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Americans heard a lot about smoke precautions, Data For Progress found. But the survey also suggests a troubling acceptance of our new reality.
It’s been just over a week since smoke from Canadian wildfires swept over the East Coast, enveloping the region in a hazardous, multi-day haze. The crisis seemed to dissipate as quickly and confusingly as it arrived, even though it’s likely not even over.
At its climax, the event broke records. Wednesday, June 7, was by far the worst wildfire smoke day in U.S. history, in terms of the number of people that were exposed to toxic air.
But will it be remembered? In the long arc of climate-related disasters, will this one stick with us as a pivotal moment? Or will the continuing ebb and flow of smog rolling in from Canada this summer dilute the acuteness of the experience?
The progressive think tank Data For Progress conducted a poll of 1,236 likely voters from around the country last weekend about what happened in the Northeast. The results aren’t especially surprising, and since the smoke is likely to come back, and in the meantime has affected other parts of the U.S., it would probably be worth running the poll again in a week or two.
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But I do think the responses sketch a picture of how people are processing our new reality, where wildfire smoke is no longer solely the concern of the arid West, but a national public health threat.
Personally, I was relieved to see that the vast majority of voters of all political stripes — 89% — believe exposure to smoky air threatens public health, despite what they may have heard from a crank on Fox News. Also, even though the response from public officials may have been slow and inadequate, the majority of those surveyed had seen recommendations on how to protect themselves by wearing a face mask, running an air purifier, or by limiting their time outdoors. That’s a hopeful data point: As these events become more common, people will at least be better prepared for them.
The survey also investigated what voters believe caused the wildfires in Canada, asking them to rate the relationship between the fires and “climate change,” “poor land management,” “natural weather patterns,” and “fossil fuel corporations.” The results were predictably polarized on climate change, with 86% of Democrats, but only 33% of Republicans, blaming it at least somewhat, if not a great deal. However, most of the country seems to be in agreement that poor land management and weather patterns also played a role.
“There is still a gulf across party lines regarding how much voters directly attribute climate change to extreme weather events,” said Danielle Deiseroth, the executive director of Data for Progress. “Climate change doesn't care whether you live in a Red state or Blue state, it’s a threat to the public health of our entire country and planet, and we need action.”
To be clear, we don’t yet know the extent to which climate change played a role in the wildfires in Eastern Canada. Quebec was not in drought, though it had an unusually hot spring. “There is a clear link between climate change and the hotter conditions and fuel aridity that make ‘fire weather’ and wildfires more likely and more destructive,” climate scientist Zeke Hausfather wrote last week. “At the same time, any individual fire may be the result of a number of factors.”
The most interesting part of the poll, to me, was a section that tried to assess the country’s emotional response to the event.
Participants were asked about their feelings twice. First, they were prompted to report whether or not they felt frustrated, hopeless, scared, sad, confused, optimistic, pleased, or indifferent when thinking about the hazardous air quality on the East Coast. Then they were asked the same questions again after being shown an image of the Empire State Building obscured by a smoky, orange glow.
The image that participants were shown while taking the Data For Progress surveyDavid Dee Delgado/Getty Images
The vast majority of voters responded that they were neither indifferent (89-91%) nor pleased (98%) nor optimistic (95-97%) before and after being shown the photo. But many were hesitant to agree to any of the other suggested sentiments. Less than half of those polled acknowledged they felt sad, even after seeing the apocalyptic photo. The regional breakdown is also interesting: Fewer respondents in the Northeast reported feeling sad than anywhere else in the country, although they were the most likely to feel scared. The emotion that got the strongest response before seeing the photo was frustration, afterwards it was fear.
I found the results for sadness somewhat unsettling. The world as we’ve known it is dissolving in a cloud of smoke, yet we collectively struggle to mourn it. Some people might not understand or accept what is happening. But I fear that for others, the tepid reaction had more to do with the fact that we’ve all seen so many images like this by now.
Acclimatized, desensitized, whatever word you want to use — it’s possible this is the world many of us have come to expect. And because a defining feature of wildfire smoke is that it will reliably drift away, unlike the devastating impacts of the fire itself, it’s possible to look at this anomalous, tragic event and see not an occasion for mourning but just another familiar symptom of decay.
Or maybe people just have trouble admitting to being sad. On the bright side, the poll did find that 84% of voters didn’t feel hopeless, even after being shown the scary photo. Of course, we don’t know whether that’s because they are hopeful about tackling climate change. But I’d like to believe that’s the case, because there is so much work to do, and it’s important that people have faith that we can do it.
Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,236 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents from June 9 to 11, 2023. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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It was a curious alliance from the start. On the one hand, Donald Trump, who made antipathy toward electric vehicles a core part of his meandering rants. On the other hand, Elon Musk, the man behind the world’s largest EV company, who nonetheless put all his weight, his millions of dollars, and the power of his social network behind the Trump campaign.
