All Quiet on the Climate Front

Summary

Podcast Summary: "All Quiet on the Climate Front"

Podcast: Today, Explained (Vox)
Episode Date: May 14, 2026
Host: Sean Rameswaram
Guests: Elizabeth Kolbert (staff writer, The New Yorker), Matt Huber (Professor, Syracuse University; author: Climate Change as Class War)

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Overview

This episode of Today, Explained investigates the current state and uncertain future of climate policy in the U.S., focusing on the unprecedented dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Trump administration, specifically under administrator Lee Zeldin. It also explores the evolution in Democratic rhetoric surrounding climate change and the shifting priorities of political messaging in the face of political backlash, cultural polarization, and voter apathy toward the climate crisis.

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Main Discussion Points

1. The EPA Under Siege

[00:00–13:26]

• Historical Context:
  The EPA was created in 1970 by Republican President Richard Nixon in a period marked by bipartisan environmental activism (Earth Day, Clean Air Act).
• Current Crisis:
  Under Trump’s second administration, Lee Zeldin leads a sweeping campaign to weaken, politicize, and potentially dismantle the EPA, surpassing even previous conservative efforts.
• The Letter:
  Several dozen (eventually identified as nearly 150) EPA employees signed a letter objecting to Zeldin’s “overly partisan” leadership and plans to eliminate the agency’s scientific division. This triggered a retaliatory electronic “manhunt,” resulting in administrative leave and firings—an unprecedented internal purge.
• Zeldin’s Philosophy and Actions:
  • Zeldin, once a member of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, now refers to climate change as a “religion” and derides Biden-era climate policy as the “Green New scam.”
  • Publicly questions climate science and regulatory legitimacy, dismissing climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated” [06:01, Zeldin].
  • Oversees rollback of rules on power plant emissions, car emissions (ending the transition toward EVs), and methane releases.
  • Most significantly, revokes the “endangerment finding” — the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases since a landmark 2007 Supreme Court case.
  • Zeldin: “The elimination of the endangerment finding is signed, sealed, and delivered.” [07:03]
• Legal and Historical Significance:
  • Revoking the endangerment finding is far more aggressive than past Republican or even prior Trump EPA heads.
  • Zeldin adopts an approach of “throw anything at the wall and see if it sticks,” unconstrained by legal precedent.
  • Elizabeth Kolbert: “We have never seen... an EPA that is as sort of openly siding with polluters as this one.” [10:38]
• Consequences:
  • Rolling back EPA protections will lead to public health harms—especially from particulate pollution—which manifest as premature deaths, though individually untraceable.
  • Kolbert: “People will die prematurely... there’s kind of a one follows the other.” [13:02]

2. Democrats and the Changing Climate Message

[17:20–30:11]

• Guest: Matt Huber (geography professor, climate/class politics author)
• Thesis:
  • Huber argues it's time for Democrats to stop leading with climate change as a rhetorical or campaign centerpiece.
  • Despite decades of centering the “climate crisis,” most Americans don’t view it as an urgent priority compared to cost-of-living issues.
  • Huber: “Most Americans don’t really prioritize this as an urgent issue, and they prioritize other cost of living issues much more.” [17:46]
• History of Climate Framing:
  • The Democratic climate focus took off after Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and the 2008 financial crisis—linking climate action to jobs and economic renewal (the “Green New Deal”).
  • The Green New Deal rhetoric was derailed by culture war polarization—mocked as “banning hamburgers and airplanes” in conservative media [21:12–22:31].
• Policy Impacts:
  • Biden’s crowning achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act, was climate-driven, but enacted quietly under the guise of reducing inflation—resulting in a lack of public association with Biden or the Democrats.
  • “They just sort of associated it with... the private firm that is investing. And again, meanwhile, inflation is really hammering the working class... the number one issue that voters care about.” [23:13–23:37]
  • Much of this climate progress has now been reversed by Trump’s return; emissions are rising.
• Campaigns and Strategic Shifts:
  • New Democratic candidates from working-class backgrounds now minimize or avoid climate as a campaign message, even when personally invested; instead, they link any mention of climate to affordability and jobs.
  • Huber lists candidates (e.g., Sam Forstag, Terry Martin, Kayla in Minnesota) whose platforms ignore or barely mention climate.
  • Example: Even ecosocialist Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on climate previously, dropped it as a central message, focusing instead on affordability.
• Huber’s Prescription:
  • Climate policy should be “Trojan horsed” into campaigns via tangible, material needs (jobs, housing, energy costs), not existential warnings.
  • “If we can kind of build a decarbonization agenda around those sectors, we can link climate to those working classes needs... shouting about the climate crisis [isn’t] going to be the... motivating impetus.” [29:02]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Elizabeth Kolbert on the unprecedented EPA purges:
  “They sort of didn’t expect...much to come of this letter. But...there ensued a sort of electronic manhunt...about almost 150 people they placed on administrative leave and several senior people were fired.” – [03:01]

