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The contrasts may be quiet, but they’re also quite clear.
The United States Senate sits on a knife-edge. Democrats currently control the chamber by a 51-49 margin, but they are defending more seats than Republicans are in this election. In fact, with the retirement of Joe Manchin and the nearly inevitable passing of that West Virginia seat to a Republican, Democrats need to win almost every contested race in order to keep the chamber at 50-50, which would give them control if Kamala Harris wins the White House and Tim Walz is able to cast tie-breaking votes.
The consequences of a shift in control for climate policy could be enormous, not just in the legislation that will (or won’t) pass, but in the fate of nominees to key agencies. So how are Senate candidates confronting the climate issue? This roundup of the 10 most closely contested races shows that while the contrasts between the candidates are stark, for the most part, climate has been a secondary or even absent issue on the campaign trail.
The contrasts between the candidates are unmistakeable; to take just one example, every Democrat on this list who was in Congress at the time voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate legislation in history, and every Republican opposed it. But with the exception of Pennsylvania, where fracking has been a major issue, and to a lesser extent in Arizona, where Ruben Gallego often brings up the toll of increasing temperatures, in none of these races is climate change anywhere near the forefront of the debate.
That’s mostly because Democrats have chosen not to elevate the issue. Though they might criticize their Republican opponents for opposing the IRA or ignoring climate altogether if you ask them, they haven’t put time and resources behind the criticism. You don’t see them discussing climate in their advertising, and in most cases you won’t even find it mentioned on their websites — or if it’s there, it merits only a brief statement of intentions and nothing more detailed.
Nevertheless, the contrast remains: All of these Democrats can be counted on to support most or all of a Harris administration’s climate initiatives, just as the Republicans will reliably oppose them, or support a second Trump administration’s efforts to roll back the measures the Biden administration has undertaken. Which is why so much depends on where the Senate falls after election day.
The candidates: Democrat Ruben Gallego vs. Republican Kari Lake
Gallego has been a particularly forceful advocate on one aspect of climate change: extreme heat. He told The Arizona Republic that “our state will become uninhabitable in the summer if we wait much longer to act,” has introduced multiple bills to address it, and criticized the Biden administration for not going far enough to confront the danger of rising temperatures. Lake, on the other hand, dismisses any such concern. Last summer she accused Gallego and Governor Katie Hobbs of “pushing mass hysteria in an effort to declare a climate emergency.” She told a podcast, “Newsflash, it’s hot in Arizona in the summer,” and said “don’t tell me that we’re in some sort of a weird heating trend … I don’t believe that for a minute.”
The candidates: Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the challenger vs. Republican Rick Scott, the incumbent
When he became Florida’s governor in 2011, Scott reportedly issued an informal ban on the use of the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in state communication. He denied the story and in recent years has softened his previous climate denial, but he was regularly criticized for inaction in a state unusually vulnerable to climate impacts and has been a consistent opponent of efforts to address warming. Mucarsel-Powell’s website says she “knows climate change is real and she is ready to take action to address the climate crisis that is impacting Floridians, their lives, and their property,” but she’s been quiet about it on the trail.
The candidates: Democrat Angela Alsobrooks vs. Republican Larry Hogan
Former Governor Hogan is the most moderate Republican on this list, and during his tenure in Annapolis he went farther on climate than most Republicans liked, but not as far as state Democrats wanted. He committed the state to reducing emissions, but grappled with Democrats in the legislature over a sweeping climate plan, eventually allowing a scaled-back version to become law without his signature. Alsobrooks calls climate change an “existential threat” and touts her climate efforts as Prince George’s County Executive, including obtaining funding for more electric buses and creating a composting program. She issued an executive order in 2022, setting a goal of making her country carbon-neutral by 2045.
The candidates: Republican Tim Sheehy, the challenger vs. Democrat Jon Tester, the incumbent
For a red-state Democrat, Tester talks a good deal about climate, not mincing words about the effects of global warming (which he says he witnesses as a working farmer) and regularly touting funding he has secured to mitigate climate effects in Montana; he gets a lifetime score of 89% from the League of Conservation Voters. But he favors carrots over sticks, objecting to some tougher pollution regulations and supporting continued fossil fuel production, including the Keystone XL pipeline. Sheehy is a full-on climate denier who rails against “the radical climate cult agenda” and the “woke crap” of ESG investing. Yet the company that made Sheehy rich markets its wildfire-fighting efforts as a response to climate change’s effects.
