If you listen to pundits, tired political hands or the constant noise on cable news, you’ll hear the same thing over and over again. One, Democrats will lose in November. And, two, no one votes on environmental issues.
I am here to say one of those things is plain wrong. And if we can once again prove it is wrong we can make the other one wrong too.
Put less cryptically, if Democrats run on climate, we can win on climate. And what’s more, we must.
Climate is a winning issue for Democrats, and we must embrace it, run on it and win on it. Only through doing so can we then take the further decisive action needed to address the crisis.
President Joe Biden did just this. In 2020, he made fighting climate change a core plank of his agenda. And what was the result? He got more votes than any presidential candidate in the history of this nation. More than Reagan, and more than either Bush, Obama or Bill Clinton.
And he used his mandate to act.
Biden has made fighting climate change a defining issue of his Administration. In his first year in office, President Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement, shut down the Keystone Pipeline, made key environmental appointments to his administration — and set a course for the United States to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad.
His environmental agenda is widely popular with voters. Which is why Democrats need to double down, run on this record and promise even more bold action.
Young voters made up nearly 14% of all ballots cast in 2020, provided a crucial margin of victory for the Biden-Harris ticket and helped us win the Senate. Young Black voters played an especially significant role. Looking forward, the key states that will determine the outcome of the 2022 election — and the balance of power in Congress including Arizona, California, Georgia, Nevada and Texas — have a larger share of youth voters than average. Ensuring and building on the turnout of those young voters in key states could very well be the difference between winning and keeping our congressional majorities — or losing.
In addition, data such as this polling by Climate Power and Data for Progress consistently shows that voters want bold action on climate, and are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports it. This is especially true for the demographics most crucial to turnout, especially in the midterms: young voters, Latinx voters, Black voters and other voters on the climate and environmental justice frontlines in urban, suburban and rural areas.
Put bluntly, turning out environmental voters, for whom the environment is the first or second most important issue, is likely to be the margin of victory we absolutely need in pivotal states to ensure the reins of power in Congress are not turned over to Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.
And it’s not like Democrats have to compete in the marketplace of ideas when it comes to climate.
The contrast could not be more stark for voters. Democrats believe climate change is real. Republicans, including those who would be in leadership of a Republican controlled Congress, deny the reality of human-caused climate change. And their actions speak even louder than their words. Upholding climate delay and false solutions is just another type of climate denial. Democrats believe we must join with our international partners to combat climate change. Republicans believe that we should isolate ourselves from the world and the near unanimous calls to action. Democrats believe that we should invest in alternatives to oil and gas. Republicans believe that we should continue to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize the big oil companies which are making huge profits while destroying our environment. Democrats have a platform, an agenda and a vision of a sustainable, renewable energy future. Republicans have nothing whatsoever on offer.
Few issues offer voters a more clear difference between the two parties than this one. And the public is overwhelmingly on our side.
Not only can Democrats run on climate, we must win on climate. The fate of the world literally depends on it.
We aren’t running out of time, we have already run out of time. The climate crisis isn’t coming: it has arrived. It infuses and affects the air we breathe, warps the weather we track, fuels the storms we fear, inflates the prices we pay, and destroys the crops that we count on for food on our tables. And the crisis continues to worsen, every year worse than the one before - and the stakes continue to increase as we enter a time of greater international instability.
In the past year, the U.S. experienced the hottest single month in recorded history in July. And more than 10 people already die every week from US climate-fueled disasters. Meanwhile, extreme weather, fueled by climate change, in 2021 damaged crops across the U.S. and caused record high prices for foods such as canola oil and wheat.
And of course recent tragic events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine underscore how crucial it is for the U.S. to move with all deliberate haste to transition off fossil fuels to a clean, sustainable energy economy that will lower the costs of energy, protect national security, and ensure reliable energy and energy independence.
Democrats are the party of climate action. Time and time again, Democrats have stepped up to offer bold solutions to the greatest threat to our climate, our economy, our national security and our well-being while Republicans, awash in dirty corporate oil money, have fought progress every step of the way.
History does not have to repeat itself. The pundits can be proven wrong, again. Democrats won on climate in 2020, and we can, and must, do it in 2022.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Michelle Regalado Deatrick is the Chair of the DNC Environment and Climate Crisis Council. Sign up here for Council updates, calls to action and event invitations.