Is Public Opinion Veering Toward Climate Change Abatement?

 

How could those pre-election polls be so wrong… again. Red wave becomes a… well… microwave… relegated to the House and red state legislatures. The big mystery seems to rest with younger voters, tech savvy and skeptical, who just plain do not cooperate with traditional pollsters (and yes, I will cite one of those polls later in this blog). They do not answer calls from unknown numbers, are wary of texts from strangers, just plain do not use email much anymore and are thus near impossible to recruit for political focus groups outside their immediate peer group. They are even turning on traditional social media like Meta/Facebook and Twitter. Y and younger generations are also truly terrified at the lack of progress on climate change, knowing that the burdens of global warming are increasing daily… and that they will bear a vastly greater slam to their quality of life from climate-related issues than their elders.

The party associated with fostering fossil fuels and vetoing efforts to contain climate change remains the GOP. As hurricanes Ian and Nicole bracketed the mid-terms, they served as harsh reminders to voters of the “more of the same and worse” they will face if insufficient steps are taken to slow carbon emissions. That those mega-storms, aridification or flooding of farmland, and coastal sea-rises seem to plague red states more than blue – as fierce fire storms seem to plague red and blue equally – the strength of the GOP “business always first” mantra is beginning to fall on angry red ears… finally. As the parade of anti-vaxxers and “keep businesses open no matter what” proponents fade from view (as COVID is less of a threat), becoming like the tired reruns of boring “stolen election” Trumpisms, climate change is returning as one of America’s greatest concerns. Young voters are rising.

An increasing number of elected Republicans, even in oil states like Texas, are beginning to sense that if they are to recruit and keep younger voters, they not only need to moderate traditional “business before environment” positioning, but they really need to be seen as pursuing solutions to an obvious problem, one that is no longer susceptible to simple denial or deprioritization. With Dems taking the high ground on this key issue – including the back-door passage of the very popular Inflation Reduction Act in August (with lots of money for climate change infrastructure) – the GOP has a lot of ground to recapture if their party stands a chance with these rising generations voters.

Resisting and favoring Big Oil, increasingly viewed even in the reddest states as price-gouging profiteers – and relegating climate change damage to rebuild and recover reactive solutions – are destined to be failed GOP strategies, “too little too late.” Keeping that fossil fuel all-American, “low tax, no regulation” supply-side economic policy that has driven the GOP platform for decades has to change. As Sammy Roth, writing for the November 14th Los Angeles Times points out: “The last time Democrats tried to pass a major climate bill in Congress, it was so unpopular that a Democratic Senate candidate in West Virginia — a guy by the name of Joe Manchin III — ran a TV ad in which he literally shot a hole through the bill… That was 12 years ago. A lot has changed about climate politics since then.

Democrats finally passed sweeping climate legislation, with Manchin throwing his support behind the Inflation Reduction Act and President Biden signing the bill in August… But despite that vote coming less than three months before the midterm elections, climate change did not play a significant role in most congressional campaigns. Across the country, just 15% of ads mentioned energy or the environment in September, rising slightly to 18% in October, according to a Wesleyan Media Project analysis.

“That lack of climate focus by the Republicans is almost certainly a sign that aggressive steps to tackle global warming aren’t as controversial as they used to be… A Pew Research Center survey in May found that 58% of Americans thought the federal government was doing too little to combat the climate crisis. Among Democrats, that number was 82%. Even among young Republicans (ages 18to 29), 47% said the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough on climate.

“‘The fact that Republicans were not running against climate change, I think was the single most telling thing in this election,’ said Edward Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication… On the flip side, Maibach said Democrats nationwide largely missed an opportunity to campaign on their climate achievements.

“Rather than highlight popular clean energy spending in the Inflation Reduction Act — including financial incentives for technologies that can save people money, such as rooftop solar panels, electric cars and electric heat pumps — many Democrats ‘ran scared,’ Maibach said, playing defense against Republican attacks on issues such as inflation, gas prices and crime… ‘The team that should have gotten the memo about running on climate doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo,’ he said.”

The facts today are different at every level. Even the notion that clamping down on fossil fuel extraction will decimate US employment figures is woefully out of date. Alternative energy employment vast exceeds the number of workers in the fossil fuel side of energy generation. As the above graph from Statista, back on June 2, 2017, reflects, this has been our reality for quite a while, despite “fake news” to the contrary. To some, caring about the environment still smacks of tree-hugging woke liberals… but as voters are turning rapidly to demanding solutions before a climate-related natural disaster strikes, there are serious and necessary cracks developing in the GOP resistance to countering climate change. Now. One of the most important results from the mid-terms has been a clear signal that containing carbon emissions is a new national priority… red or blue.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we have just under a decade to get greenhouse emissions contained such that we can pursue genuine decarbonization (literally sucking carbon emissions out of the air) as a viable, long-term solution.