I woke up this Earth Day morning in Santa Barbara, California—which is appropriate, since the offshore oil spill here in 1969 was one of the galvanizing events for the first Earth Day 56 years ago. People got mad, they squawked, and government began to listen. We should never forget what they accomplished—in 18 months Congress had adopted the suite of laws (Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Environmental Protection Agency, etc) that the Trump administration is still trying to gut. And within five years those laws had begun to work. The air is far cleaner than it was, thanks to them. You can swim in far more lakes and rivers, thanks to them. Because they got loud.

We face a more complicated moment today, of course. The ecological crisis of our time is not caused by something going wrong—an engine spewing small amounts of carbon monoxide into the air—and not easily fixed by adding a catalytic converter to the tailpipe. Global warming is the result of things going as they’re supposed to: A “clean-burning” engine emits just water vapor, and lots and lots and lots of carbon dioxide. But that CO2 traps heat, and is now warming the planet disastrously. To fix it we have to replace an energy system that runs on fossil fuels with another that runs primarily on the sun. And we have to do it fast.

I flew here Tuesday, and for my carbon sins got a clear-sky view of pretty much the entire western United States. It was, as always, majestic—to fly above the Grand Canyon is to glimpse deep time. But it was also almost unbelievably sad. I’ve been telling you that this was the hottest winter, by far, in the history of the West. But to see it is different. I flew over peaks where I’ve glissaded down snowfields in June, and there was not an inch of snow to be seen. Lake Mead from above looked like a bathtub with the plug open. Sere brown and tawny withered gold as far as you could see, and with it the scary promise of what will come this summer, the smoke that will rise and the flames that will burn orange against the night.

Temperatures are higher than they’ve ever been, even before El Niño breaks above our heads this summer. And yet we’re talking very little about climate change in our national conversation. There are many reasons for that—the most obvious is that the constant psychic assault from the president leaves so little room to think about anything else. But there’s also been a concerted effort among Democrats and some of their environmental allies to stay away from the topic on the grounds that it will distract from or undercut messages about “affordability” which are supposed to be the ticket to electoral success in the fall.

If they think he’s got tariffs wrong, and the war wrong, and immigration wrong, and pretty much everything else wrong, why would they think he had the science of climate right?

I’m committed to that electoral success—my calendar for the months ahead is mostly red districts, where Third Act is busy trying to move the needle with older voters. And I understand the concerns, but I think they’re basically wrong, and that talking straightforwardly about the climate crisis is both politically useful, and an excellent way to take on affordability. And I also think that human beings just need to be discussing the single biggest thing happening on planet Earth, especially since we’re causing it.

The so-called “climate hushing” among Democrats is a product of political consultants looking at polling data. As Claire Barber explained in an excellent essay last month:

The Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank run by veteran Democratic political strategist Adam Jentleson that opened its doors in 2025, made waves with its focus on shifting Democratic messaging away from progressive causes, like climate and LGBTQ issues. The think tank is pointed in its stance on climate messaging. A report released in the fall reads, “The First Rule About Solving Climate Change: Don’t Say Climate Change.”“While battleground voters overwhelmingly agree climate change is a problem, addressing it is not a priority for them,” the report said. Similar to the American Mind Survey, Searchlight found that a majority of Americans believe that climate change is a problem, but rank it below other key issues, like affordability. Searchlight also found high partisan (Democratic) association with the terms “climate” and “climate change” and suggested jettisoning mentions of both altogether.

The phenomenon really dates, I think, from the 2024 presidential campaign, and Vice President Kamala Harris’ abbreviated run for the White House. Climate campaigners were perfectly happy to shut up during that run for an obvious reason: President Joe Biden had given them, in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), most of what DC could provide: a massive infusion of funds for the energy transition we require. The job was to pull Harris across the finish line so that her administration could continue the work well underway with the IRA. We failed at that: Her message, on the politics of joy and the dangers of Donald Trump, ran aground on frustrations with inflation. Climate played no discernible part in the election; I’m not sure any issue played a part in the election, save a kind of general kvetchy grumpiness, and a sense that normal people were being squeezed.

In the wake of their defeat, Democrats have seized on “bread and butter issues,” and left supposed culture war clashes behind. That’s come at a real cost. Corporations, feeling only pressure from the right, have backslid dramatically on their climate commitments. (The Big Tech guys, who just a couple of years ago were noisily pledging they’d go net zero, are currently planning gas-fired data centers that Wired reports today will produce more emissions than midsized European countries). And journalists are, not surprisingly, wandering away from the whole area: The wonderful Amy Westervelt yesterday described a dour meeting of environmental reporters where, among other things, she learned that not just The Washington Post but also Reuters was laying off its climate desk:

Meanwhile, funders of climate journalism are largely folding, too, opting to back comms projects instead or simply stay away from anything as "controversial" as climate and journalism........

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