https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2026/05/26/the-sound-of-climate-silence-00936026
BY ARIANNA SKIBELL
Excerpt:
Call it the great “climate hushing.”
At least, that’s how Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, refers to the shift in Washington’s response to the planet’s increasingly dire outlook.
As President Donald Trump unravels U.S. climate policy, Democrats and environmental groups have grown strangely quiet about the flashing warning signs of an imperiled climate system, writes Zack Colman.
New research shows the planet is heating up more quickly than previously thought, which could worsen damage from a potentially historic El Niño, shrink Arctic ice cover to record lows and push a critical ocean current that regulates weather closer to collapse.
“You have to remember that these consequences, a lot of them are irreversible, effectively — certainly in a human lifetime — and you’re piling up debt,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geosciences professor and contributing author to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “And we’re not going to be able to afford it later.”
Last year, Republicans eroded President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — the largest-ever U.S. action to confront climate change — in their megalaw to extend tax cuts and shrink social safety net programs. So as the midterms approach, Democrats have pivoted to energy affordability.
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“A fair number of Democrats who have long been champions of climate action themselves have remained or have gone quiet,” Leiserowitz said. “I just don’t see any reason why they need to be scaredy cats.”
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But experts worry the shift in Democrats’ rhetoric means they may not aggressively pursue climate action if they win back power in Washington. The road is already uphill: the Trump administration has terminated grants for climate research, brain-drained federal work on the issue and floated draconian cuts to satellites and other programs to monitor the Earth’s climate.
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