• On the Trump administration’s regulatory philosophy:
  “What we’re seeing in Lee Zeldin at the EPA is similar to...Trump 2.0, which is that the sort of guardrails are off...let’s throw anything at the wall and see if it sticks.” – Elizabeth Kolbert [08:55]

• On visible and invisible pollution:
  “Now, do you know you’re breathing in PM2.5? No. It’s invisible, right? ...But over time, we will see the effects of what they’re doing show up in deaths. Really. That’s how it will show up in premature deaths.” – Elizabeth Kolbert [12:00]

• On political priorities and climate crisis:
  “Most Americans don’t really prioritize this as an urgent issue, and they prioritize other cost of living issues much more.” – Matt Huber [17:46]

• On the failure of the Green New Deal brand:
  “Almost immediately the Green New Deal became we’re gonna ban hamburgers. We’re gonna ban air travel...What started as...majoritarian politics...became yet another kind of polarized culture war issue.” – Matt Huber [22:15; 22:31]

• On the shift in Democratic campaign messaging:
  “Some of their websites literally don’t mention climate change at all. And if they do, it’s just very brief and links it to energy affordability, jobs, things like this. That’s a real shift.” – Matt Huber [27:06]

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Key Timestamps

• [00:00–02:10]: Introduction, historical context on the EPA; 1970s bipartisan environmentalism.
• [02:10–03:33]: Whistleblower letter to Zeldin, EPA staff purges.
• [03:33–04:25]: Lee Zeldin’s rise in Republican politics; Trump connection.
• [05:13–06:11]: Zeldin’s climate skepticism and “religion” rhetoric.
• [06:16–08:33]: Specific deregulation: coal, cars, methane, endangerment finding.
• [08:55–10:38]: Comparison to Scott Pruitt; removal of legal “guardrails.”
• [10:38–12:00]: Tension between EPA, industry, and the invisibility of pollution’s public health impacts.
• [13:00–13:26]: Consequences: Deregulation leading to premature death.
• [17:20–18:34]: Huber’s thesis: Climate as a second-tier issue for voters.
• [18:43–20:03]: History of climate in Democratic politics; Green New Deal origins.
• [21:12–22:42]: Political polarization, media backlash from Green New Deal rhetoric.
• [23:13–24:55]: The Inflation Reduction Act, its invisibility, and Trump’s rollbacks.
• [25:17–28:10]: Working-class candidates and downplaying climate.
• [29:02–30:11]: Huber on re-centering climate within material needs, not existential urgency.

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Conclusion

All Quiet on the Climate Front delivers a sobering portrait of the EPA’s vulnerability to political assault and the shifting winds of environmental messaging in the U.S. Where the Obama and Biden years framed climate as a defining crisis, Democrats are increasingly abandoning it as a central campaign issue, focusing instead on cost-of-living and material concerns. Meanwhile, the EPA sustains unprecedented attacks—from both within and without—jeopardizing progress on environmental and public health protections for years to come. The episode urges a reexamination of strategy for both policymakers and advocates, acknowledging the hard realities of American public opinion and power.

