DNC Speaks No Climate, Hears No Climate

This guest post is by FrameLab contributor David Fenton.

Paid parental leave. Health care as a human right. Freedom to control your own body. Taxing the wealthy to pay their fair share. Protecting democracy. 

These were the themes of the Democratic National Convention. They will be exceedingly difficult to achieve in the chaos of our escalating climate crisis. Yet we heard almost nothing about the threat to a livable planet during convention prime time. 

Vice President Kamala Harris devoted barely seven words to the issue. President Biden briefly touted his Inflation Reduction Act without explaining that climate change threatens global security, prosperity and health. Former President Obama mentioned it in one throwaway line. Michelle Obama didn’t mention it at all. Tim Walz, Oprah and so many others were silent on the issue of the very survival of our civilization. 

Of course, at the Republican Convention energy was mentioned frequently — they want to drill for more of the polluting kind. The intensified global heating and destruction this will cause was mentioned, too – in mockery. So one party used prime time to distort the truth, while the other mostly hid it from the public. 

Why do most Democratic Party campaign consultants and political advisers steer their clients away from talking about the most alarming and urgent threat facing the world? How did the climate emergency become the silent emergency? 

President Biden passed major, though flawed, climate legislation by only one vote. But he never gave a prime time speech about the issue. He never once held a public meeting with even one climate scientist for the purpose of public education. The political staff at the White House shot this down. Attempts within the Obama and Biden White House staffs to mount a major climate public education campaign met the same fate. 

These political operatives read the polls, where climate change is a low priority issue for the American public. In a recent survey by the Yale Center for Climate Change Communication, likely voters ranked climate change 19th of 28 issues. 

Yale researchers consistently find that most Americans do not think climate change will affect them in their lifetime. Why? Those same surveys find two-thirds of the public “rarely or never” hear anyone talking about climate or see anything about it in the media. They certainly are not hearing about it from our cowardly political leaders. 

Media Matters consistently finds that network television evening, morning and Sunday shows rarely mention climate change (with Disney’s ABC News being the worst offender). The dots are not being connected between fossil fuel pollution and extreme weather on network or local television. Pundits like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough applaud the United States for becoming the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, bigger than Saudi Arabia, without mentioning the certain destruction this will bring to our economy, security and way of life. 

Online, climate disinformation dominates the social media swamp. Facebook and X feature prominent climate deniers. The YouTube recommendation engine feeds science disinformation to viewers regularly, especially if it tags you as Republican. 

Meanwhile, the philanthropic and nongovernmental organization sectors have massively underinvested in public education on the issue. They have largely ceded the information wars, with the fossil fuel industry dominating the propaganda battlefield. Billions of environmental NGO dollars go into science, policy and law, but little goes to helping the public understand the imminent climate threat to their homes, insurance, health and children. Public perception is the foundation of political will. When it comes to climate, we lack it.

The public knowledge deficit affects the market and clean energy transition, too. Ford just announced it was abandoning plans to build a major new battery factory because of slack demand for electric vehicles. The lack of advertising and social media campaigns to link gas cars to asthma, wildfire smoke, heat waves, floods and stronger storms doesn’t help. Nor does the failure of political leaders to explain the imperative of phasing out gas cars for public safety. 

Of course, this will change. The weather is guaranteed to become increasingly more catastrophic — and will eventually result in the public demanding quick action to protect us. The problem is, if we wait till then, it will likely be too late, as carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere for centuries and there is already way too much of it. Already, scientists report the earth is approaching irreversible tipping points in its life support systems for humanity. 

If Kamala Harris becomes president, let’s hope she makes a priority of helping the public learn the truth, so those political consultants finally see climate as a major voting issue. Let’s hope she mobilizes the public so that Congress will pass stronger climate legislation and America can lead the world to do much more. Otherwise, we’re cooked. 

David Fenton, a long-time climate activist, is the author of “The Activist’s Media Handbook: Lessons from 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator.”