With Musk standing by his side on Election Day, Trump has once again secured the presidency. His reascendance sent shock waves through the automotive world, where companies that had been lurching toward electrification with varying levels of enthusiasm were left to wonder what happens now — and what benefits Tesla may reap from having hitched itself to the winning horse.
Certainly the federal government’s stated target of 50% of U.S. new car sales being electric by 2030 is toast, and many of the actions it took in pursuit of that goal are endangered. Although Trump has softened his rhetoric against EVs since becoming buddies with Musk, it’s hard to imagine a Trump administration with any kind of ambitious electrification goal.
During his first go-round as president, Trump attacked the state of California’s ability to set its own ambitious climate-focused rules for cars. No surprise there: Because of the size of the California car market, its regulations helped to drag the entire industry toward lower-emitting vehicles and, almost inevitably, EVs. If Trump changes course and doesn’t do the same thing this time, it’ll be because his new friend at Tesla supports those rules.
The biggest question hanging over electric vehicles, however, is the fate of the Biden administration’s signature achievements in climate and EV policy, particularly the Inflation Reduction Act’s $7,500 federal consumer tax credit for electric vehicles. A Trump administration looks poised to tear down whatever it can of its predecessor’s policy. Some analysts predict it’s unlikely the entire IRA will disappear, but concede Trump would try to kill off the incentives for electric vehicles however he can.
There’s no sugar-coating it: Without the federal incentives, the state of EVs looks somewhat bleak. Knocking $7,500 off the starting price is essential to negate the cost of manufacturing expensive lithium-ion batteries and making EVs cost-competitive with ordinary combustion cars. Consider a crucial model like the new Chevy Equinox EV: Counting the federal incentive, the most basic $35,000 model could come in under the starting price of a gasoline crossover like the Toyota RAV4. Without that benefit, buyers who want to go electric will have to pay a premium to do so — the thing that’s been holding back mass electrification all along.
Musk, during his honeymoon with Trump, boasted that Tesla doesn’t need the tax credits, as if daring the president-elect to kill off the incentives. On the one hand, this is obviously false. Visit Tesla’s website and you’ll see the simplest Model 3 listed for $29,990, but this is a mirage. Take away the $7,500 in incentives and $5,000 in claimed savings versus buying gasoline, and the car actually starts at about $43,000, much further out of reach for non-wealthy buyers.
What Musk really means is that his company doesn’t need the incentives nearly as bad as other automakers do. Ford is hemorrhaging billions of dollars as it struggles to make EVs profitably. GM’s big plan to go entirely electric depended heavily on federal support. As InsideEVsnotes, the likely outcome of a Trump offensive against EVs is that the legacy car brands, faced with an unpredictable electrification roadmap as America oscillates between presidents, scale back their plans and lean back into the easy profitably of big, gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks. Such an about-face could hand Tesla the kind of EV market dominance it enjoyed four or five years ago when it sold around 75% of all electric vehicles in America.
That’s tough news for the climate-conscious Americans who want an electric vehicle built by someone not named Elon Musk. Hundreds of thousands of people, myself included, bought a Tesla during the past five or six years because it was the most practical EV for their lifestyle, only to see the company’s figurehead shift his public persona from goofy troll to Trump acolyte. It’s not uncommon now, as Democrats distance themselves from Tesla, to see Model 3s adorned with bumper stickers like the “Anti-Elon Tesla Club,” as one on a car I followed last month proclaimed. Musk’s newest vehicle, the Cybertruck, is a rolling embodiment of the man’s brand, a vehicle purpose-built to repel anyone not part of his cult of personality.
In a world where this version of Tesla retakes control of the electric car market, it becomes harder to ditch gasoline without indirectly supporting Donald Trump, by either buying a Tesla or topping off at its Superchargers. Blue voters will have some options outside of Tesla — the industry has come too far to simply evaporate because of one election. But it’s also easy to see dispirited progressives throwing up their hands and buying another carbon-spewing Subaru.
Republicans are taking over some of the most powerful institutions for crafting climate policy on Earth.
When Republicans flipped the Senate, they took the keys to three critical energy and climate-focused committees.
These are among the most powerful institutions for crafting climate policy on Earth. The Senate plays the role of gatekeeper for important legislation, as it requires a supermajority to overcome the filibuster. Hence, it’s both where many promising climate bills from the House go to die, as well as where key administrators such as the heads of the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency are vetted and confirmed.
We’ll have to wait a bit for the Senate’s new committee chairs to be officially confirmed. But Jeff Navin, co-founder at the climate change-focused government affairs firm Boundary Stone Partners, told me that since selections are usually based on seniority, in many cases it’s already clear which Republicans are poised to lead under Trump and which Democrats will assume second-in-command (known as the ranking member). Here’s what we know so far.