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Transcript

[Sean Ramisviram]

Summer's around the corner. Heat waves are gonna be freaking us out. It's as good a time as any to check in on climate change here at Today explained from Vox. So let's start with the epa. The Environmental Protection Agency was signed into existence by a Republican, Richard Nixon. Can you believe this was way back in 1970 when it was okay for the right to care about the planet? After a massive oil spill off the California coast, there was a ton of movement around environmental stewardship in this country. We had our first Earth Day. The Clean Air act passed with only one person in all of con voting no. And that same Congress, along with Tricky Dick, created the EPA. 56 years later, in this Anthropocene era of ours, another Republican administration is doing everything in its power to destroy the epa. All while we civilians contend with the effects of human caused climate change. That story is coming up on the show today.

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Dropping May 14th tap in with us.

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Hey everybody, Sue Bird here. This week on A Touch More. I'm celebrating the start of the WNBA by breaking down what I saw in weekend. And we have NBC's one and only Maria Taylor to talk about her boundary breaking career in sports journalism, the NBA playoffs and her thoughts on which teams have the best chance of making the WNBA finals. Check out the latest episode of A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

Hello everybody. This is a big one if you're into environment.

[Sean Ramisviram]

Elizabeth Colbert is into environment. We asked her on Today Explained because she recently wrote a big old doozy for the New Yorker called Can the EPA Survive? Lee Zeldin.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

It opened with a story, several dozen, we're not sure exactly how many at this point, employees of the EPA signed a letter addressed to the administrator Lee Zeldin, objecting to much of what he was doing, objecting to what they saw as the overly partisan nature of his leadership, objecting to his plans to eliminate the EPA scientific division.

[Sue Bird]

Today we stand together in dissent against the current administration's focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions and disregard for scientific expertise.

[Matt Huber]

We call on you to reaffirm your

[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

testimony, honor your oaths of the Constitution and renew your commitment to become the environmental steward the public entrusted you to be.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

And they, as according to people I spoke to, sort of didn't expect, you know, much to come of this letter. But in fact what did occur was when they presented it to him, there ensued a sort of electronic manhunt and they searched after and everyone that they could identify and that was about almost 150 people they placed on administrative leave and several of them very senior people were fired.

[Sean Ramisviram]

How does Lee Zeldin become someone on Trump's radar?

[Elizabeth Colbert]

He was a big, big Trump supporter during the first impeachment inquiry.

[Lee Zeldin]

The President of the United States knows that this is a total sham. Many of my constituents, a lot of the American public knows that this is a total charade at.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

Zeldin was on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a lot of the closed door sessions. He questioned a lot of the witnesses very aggressively. He was constantly tweeting things out.

[Matt Huber]

I've sat through every interview of this so called impeachment inquiry and the President hasn't done anything to possibly impeach him for nothing.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

He was a big defender of Trump at that time and Trump clearly took notice. Thanks Lee. I think that is when Lee Zeldin really came to the attention of Trump.

[Sean Ramisviram]

And does Lee Zeldin have strong feelings about climate science, the environment? What's his philosophy?

[Elizabeth Colbert]

Well, as, as a congressman, he, you know, he represented the east end of Long island which is a very low lying part of the world and experiencing a lot of flooding owing to sea level rise. And he actually joined a group called the Climate Solutions caucus in 2016, which was a bio bipartisan group, still is, still exists now. He refers to climate change, you know, sort of concerns about climate change as a religion and a lot of the programs that the Biden administration had put in place to try to limit climate change as a, as the Green New scam.

[Lee Zeldin]

I mean I just saw a clip yesterday where Al Gore was, was talking about global freezing. I'm like, I'm having trouble keeping up. I thought it was global warming and now it's global freezing. All of this is believed to be a. Have you killed off the Green New Deal? It's done, it's dead.

