 21:50SPEAKER_02: It really was a true swing state.
- 21:52SPEAKER_02: And there was always this very famous saying, as Ohio goes, goes the rest of the country.
- 21:57SPEAKER_02: And they really did used to be a bellwether.
- 22:00SPEAKER_02: And that is not the case anymore.
- 22:01SPEAKER_02: That state is very, very red conservative.
- 22:05SPEAKER_02: And I'm certainly not defending what he's doing here.
- 22:08SPEAKER_02: But I think as a guy who lost his Senate seat to Bernie
- 22:14SPEAKER_02: I think he's trying to find this middle ground.
- 22:17SPEAKER_02: And I would argue that's probably what Roy Cooper is doing.
- 22:20SPEAKER_02: That's what John Ossoff is doing.
- 22:21SPEAKER_02: It's just frustrating because especially in places like North Carolina and Georgia,
- 22:25SPEAKER_02: there are very compelling,
- 22:27SPEAKER_02: obvious reasons sitting in front of your face why climate should be
- 22:30SPEAKER_02: a concerning issue for you as a voter because insurance premiums,
- 22:33SPEAKER_02: all the extreme weather,
- 22:34SPEAKER_02: all of these things that you're seeing are happening right there at your doorstep.
- 22:37SPEAKER_01: I just feel like it's a missed opportunity, but let's keep going.
- 22:40SPEAKER_01: What else did you find?
- 22:41SPEAKER_02: Well, staying in the Midwest,
- 22:43SPEAKER_02: let's pivot north to Michigan,
- 22:45SPEAKER_02: where there is an incredibly interesting race there with Abdul Al-Sayed,
- 22:50SPEAKER_02: who went on Fox News and said something pretty interesting.
- 22:54SPEAKER_00: Look, I'm not going to defend the Green New Deal.
- 22:55SPEAKER_00: What I'm telling you, though,
- 22:56SPEAKER_00: is that we could make a whole lot more amazing jobs if we actually invest
- 22:59SPEAKER_00: in renewable energy.
- 23:00SPEAKER_00: Look, I'm just telling you this.
- 23:01SPEAKER_00: Are you opposed to the idea that we could reduce energy costs and create jobs in Michigan?
- 23:06SPEAKER_02: So this is fascinating to me.
- 23:07SPEAKER_02: I think he knew exactly what he was doing when he said it on Fox News, right?
- 23:12SPEAKER_02: On his campaign website,
- 23:13SPEAKER_02: he does have a dedicated environment and natural resources section on his campaign.
- 23:19SPEAKER_02: And it says on the website, quote, Now, this is the part I was most interested by.
- 23:34SPEAKER_02: That means codifying the endangerment fighting into law
- 23:37SPEAKER_02: so no future administration can strip the EPA of its authority
- 23:41SPEAKER_02: to regulate greenhouse gases by executive order.
- 23:44SPEAKER_02: Now, this,
- 23:44SPEAKER_02: of course,
- 23:44SPEAKER_02: is directly responding to the fact that the EPA is trying to claim that
- 23:50SPEAKER_02: the endangerment fighting,
- 23:51SPEAKER_02: which is,
- 23:51SPEAKER_02: you know,
- 23:51SPEAKER_02: the scientific proof that we are putting these poisonous gases in
- 23:55SPEAKER_02: the air causing climate change,
- 23:57SPEAKER_02: is basically not a thing and we shouldn't be regulating it.
- 23:59SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 24:00SPEAKER_02: I'm going to give him props for laying the law down on the endangerment finding.
- 24:04SPEAKER_01: Well, and I'm explicitly talking about not only climate change,
- 24:08SPEAKER_01: but the mechanisms that the Trump administration is using
- 24:12SPEAKER_01: to make sure we don't do anything about climate change.
- 24:16SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 24:16SPEAKER_01: And I do think it's interesting that he said that he's not going to defend
- 24:19SPEAKER_01: the Green New Deal on Fox News.
- 24:22SPEAKER_01: The Green New Deal, I guess, has become massively politically toxic for these candidates.
- 24:27SPEAKER_01: I think they've allowed Republicans to make it toxic for them.
- 24:32SPEAKER_01: And it's something that Republicans would never let them do.
- 24:36SPEAKER_02: True.
- 24:36SPEAKER_02: Well, let's pivot up to Alaska where you've got Mary Peltola,
- 24:39SPEAKER_02: who's the Democratic challenger to Dan Sullivan.
- 24:41SPEAKER_02: And of course, there's two Dan Sullivans on the ballot up there.
- 24:44SPEAKER_02: It's very confusing.
