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WASHINGTON: Wildfires are out of control in the western United States, cities are choking on toxic air, and Hurricane Laura hit the Gulf Coast just a few weeks ago.
So why isn’t the threat of global warming dominating the electoral contest between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden?
In fact, climate change has moved closer to the top of Democratic voters’ concerns since polls began two decades ago, but it remains anchored at the bottom of Republican priorities, meaning candidates don’t need to spend a lot of time discussing the subject.
Talking about it helps Biden connect with his party, but this year ecological issues have been partially displaced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis, as well as protests over racial justice, experts say.
Jon Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford University, told AFP that while the absolute number of people concerned about climate change was at an all-time high, it remained just one of several concerns.
“If he talks only about the weather, he is hurting himself because he has to talk about other issues,” he told AFP.
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Trump, a famous climate denier, has been silent on the issue.
It doesn’t make much sense for him to use the issue to try to appeal to California, the state most affected by the fires, because it is so solidly Democratic.
If Biden has to weigh how much time he spends on climate change with other issues and weigh how an aggressive green agenda could put off swinging state voters in places like the Midwest, other Democratic lawmakers are more willing to go on the offensive.
“It’s just a fact that the Trump administration has the worst environmental record in history,” New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, who is among the greenest lawmakers in Congress, told AFP.
“The Trump administration supports special interests at the expense of everyone else,” he continued, citing the president’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement and the removal of numerous environmental and wildlife regulations.
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GREENER DEMOCRATS THAN EVER
One group of voters who is particularly blamed for climate issues is the left of the Democratic party, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Among Democrats who call themselves liberals, he’s now the second-highest-ranked issue, while he’s eighth for moderate Democrats, according to the latest Yale poll released in April.
That is why all Democratic candidates in the primaries had to make a climactic speech during the party primaries and vowed to re-enter the Paris agreement.
In fact, Biden’s campaign’s carbon neutrality goal for 2050 would have been considered a radical idea when he was vice president himself, just five years ago.
Paul Bledsoe, a professor at the American University Center for Environmental Policy, said it was remarkable that when Biden invokes climate, he does so through the lens of economic opportunity in the form of a Green New Deal.
“When I think of climate change, the word I think of is ‘jobs,'” Biden said in July.
“So these issues have merged, I think, into the public consciousness,” said Bledsoe, who served on former President Bill Clinton’s climate task force.
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REPUBLICANS UNMOVED
As for Republicans, it’s not that they don’t care about the environment, it’s that climate change in particular has become a wedge problem, as a result of their growing hostility towards collective action and the influence of fuel donors. fossils, experts say.
When Americans first became aware of environmentalism in the late 1960s, it was a nonpartisan cause; in fact, it was under President Richard Nixon that the Environmental Protection Agency was created.
Basic goals, like having clean air and clean water, can still resonate today.
That’s why, for example, Trump this week announced a decade-long ban on drilling for oil off the Gulf Coast, a U-turn that surprised energy executives.
This was a goal shared by Republicans and Democrats in Florida, who feared the possible impact of the oil spills on the state’s tourism industry.
Francis Rooney, a Republican congressman from Florida who is one of the few lawmakers in his party who proudly calls himself an environmentalist and supports a carbon tax, said of Trump: “His environmental record is not good at all.”
“I have talked to him a lot about offshore drilling in Florida and I will say that at least he understands it, he has decided that if he wants to win Florida, he must clearly oppose offshore drilling,” he told AFP.
Rooney, who will retire at the end of this term, said he was frustrated that his party was no longer interested in environmental stewardship and said younger generations of conservatives were being shunned.
“I am concerned that we are going to lose. We are going to lose because we don’t have a large enough voter base,” he said.