[Sean Ramisviram]

Okay, so that's maybe what he thinks to some extent. What is he doing? It's been over a year since he was put in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. How has he transformed it?

[Elizabeth Colbert]

Yeah, I mean on some level you could say it doesn't really matter what his personal beliefs are. He certainly carried out the Trump administration's agenda to dismantle anything having to do with Trying to curb climate change as

[Lee Zeldin]

if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens is climate change. It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

That involved dismantling rules that were supposed to limit emissions from power plants.

[Sean Ramisviram]

On day one and every day since,

[Lee Zeldin]

President Trump has shown his unwavering support for beautiful, clean coal.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

It involves dismantling rules that were supposed to limit emissions from cars and really, you know, accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.

[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

The president says he's moving away from

[Sue Bird]

mandates for electric vehicles that he says hurt the auto industry.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

Trump also ended federal greenhouse gas emission standards for all vehicles and engines. It involves dismantling rules that were designed to limit methane releases. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. It gets released from oil and gas operations. He most significantly has gone after what's called the endangerment finding, which is sort of the legal basis for these other efforts.

[Lee Zeldin]

The elimination of the endangerment finding is signed, sealed, and delivered.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

The endangerment finding dates back to a court case, a very significant sort of landmark court case in 2007. And in that case, the Supreme Court basically directed the epa. It said, you have an obligation to decide whether greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare, and if so, to regulate them. And a couple years later, after the case, under the Obama administration, the EPA finally did come out and say, oh, yeah, greenhouse gases, global warming, they do endanger the public health and welfare. And that set in motion these regulations that I alluded to having to with power plants having to do with exhaust, exhaust from cars. And by revoking that, what they're really trying to say is the EPA has no authority to regulate greenhouse gases. That's really what they're arguing today.

[Lee Zeldin]

We dismantle the tactics and legal gymnastics used by the Obama and Biden administrations to backdoor their ideological agendas on the American people.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

That flies in the face of the supreme court case from 2007. But it will be challenged in court. It has already been challenged in court. So whether that will stand, whether that will, you know, persist, I can't tell you. But they already have taken that. That step.

[Sean Ramisviram]

This isn't the first time Donald Trump's been the President of the United States, and it's not the first time he appointed a guy who didn't seem to love the EPA to run the agency. Famously, the Sierra Club said that having Scott Pruitt in charge of the US EPA was like putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires. Is Lee Zeldin worse than, say, Scott Pruitt? For the epa.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

Well, I think that what we're seeing in Lee Zeldin at the EPA is similar to what we're seeing across the, you know, Trump 2.0, which is that the sort of guardrails are off. So, you know, to give one example, when Scott Pruitt, who was a pretty open climate change denier, I believe the

[Lee Zeldin]

ability to measure with precision the degree of human activity's impact on the climate is subject to more debate on whether the climate is changing or whether human activity contributes to it.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

He had been Attorney General of the state of Oklahoma, had sued the EPA many times, including over its efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. But even he said, look, the endangerment finding, that is settled law. We can't go after that. But now I think the attitude, as we see over and over again is let's throw anything at the wall and see if it sticks. We actually are unconstrained by legal niceties like Supreme Court cases or appropriations law or administrat law. When the courts catch up, if they catch up, there's nothing you can do. It's very hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So, for example, if you cancel a grant and then it's eventually ruled that that was illegal, it's very hard to get that money back.