- 24:46SPEAKER_02: Yeah, super interesting.
- 24:48SPEAKER_02: So she arguably has to walk a very interesting line and Alaska being the place of
- 24:54SPEAKER_02: so many natural resources tied to the fossil fuel industry.
- 24:58SPEAKER_02: She's definitely playing into that card, right?
- 25:00SPEAKER_02: Like she is very much so saying, She wants to expand oil and gas efforts in the state.
- 25:08SPEAKER_02: She did have a very small section where she was like,
- 25:12SPEAKER_02: I also want to expand geothermal and biomass energy projects,
- 25:15SPEAKER_02: which to me sounds like she's like kind of tossing bread I mean,
- 25:19SPEAKER_02: so does
- 25:19SPEAKER_01: the Trump administration.
- 25:20SPEAKER_01: The Trump administration is like weirdly obsessed with geothermal.
- 25:23SPEAKER_01: I think it's because I think it's
- 25:26SPEAKER_01: because Energy Secretary Chris Wright has some personal interest in those things.
- 25:31SPEAKER_01: I haven't done all the reporting on that, but it's my it's my pet theory.
- 25:35SPEAKER_01: And I get to just say things now because so does everybody else.
- 25:38SPEAKER_02: If you want to look at,
- 25:39SPEAKER_02: you know,
- 25:39SPEAKER_02: one other thing related to Mary,
- 25:41SPEAKER_02: she's a huge outdoorsman and has all of this stuff on her website about fishing.
- 25:45SPEAKER_02: So she wants to ban things like factory trawling and wants
- 25:47SPEAKER_02: to fully fund fish stock assessments and rebuild depleted fish stocks.
- 25:52SPEAKER_02: And it's very like pro wild caught fish and a little anti farm fishing stuff.
- 25:57SPEAKER_02: But she's not talking about climate change.
- 25:59SPEAKER_02: No, it's just an environmental issue there.
- 26:01SPEAKER_01: Well, which is wild because Alaska is one of the I think it is the fastest warming state.
- 26:07SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 26:08SPEAKER_01: In the country.
- 26:09SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 26:09SPEAKER_01: Like if there is,
- 26:11SPEAKER_01: you know,
- 26:11SPEAKER_01: we're talking about like Florida and Texas,
- 26:13SPEAKER_01: some of these states that are seeing a lot of climate impacts.
- 26:15SPEAKER_01: Alaska is really seeing a lot of climate impacts.
- 26:17SPEAKER_01: So totally.
- 26:18SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
- 26:19SPEAKER_01: she's made some sort of calculation that like voters there don't want to hear about
- 26:23SPEAKER_01: that.
- 26:24SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
- 26:25SPEAKER_01: It just seems wild to me.
- 26:27SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 26:27SPEAKER_02: But we'll see.
- 26:28SPEAKER_02: We will see.
- 26:29SPEAKER_02: All right.
- 26:30SPEAKER_01: Let's move on.
- 26:30SPEAKER_02: Who else?
- 26:31SPEAKER_02: Moving back to the Midwest.
- 26:33SPEAKER_02: Let's go down to Iowa.
- 26:35SPEAKER_02: So there,
- 26:36SPEAKER_02: Joni Ernst is not seeking re-election,
- 26:38SPEAKER_02: saying that she wants to spend more time with her family.
- 26:41SPEAKER_02: So she has tried to pass the baton to Ashley Hinson,
- 26:43SPEAKER_02: who is currently a member of the House of Representatives representing Iowa.
- 26:48SPEAKER_02: But super interesting guy, Josh Turek, is the Democratic nominee for Senate there.
- 26:53SPEAKER_02: Kind of interesting fact, he's a Paralympian.
- 26:56SPEAKER_02: He won two gold medals in 2016 and 2020 for wheelchair basketball.
- 27:00SPEAKER_02: Thought that was kind of interesting.
- 27:02SPEAKER_02: Very cool.
- 27:02SPEAKER_02: He calls himself a prairie populist, which I thought was rather clever.
- 27:06SPEAKER_02: And he does address the issue of the water quality crisis, which is happening in Iowa.
- 27:10SPEAKER_02: This is like a whole big issue of nitrates running off into the water, polluting the waterways.
- 27:14SPEAKER_02: That's a super huge problem in Iowa.
- 27:15SPEAKER_01: From agriculture.
- 27:16SPEAKER_02: From agriculture,
- 27:17SPEAKER_02: because they have extremely high cancer rates in the state that a lot
- 27:20SPEAKER_02: of people suspect are due to this pollution of their waterways.
