Democratic politicians have largely abandoned climate talk

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Nearly a year after the 2024 election, Democrats are still trying to figure out what went wrong. In the midst of this soul-searching, a new piece of advice has appeared: “Don’t say climate change.” 

That’s the takeaway from a recent poll by the Searchlight Institute, a new Democratic think tank. Americans said they see climate change as a problem, but it’s rarely one of their top issues—voters in battleground states are more concerned with affordability and health care. But when asked which issue they think the Democratic Party prioritizes, climate change was number one. 

This mismatch might explain, at least in part, why Democrats often get portrayed as out of touch. “Advocates and elected officials should understand that their messages are actively weakened by a focus on ‘climate’ over affordability and low energy prices, and that voters are looking for immediate help with rising costs rather than solutions to abstract problems,” Searchlight’s post about the polling said.

The results didn’t surprise Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) a longtime climate champion who’s been making the case that clean energy can lower electricity bills. Casten recently unveiled draft legislation called the Cheap Energy Agenda, along with Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.). 

“There’s no obvious electoral upside in being really smart on energy and climate policy,” Casten said. But he’s still talking about climate change all the time. “Polling doesn’t tell you what you talk about,” he said. “It tells you how you talk about it.”

Advocacy groups are on board, too, with the League of Conservation Voters, Climate Power, and others running an ad blitz this summer blaming Republicans for increasing energy costs.

Over the last decade, activists and organizations pushed Democratic politicians to take climate change seriously. The youth-led Sunrise Movement rose to prominence as a force in climate politics in 2018, when activists stormed into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, demanding a Green New Deal. They eventually succeeded in helping to elevate climate change in the party’s platform.

Democrats even passed the country’s most ambitious climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, in 2022 to accelerate the adoption of clean energy through tax credits and incentives—a sweeping effort dismantled by Republicans this year.

Searchlight’s pragmatic, follow-the-polls approach has been interpreted by some Democrats as a push to abandon what they believe in. Tré Easton, vice president for public policy at Searchlight, sees it differently. “It’s not that Democrats should just jettison their long-held policy beliefs and their values,” he said. “It’s that there needs to be a recalibration of how they make those pitches to voters. Because clearly, I think the results of the 2024 election would demonstrate that something’s not working.”

In fact, it appears that climate change had already started to vanish from the national conversation, well before Searchlight’s poll came out. Media coverage of the topic has dropped roughly in half since 2023, according to Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

His group’s polling has found that compared to previous years, Americans say they are hearing less about climate change in the news, on social media, and from people they know. They’re not seeking out as much information on their own, either: There’s been a sharp decline in Google News searches for “climate change” since 2023.

“The fact is that we talk about the things that we collectively say are important,” Leiserowitz said. “The conclusion most people then will draw is that if nobody’s talking about climate change, then it can’t be that important.” It’s out of sight, out of mind.

Leiserowitz argues that the 2024 election was not a referendum on climate change. Most Americans are still worried about global warming, according to the Yale program’s most recent polling. “They had not changed their views and concerns about climate change at all,” Leiserowitz said. “What has changed is elite discourse about it.” 

It’s not just Democratic politicians who are talking about climate change less. The progressive left is also turning its attention to other pressing concerns. The Sunrise Movement, for example, has switched its focus from climate change to fighting for the right to free speech and protest under President Donald Trump, training its members in nonviolent resistance tactics. Progressive activists are pushing back against the administration’s crackdown on immigration, protesting outside ICE facilities, and the deployment of the National Guard in cities such as Chicago, Portland, and Washington, DC. Over the weekend, an estimated 7 million people participated in “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration, according to the organizers.

“At least for us—and I don’t know how many others are thinking the exact same way—but it’s like the terrain of authoritarianism, the terrain of fascism, is the thing that we are trying to address, so that we can actually be able to fight for everything else that we’re trying to fight for,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, Sunrise’s executive director. Still, she said, it’s important not to lose sight of their signature issue. 

“Nobody wants to walk away from the issue of climate change,” Shiney-Ajay said. “I think everyone is pretty clear-eyed that we need to constantly be reminding people that we are doing this because we are young people fighting for a livable future.”

Leiserowitz said that Searchlight’s advice (“How to Talk about Climate Change: Don’t”) fails to distinguish between climate advocates and Democrats running for office in swing states. It might make sense for a politician in a tight race to tailor their message to the polls, but climate organizations have different goals besides getting Democrats elected, he said. “If your goal is to get overall societal action on climate change, it’s crazy not to talk about it.”

Searchlight and others dispute the idea that Democrats have to talk about climate change to get political action on it, arguing that it’s easier to pass legislation on an issue that hasn’t been dragged into a polarizing national discussion. “There’s a lot of action that was very important for climate change, for example, that happened in what’s been called ‘secret’ or ‘quiet Congress,’ behind the scenes,” said Josh Freed, senior vice president for climate and energy at the think tank Third Way.

He pointed to the growth of bipartisan support for nuclear power legislation as an example. Last year, members of Congress from both parties overwhelmingly backed the ADVANCE Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden, aimed at speeding up the development of new reactors.

There’s increasing recognition that the way politicians have talked about climate change, full of jargon and abstract language, is also part of the problem. “The way to victory is to talk about price,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who has been a vocal advocate for climate action, at a recent New York Times event. “You could talk about the planetary emergency and mitigation and adaptation, and you could throw in some environmental justice rhetoric, and by the time you’re done talking, people think you don’t care about them.” 

While the “cheap energy” argument is in vogue, not everyone is convinced it’s resonating with voters. “Voters can tell when affordability is an afterthought, and it doesn’t neutralize the toxicity of the term ‘climate,’” Searchlight’s post says. 

“We framed it in a particularly provocative way to sort of get conversation going,” Easton said. But he thinks there’s still room for Democrats to talk about the subject. “If you have an issue that’s as important as climate change, but it’s become polarized, you have to think creatively about how you address it from a policy perspective.”