[Sean Ramisviram]

It sounds like from what you're saying and from what Lee Zeldin and his minions are doing at the epa, that they are trying to go farther than, let's say, a conservative administration has ever gone before to hobble this agency. Is that a reaction to something in particular? Was Joe Biden or, I don't know, President Obama going farther than ever before to institute environmental regulations.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

What we find in environmental protection is when we look at how dangerous something is or we look at new chemicals like pfas, chemicals that there are lots of public health hazards. And really, ultimately the EPA is a public health agency. There is a tendency over time to try to get rid of these hazards. And that runs smack into a lot of economic interests that are producing these hazards, let's just put it that way. So there's, you know, always been a tremendous tension between the epa, you know, and the industries that it regulates. And we have never seen in the, you know, 56 year history of the EPA. EPA, and that includes Republican administrations and Democratic administrations, an EPA that is as sort of openly siding with polluters as this one. Lee Zeldin is not going to come out and say. He doesn't come out and say, oh yeah, we've decided you know, to side with polluters here. He will say, you know, we can protect the environment and grow our economy at the same time, and we're going to prove that. Now, usually that means rolling back restrictions that were put in place for public health reasons. It's very difficult for people to judge what he's saying because many of these things, they're invisible and their effects are very hard to directly measure, you know, whether you breathed in these particulates. So I'll use an example of this, what's called PM2.5, which is this very fine soot emitted in all sorts of ways, power plants, cars, et cetera. And the Biden administration had tightened regulations on that and that causes lung disease. It's been proved over and over again to be a serious public health hazard. Now, do you know you're breathing in PM2.5? No. It's invisible, right? So it's not like you see a cloud of it. But over time, we will see the effects of what they're doing show up in deaths. Really. That's how it will show up in premature deaths. But, you know, will you as an individual know that you were affected? That's very difficult for an individual to trace.

[Sean Ramisviram]

People will die.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

People will die prematurely. And I think it's pretty clear, obviously, when you're trying to prevent deaths from lung disease, you're trying to prevent deaths from cancer, and you're rolling back those protections, then you will be producing deaths from those causes. There's kind of a one follows the other.

[Sean Ramisviram]

You can read more about Lee Zeldin and what he's doing over@the epaewyorker.com the Democrats don't have power, but they might soon. Gerrymandering notwithstanding, when we're back on today explained an environmentalist has some advice for do not talk about climate change.

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[Matt Huber]

I'm Matt Huber. I'm a professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University.

[Sean Ramisviram]

Matt's also the author of a pair of books on the environment, most recently Climate Change as Class War. And even more recently still, he wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times telling Democrats to say less about climate change. We asked him to say more.

[Matt Huber]

Well, you know, I've been very invested in the piece. I try to argue it's sort of the end of what I'd call like a 20 year period in Democratic Party politics where actually I think a lot of Democrats were thinking that climate would be kind of this urgent crisis issue that could kind of galvanize this kind of mass majoritarian coalition around sort of green jobs. But what I've sort of come to in the few years is that I'm just not sure that really rhetorically centering the climate crisis as the impetus of this kind of politics is actually going to be effective in building that power, building that majority. Most Americans don't really prioritize this as an urgent issue, and they prioritize other cost of living issues much more.

[Sean Ramisviram]

When did fighting climate change become such a core issue for the Democratic Party? Did Al Gore invent that too?

[Matt Huber]

Yeah, in addition to the Internet,

[Sean Ramisviram]

you

[Matt Huber]

know, I, I do, I think 2006, which was 20 years ago, was a big flashpoint where Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was released. Our ability to live is what is at stake. And that did coalesce with a massive, you know, a couple years later, a massive financial crisis. And I think in the Zeitgeist, there was a lot of feeling that, like, just like in the Great Depression, that there, there had to be this kind of mass jobs program, public investment program, and that climate change actually provided the kind of, again, the urgency and impetus to kind of center around that kind of large scale investment program. And it could create jobs and appeal to sort of these more economics concerns.

[Lee Zeldin]

My presidency will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process.

[Matt Huber]

And I think 10, 12 years later, when the Green New Deal became a big deal spread by like Alexandria Ocasio, Cortez and others, I think they too were also thinking it would actually be a more effective Politics in the context of a kind of large scale economic crisis like the original New Deal was.

[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

And historically speaking, we have mobilized our entire economy around war. But I thought to myself, it doesn't have to be that way, especially when our greatest existential threat is climate change.