- 27:24SPEAKER_02: And he did have a roundtable back in April discussing extreme weather,
- 27:27SPEAKER_02: how it's raising insurance costs.
- 27:30SPEAKER_02: But he's also very focused,
- 27:31SPEAKER_02: obviously,
- 27:32SPEAKER_02: on lowering the cost of gasoline and diesel because it's a super agricultural state.
- 27:36SPEAKER_02: It costs so much money for farmers to put diesel in their equipment and do their harvesting.
- 27:43SPEAKER_02: So, yes, he wants to reduce costs on energy.
- 27:46SPEAKER_02: But despite all these things, again, no words on climate or energy anywhere on his platform.
- 27:52SPEAKER_02: I'm surprised it's
- 27:53SPEAKER_01: not even energy.
- 27:54SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
- 27:55SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
- 27:57SPEAKER_01: And that's just an ethanol state.
- 28:00SPEAKER_01: And there's just the fact that energy costs are sky high in part because of a war
- 28:07SPEAKER_01: over fossil fuels, right?
- 28:08SPEAKER_01: I know we'll get to that at some point,
- 28:09SPEAKER_01: but like... Well,
- 28:10SPEAKER_02: and the other reason to be shocked
- 28:11SPEAKER_02: that he's not mentioning energy is wind energy is huge in Iowa.
- 28:16SPEAKER_02: Like,
- 28:17SPEAKER_02: this is a really large source of income for farmers who lease some of their land
- 28:21SPEAKER_02: to wind farms.
- 28:23SPEAKER_02: And Ashley Hinson,
- 28:24SPEAKER_02: the woman he's facing off of,
- 28:25SPEAKER_02: On the Republican side,
- 28:27SPEAKER_02: she voted in favor of the one big beautiful bill,
- 28:31SPEAKER_02: which cut clean energy credits and has dramatically impacted that state.
- 28:35SPEAKER_02: So I, too,
- 28:36SPEAKER_02: am a little surprised that he's not standing up and saying,
- 28:39SPEAKER_02: we need to get some of this back because Iowa has really low energy rates.
- 28:44SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that is because they have a lot of wind energy.
- 28:47SPEAKER_02: So I see it as a missed opportunity.
- 28:49SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 28:50SPEAKER_02: All right.
- 28:51SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about our favorite Senate candidate at the moment, James Tallarico in Texas.
- 28:56SPEAKER_01: At least the most popular, most talked about candidate, James Tallarico.
- 29:05SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 29:05SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 29:06SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 29:29SPEAKER_02: Clean and green.
- 29:30SPEAKER_02: And I just,
- 29:31SPEAKER_02: I have to play this clip because Trump is definitely trying to paint Tallarico as
- 29:35SPEAKER_02: a woke environmentalist.
- 29:38SPEAKER_00: So James Salafrico wants to get rid of your guns.
- 29:42SPEAKER_00: He wants to get rid of your oil.
- 29:43SPEAKER_00: Wants to get rid of your meat.
- 29:45SPEAKER_00: He can't stand the stuff.
- 29:46SPEAKER_00: He's at so many barbecues and he's throwing up all over the place.
- 29:51SPEAKER_00: He's a vegan.
- 29:51SPEAKER_00: I used to say vegan, but my wife said it's not vegan, it's vegan.
- 29:56SPEAKER_00: But he's been all, all his life he eats lettuce and celery.
- 30:01SPEAKER_00: And then he gets forced for the vote.
- 30:05SPEAKER_01: Is he a vegan?
- 30:05SPEAKER_01: No.
- 30:06SPEAKER_01: Because I didn't know that.
- 30:07SPEAKER_01: No.
- 30:08SPEAKER_01: I believe he is not.
- 30:10SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's just like a big lie.
- 30:11SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
- 30:12SPEAKER_02: He is not a vegan.
- 30:13SPEAKER_02: So to Tallarico's credit,
- 30:15SPEAKER_02: he has a pretty robust energy environmental section on his issues platform page.
- 30:20SPEAKER_02: And near the top of it,
- 30:21SPEAKER_02: in bold,
- 30:22SPEAKER_02: it says,
- 30:23SPEAKER_02: if any state can figure out how to grow our economy and lower costs
- 30:27SPEAKER_02: and combat climate change,
- 30:31SPEAKER_02: So he does not shy away from the words climate change.
- 30:33SPEAKER_02: He really wants to lean into investing in innovation, this all-of-the-above energy approach.
- 30:40SPEAKER_02: He talks about,
- 30:41SPEAKER_02: we want to add hundreds of thousands of jobs to the oil,
- 30:43SPEAKER_02: gas, wind, solar, battery sectors.