This committee has been famously led by Joe Manchin, the former Democrat, now Independent senator from West Virginia, who will retire at the end of this legislative session. Energy and Natural Resources has a history of bipartisan collaboration and was integral in developing many of the key provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act — and could thus play a key role in dismantling them. Overall, the committee oversees the DOE, the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, so it’s no small deal that its next chairman will likely be Mike Lee, the ultra-conservative Republican from Utah. That’s assuming that the committee's current ranking member, John Barrasso of Wyoming, wins his bid for Republican Senate whip, which seems very likely.
Lee opposes federal ownership of public lands, setting himself up to butt heads with Martin Heinrich, the Democrat from New Mexico and likely the committee’s next ranking member. Lee has also said that solving climate change is simply a matter of having more babies, as “problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, they’re solved by more humans.” As Navin told me, “We've had this kind of safe space where so-called quiet climate policy could get done in the margins. And it’s not clear that that's going to continue to exist with the new leadership.”
This committee is currently chaired by Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware, who is retiring after this term. Poised to take over is the Republican’s current ranking member, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. She’s been a strong advocate for continued reliance on coal and natural gas power plants, while also carving out areas of bipartisan consensus on issues such as nuclear energy, carbon capture, and infrastructure projects during her tenure on the committee. The job of the Environment and Public Works committee is in the name: It oversees the EPA, writes key pieces of environmental legislation such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and supervises public infrastructure projects such as highways, bridges, and dams.
Navin told me that many believe the new Democratic ranking member will be Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, although to do so, he would have to step down from his perch at the Senate Budget Committee, where he is currently chair. A tireless advocate of the climate cause, Whitehouse has worked on the Environment and Public Works committee for over 15 years, and lately seems to have had a relatively productive working relationship with Capito.
This subcommittee falls under the broader Senate Appropriations Committee and is responsible for allocating funding for the DOE, various water development projects, and various other agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
California’s Dianne Feinstein used to chair this subcommittee until her death last year, when Democrat Patty Murray of Washington took over. Navin told me that the subcommittee’s next leader will depend on how the game of “musical chairs” in the larger Appropriations Committee shakes out. Depending on their subcommittee preferences, the chair could end up being John Kennedy of Louisiana, outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, or Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. It’s likewise hard to say who the top Democrat will be.
Inside a wild race sparked by a solar farm in Knox County, Ohio.
The most important climate election you’ve never heard of? Your local county commissioner.
County commissioners are usually the most powerful governing individuals in a county government. As officials closer to community-level planning than, say a sitting senator, commissioners wind up on the frontlines of grassroots opposition to renewables. And increasingly, property owners that may be personally impacted by solar or wind farms in their backyards are gunning for county commissioner positions on explicitly anti-development platforms.
Take the case of newly-elected Ohio county commissioner – and Christian social media lifestyle influencer – Drenda Keesee.
In March, Keesee beat fellow Republican Thom Collier in a primary to become a GOP nominee for a commissioner seat in Knox County, Ohio. Knox, a ruby red area with very few Democratic voters, is one of the hottest battlegrounds in the war over solar energy on prime farmland and one of the riskiest counties in the country for developers, according to Heatmap Pro’s database. But Collier had expressed openness to allowing new solar to be built on a case-by-case basis, while Keesee ran on a platform focused almost exclusively on blocking solar development. Collier ultimately placed third in the primary, behind Keesee and another anti-solar candidate placing second.
Fighting solar is a personal issue for Keesee (pronounced keh-see, like “messy”). She has aggressively fought Frasier Solar – a 120 megawatt solar project in the country proposed by Open Road Renewables – getting involved in organizing against the project and regularly attending state regulator hearings. Filings she submitted to the Ohio Power Siting Board state she owns a property at least somewhat adjacent to the proposed solar farm. Based on the sheer volume of those filings this is clearly her passion project – alongside preaching and comparing gay people to Hitler.
Yesterday I spoke to Collier who told me the Frasier Solar project motivated Keesee’s candidacy. He remembered first encountering her at a community meeting – “she verbally accosted me” – and that she “decided she’d run against me because [the solar farm] was going to be next to her house.” In his view, he lost the race because excitement and money combined to produce high anti-solar turnout in a kind of local government primary that ordinarily has low campaign spending and is quite quiet. Some of that funding and activity has been well documented.
“She did it right: tons of ground troops, people from her church, people she’s close with went door-to-door, and they put out lots of propaganda. She got them stirred up that we were going to take all the farmland and turn it into solar,” he said.
Collier’s takeaway from the race was that local commissioner races are particularly vulnerable to the sorts of disinformation, campaign spending and political attacks we’re used to seeing more often in races for higher offices at the state and federal level.
“Unfortunately it has become this,” he bemoaned, “fueled by people who have little to no knowledge of what we do or how we do it. If you stir up enough stuff and you cry out loud enough and put up enough misinformation, people will start to believe it.”
Races like these are happening elsewhere in Ohio and in other states like Georgia, where opposition to a battery plant mobilized Republican primaries. As the climate world digests the federal election results and tries to work backwards from there, perhaps at least some attention will refocus on local campaigns like these.