[Lee Zeldin]

We must implement a program consistent with the goals of the Green New Deal.

[Matt Huber]

By the way, the Green New Deal

[Lee Zeldin]

is not just a resolution, it's a revolution that we're talking about. It's a revolution.

[Matt Huber]

Unfortunately for them, I think we never really entered that kind of crisis since the Green New Deal politics took off, because we did have a recession. But it was this Covid recession that was a strange, strange kind of economic shutdown and not the kind of crisis that called for this kind of big job.

[Sean Ramisviram]

But that that label Green New Deal became so polarizing and, you know, it was a strategy to make it so obviously. Do you think anything like that kind of messaging is, is just bunk now?

[Matt Huber]

Yeah, I'm really sad because I was a big Green New Deal Stan, if I can use that word. I really loved the kind of this broad vision and a positive vision because I think, think a lot of climate politics can be pretty doomerist. Right. It did go wrong though, I think when Alexandria Ocasio Cortez announced the House resolution on a Green New Deal in 2019, she did this media blitz around it and she released this FAQ document, or her office released this very bizarre FAQ document with the sort of media blitz about the Green New Deal. And in the document it had some sort of, sort of very kind of stream of consciousness language about how we're not quite ready to ban farting cows and airplanes. Okay. And of course, as you would expect, that language got taken up by the Fox News culture war machine. And almost immediately the Green New Deal became we're gonna ban hamburgers. We're gonna ban air travel.

[Lee Zeldin]

Well, let's keep it real. Maybe we shouldn't be eating hamburgers. I mean, it's wild. Or driving cars or using appliances or having a middle class which will destroy the lifeblood of our economy and take away air travel and cow meat and the automobile as we know it.

[Matt Huber]

What started as was supposed to be this kind of broad based majoritarian politics that could appeal to working class people became yet another kind of polarized culture war issue.

[Sean Ramisviram]

Unfortunately, Biden clearly realizes he can't use this Green New Deal marketing to get this kind of legislation through Congress, but he does get this kind of legislation through Congress, weirdly called the Inflation Reduction Act. Yeah, but here we are in 2026. And no one ever talks about anything that he did, even though when they were doing it, they said it was the most consequential environmental legislation in American history. How did that happen?

[Matt Huber]

Oh, boy.

[Lee Zeldin]

Come on, man.

[Matt Huber]

I think there are a lot of things going on. I mean, in many ways, the Inflation Reduction act was based on this Green New Deal idea that, you know, jobs and investments in the green economy will lead to material benefits and help win back some of these working class voters who had been shifting to Trumpism. But of course, a lot of these investments were very long term. And also the style of policymaking that, that has been in vogue for a while in the Democratic Party is to incentivize these investments through tax credits, which means you're incentivizing the private sector to do a lot of the building of these projects. And I cite a study in the piece that found basically when you survey communities where these investments are going, they actually didn't identify it with a kind of political project coming from Biden, coming from the Democratic Party. They just sort of associated it with, with the private firm that is investing. And again, meanwhile, inflation is really hammering the working class and the cost of living is skyrocketing as the core issue that over and over again polls are showing are the number one issue that voters care about. The Biden administration actually was saying that the economy was actually really good. If you look at unemployment, if you look at GDP numbers, everything's going great. And so you really had no answer for the, the core material cost of living concerns that, that really shaped the 2024 election. And of course, now with Trump in office, they've repealed a good portion of that legislation. Emissions in 2025 in the United States went up, which is very depressing. And so, yeah, it was a real disaster on a number of fronts.

[Sean Ramisviram]

I would say people are already thinking about 2028 probably because they can't wait to have some fresh blood in our politics. But, but, but there's an election this year and you write in your opinion piece in the Times about how we're already seeing Democrats shift away from climate change. Where do you see it specifically?