- 30:46SPEAKER_02: This last quote was something that really stood out to me.
- 30:54SPEAKER_02: And one of the deadliest winter storms in our state's history,
- 30:57SPEAKER_02: which killed hundreds of our fellow Texans.
- 30:59SPEAKER_02: That kind of incompetence in the face
- 31:01SPEAKER_02: of increasingly frequent climate disasters is completely unacceptable.
- 31:06SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 31:06SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's not climate hushing to me.
- 31:09SPEAKER_01: No.
- 31:10SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's weird because he's also like in another breath being like, I love Exxon.
- 31:15SPEAKER_01: Exxon's amazing.
- 31:18SPEAKER_01: But it's no matter what it is,
- 31:20SPEAKER_01: you know, we could go into critiquing that, but it's just not climate hushing.
- 31:24SPEAKER_02: It's not.
- 31:25SPEAKER_02: And so I would say across the board,
- 31:28SPEAKER_02: you're kind of seeing a mixed bag with these Senate candidates.
- 31:31SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 31:32SPEAKER_01: All right.
- 31:33SPEAKER_01: So in summary,
- 31:34SPEAKER_01: it sounds like not all of our battleground Senate candidates are climate hushing,
- 31:40SPEAKER_01: but a lot of them are.
- 31:43SPEAKER_01: And it sort of remains to be seen whether or not this strategy is going to work.
- 31:48SPEAKER_01: But moving beyond the horse race aspect of this,
- 31:51SPEAKER_01: I think just on a moral level,
- 31:54SPEAKER_01: it is alarming to me to see so much climate hushing because of the moral stakes of
- 32:01SPEAKER_01: the climate crisis itself.
- 32:03SPEAKER_01: And personally, I just don't see how we solve this massive problem without talking about it.
- 32:09SPEAKER_01: And when I talked to Aaron, he definitely agreed with me on that.
- 32:12SPEAKER_03: I think it is silly to say that we're going to be able to do what we need to do
- 32:17SPEAKER_03: to have a livable world without ever talking about climate change.
- 32:21SPEAKER_03: And even some of the top climate hushers have admitted this.
- 32:25SPEAKER_03: Searchlight's senior fellow Jane Flegel,
- 32:28SPEAKER_03: she said in her own words,
- 32:29SPEAKER_03: it is hard for me to imagine solving climate change as a problem
- 32:32SPEAKER_03: without somebody caring about climate change.
- 32:35SPEAKER_02: So that's really interesting.
- 32:37SPEAKER_02: Why would these centrist think tankers argue for climate hushing,
- 32:43SPEAKER_02: even if they can't imagine solving climate change without talking about it?
- 32:47SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is weird.
- 32:50SPEAKER_01: One of their main arguments is that climate change is a moral issue
- 32:54SPEAKER_01: and they don't think that voters are persuaded by moral arguments.
- 32:59SPEAKER_01: In an October 2025 memo,
- 33:02SPEAKER_01: Third Way wrote,
- 33:03SPEAKER_01: persuadable voters aren't influenced by moral arguments about the need for
- 33:09SPEAKER_01: or benefits of combating climate change.
- 33:13SPEAKER_01: They said,
- 33:13SPEAKER_01: it's time for Democrats to focus up and hone an energy message that leads
- 33:18SPEAKER_01: with lower costs, not environmentalism and judgment.
- 33:22SPEAKER_01: Well, Aaron had something to say about that.
- 33:23SPEAKER_01: I'll just let him take it.
- 33:25SPEAKER_03: Voters are often impacted by moral arguments.
- 33:28SPEAKER_03: Like there's a reason that Gaza has been this deeply motivating issue for millions
- 33:34SPEAKER_03: of Americans because it's not about like how is this going
- 33:37SPEAKER_03: to impact my job prospects or whatever.
- 33:40SPEAKER_03: It's like I'm seeing children get blown up.
- 33:43SPEAKER_03: There's a genocide happening.
- 33:44SPEAKER_03: My tax dollars are going towards it.
- 33:46SPEAKER_02: I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around all of this because
- 33:50SPEAKER_02: if you told me I can make your energy cheaper,
- 33:52SPEAKER_02: but it's going to kill you,
- 33:53SPEAKER_02: I would probably say, yeah, I don't know if that's a good enough tradeoff.
- 33:57SPEAKER_01: But besides that, it's an incredibly cynical view of the American voter.
- 34:02SPEAKER_01: And I don't even know if it's the right one.