[Matt Huber]

I tried to argue that you can see a lot of working class candidates that are, that are union members that are fighting this, this again, this kind of standard, kind of progressive, call it a Bernie Sanders type agenda of taxing the rich and public investments, Medicare for all. But they are steering clear from the climate issue. And if they are talking about climate change, they are linking it directly to cost of Living issues like energy affordability to win and to campaign. I think they're sort of realizing that talking about the apocalyptic existential nature of the climate crisis is not going to really inspire and motivate people to support them. So I profiled someone named Sam Forstag in Montana and he is a smoke jumper. I don't know if you know what that is.

[Sean Ramisviram]

I don't. Sounds cool.

[Matt Huber]

Someone that literally parachutes out of planes to fight forest fires in the west. And he has also, because he's part of. He's a government employee, he is a union member too. And he, and he is fighting again on this kind of working class type of agenda.

[Sean Ramisviram]

The biggest fires that people are dealing

[Lee Zeldin]

with back home in Montana, where I live is, well, nobody can afford housing.

[Matt Huber]

Bernie Sanders and AOC have endorsed him. I profile an iron worker in Oklahoma.

[Lee Zeldin]

Big tech, big bosses. They're not bigger than us. I'm Terry Martin, an iron worker, a

[Matt Huber]

husband and a dad, a flight attendant in Minnesota.

[Sue Bird]

Kayla isn't just a state representative, she has a second job as a flight attendant. And right now she actually has a third job too. She's running for Congress. She's part of this new group of congressional candidates, people with non traditional, more working class backgrounds.

[Matt Huber]

Some of their websites literally don't mention climate change at all. And if they do, it's just very brief and links it to energy affordability, jobs, things like this. That's a real shift, right? Because these are the exactly the types of candidates that I would say five or six years ago would have been like the central messengers of this kind of green New Deal type of message of unions, jobs, you know, people that blue collar workers that are going to kind of build the energy transition. These would be the kind of workers that'd be front and center, but they're not. And I think that's, that's telling. But the one I profile in this, the piece, or mentioned in the piece briefly is Zoran Mamdani actually who ran a very successful campaign, but his campaign was. There's been reporting showing that he barely talked about climate change at all in his campaign. And that's after he had really been a climate activist in the Democratic Socialists of America and ran on climate change and public power in his assembly campaign in 2020.

[Sean Ramisviram]

Did you ever wonder why New York State only gets 5% of its energy from wind and solar? It's because of one capitalism. I'm Zohran Mandani, assemblymember for District 36 and a proud ecosocialist. Today I want to talk to you about utilities and why they suck.

[Matt Huber]

The whole affordability message I think came out of his campaign and people sort of realizing if you do this kind of laser focused campaign, that's a way to build a mass coalition and that's a way to win.

[Sean Ramisviram]

I really care about climate change and it bums me out that it's like everyone's 14th most important issue. As someone who's written the books, who's done the research, who's a college professor talking about these issues, how much does it break your heart that this is where we're at, that you have to write an opinion piece in the New York Times that tells politicians that they need to Trojan horse climate issues into their platforms?

[Matt Huber]

I mean, it doesn't really break my heart, it kind of just, it actually reinforces what the climate changes class war book was arguing, which is that the climate challenge is really a question of power. I mentioned in the book, you know, four years ago that it's convenient that the thing the sectors we need to decarbonize are energy transport, things like housing. These are end of month concerns for working class people. So if we can kind of build a decarbonization agenda around those sectors, we can link climate to those working classes needs. But I think since the book I've become less convinced that shouting about the climate crisis as this sort of existential threat is really going to be the again, central motivating impetus of that kind of politics. And why not just focus directly on those material needs and then once you build the power, you figure out how to really make those investments and build towards decarbonization.

[Sean Ramisviram]

Matt Huber wrote Democrats don't have to campaign on climate change anymore. For the New York Times opinion section, I'm Sean Ramisviram. Today's show was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Jolie Myers, mixed by Bridger Dunnigan and truth proofed by Gabriel Donatov. The show is called Today Explained.

[Elizabeth Colbert]

It.