- 34:04SPEAKER_01: And that brings up what I think is the most alarming thing
- 34:07SPEAKER_01: about all this climate hushing is that By doing it,
- 34:11SPEAKER_01: Democrats are just completely ceding the climate conversation to Republicans.
- 34:17SPEAKER_01: Like, Democrats might be ignoring the subject of climate change, but Republicans aren't.
- 34:23SPEAKER_01: Erin pointed this out, too.
- 34:25SPEAKER_03: There's a study that found in 2024,
- 34:27SPEAKER_03: Fox News ran more segments on climate change than CBS,
- 34:31SPEAKER_03: ABC, NBC, PBS, and MSNBC combined, right?
- 34:36SPEAKER_03: And so it's never a decision of, okay, do we talk about climate change or not?
- 34:39SPEAKER_03: It's how do we talk about climate change?
- 34:41SPEAKER_03: Because that side,
- 34:42SPEAKER_03: Fox News, Leonard Leo, Donald Trump, all of them are going to be talking about it.
- 34:47SPEAKER_02: I gotta admit, Emily, when I heard this one, I jumped all over that.
- 34:51SPEAKER_02: I bet you did.
- 34:52SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because to be fair,
- 34:54SPEAKER_02: I tried to get as much climate coverage on CBS News before my unit was dismantled
- 34:57SPEAKER_02: and we were all fired, but I don't want to make this about me.
- 35:03SPEAKER_02: It's so tempting.
- 35:04SPEAKER_02: But OK, with only a few days to go before the election,
- 35:07SPEAKER_02: it's obviously too late to reverse this strategy of climate hushing.
- 35:11SPEAKER_02: It's very clear it's happening for certain candidates, as we talked about.
- 35:14SPEAKER_02: And we'll just have to wait and see how the voters respond to this idea of not looking up.
- 35:19SPEAKER_02: I think what will be really interesting is if we see a blue wave,
- 35:23SPEAKER_02: will the trend of climate hushing be retired?
- 35:25SPEAKER_02: And can we go back to being very open and honest about what's actually happening
- 35:28SPEAKER_02: before our own eyes?
- 35:30SPEAKER_02: Or are we just going to continue to ignore it?
- 35:31SPEAKER_01: It's going to be a vicious cycle, right?
- 35:33SPEAKER_01: Like if the Democrats do win big,
- 35:35SPEAKER_01: I wonder,
- 35:36SPEAKER_01: are they going to argue, look, we didn't talk about climate and we did great.
- 35:40SPEAKER_01: Let's never talk about climate again.
- 35:43SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 35:44SPEAKER_01: I do worry about that.
- 35:45SPEAKER_01: As a person whose job is dedicated to informing people about the climate crisis,
- 35:50SPEAKER_01: if our politics never talks about it,
- 35:52SPEAKER_01: I worry what that's going to do for public understanding.
- 35:55SPEAKER_01: But I mean, look, obviously affordability in the economy is I mean, look at the Iran War.
- 36:00SPEAKER_01: Our dependence on fossil fuels means that a conflict thousands
- 36:04SPEAKER_01: of miles away is making it more expensive for us to fill up our cars
- 36:07SPEAKER_01: and heat our homes.
- 36:08SPEAKER_01: So how do you talk honestly about affordability and
- 36:23SPEAKER_01: If you're leaving that out,
- 36:25SPEAKER_01: I think there's a big reason to question this whole premise
- 36:28SPEAKER_01: that climate does not swing votes.
- 36:31SPEAKER_01: Economist Matt Burgess at the University of Wyoming studied
- 36:35SPEAKER_01: the 2020 presidential election and estimated that if climate change had not been
- 36:40SPEAKER_01: an issue in the 2020 election,
- 36:42SPEAKER_01: Republicans might have gained a three-point swing in the popular vote.
- 36:47SPEAKER_01: And that would have handed the election to Trump.
- 36:50SPEAKER_01: So...
- 36:51SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
- 36:51SPEAKER_01: I would be a little more skeptical of anyone telling Democrats
- 36:54SPEAKER_01: that keeping quiet is how they win.
- 36:57SPEAKER_01: I think people deserve to know how climate change and fossil fuels are affecting their lives.
- 37:02SPEAKER_01: They deserve to know who's making money at their expense.
- 37:05SPEAKER_01: And they deserve to know what their elected leaders can and are going to do
- 37:09SPEAKER_01: about it, especially when they're deciding who they're going to vote for.
- 37:13SPEAKER_02: Emily, I agree with you.
- 37:16SPEAKER_01: Shocker.
- 37:19SPEAKER_01: All right.
- 37:19SPEAKER_01: Well, that's all we have for this episode.
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- 37:55SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for listening.
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