The candidates: Republican Mike Rogers vs. Democrat Elissa Slotkin
Slotkin, a current member of the House of Representatives, has portrayed herself as something of a climate moderate in Congress, cosponsoring bipartisan emissions legislation but declining to support the Green New Deal. Still, she often brings up her work preparing the Department of Defense to adapt to climate change, and has been supportive of the Biden administration’s climate initiatives. Rogers, on the other hand, was a consistent vote in the House, where he served from the aughts to the mid-2010s, against all kinds of environmental initiatives, and ridiculed DOD climate efforts: “When we dedicate scarce defense funding to global climate change, biofuel initiatives and social engineering experiments with military personnel, you can almost hear the cheers and laughter of our adversaries,” he wrote in 2021. While Slotkin has brought up climate on the campaign trail, neither candidate mentions it on their website.
The candidates: Republican Sam Brown, the challenger vs. Democrat Jacky Rosen, the incumbent
Rosen has been more outspoken about climate change than many Democrats on this list, and has been a particularly strong booster of Nevada’s solar industry; she also attended COP26 in 2021. Brown’s website says, “We have been blessed with an abundance of natural resources, but we’ve also been plagued by politicians pushing extreme left energy agendas, like the Green New Deal, that raise prices and destroy jobs”; he has also criticized electric vehicles and incentives to increase EV sales.
The candidates:Democrat Sherrod Brown, the incumbent vs. Republican Bernie Moreno, the challenger
Senator Brown has used his chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee to draw attention to climate issues, including pressing the Federal Reserve to incorporate climate risks into its relationship with the banking industry. He has called climate “one of the greatest moral issues of our time,” and has long advocated clean energy as a vehicle to rebuild the country’s industrial base. But during this campaign, he has become increasingly wary of certain emissions regulations he fears will lead to job loss, saying “I’ve spent most of my career looking at trade or environment through the eyes of employment in my state.” Moreno wants to eliminate EV subsidies and has attacked “Biden’s radical Green New Deal agenda,” arguing that achieving “energy dominance” through fossil fuel production is vital to prosperity.
The candidates:Democrat Bob Casey, the incumbent vs. Republican Dave McCormick, the challenger
Though Casey has a strong environmental record, McCormick has succeeded in making fracking a central issue of the campaign, including falsely accusing Casey of supporting a ban on the technique, which is commonly used in Pennsylvania to extract natural gas. McCormick acknowledges that climate change is real, but nevertheless told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette he wants to “unlock oil and gas production here at home.” (The U.S. is already the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas.) In the midst of the fracking controversy, Casey seems to have quieted his prior climate advocacy somewhat (his website has no section on climate, but does have one on “Preserving Pennsylvania’s Energy Legacy”), but he hasn’t publicly disavowed any of his prior positions.
The candidates: Democrat Colin Allred, the challenger vs. Republican Ted Cruz, the incumbent
Cruz has long been one of Congress’ most prominent climate deniers and one of the top recipients of contributions from the fossil fuel industry. He blames the Green New Deal, a piece of legislation that was never voted on, for high electricity prices in Texas, and has attacked federal agencies for “fueling youth climate anxiety.” While Allred has supported climate action in the past, he has trod somewhat carefully on the issue during the campaign (he advocates “an all-of-the-above energy strategy” and has promoted liquified natural gas exports) and hasn’t made an issue of Cruz’s climate denial.
The candidates:Democrat Tammy Baldwin, the incumbent vs. Republican Eric Hovde, the challenger
Baldwin has been a consistent advocate for climate action, including co-sponsoring a bill to achieve net-zero emissions for the entire country by 2050. Hovde has spent a good deal of the campaign railing against EV subsidies and other green energy spending, calls efforts to phase out fossil fuels “delusional,” and instead promotes increased fossil fuel production.
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Give the people what they want — big, family-friendly EVs.
The star of this year’s Los Angeles Auto Show was the Hyundai Ioniq 9, a rounded-off colossus of an EV that puts Hyundai’s signature EV styling on a three-row SUV cavernous enough to carry seven.
I was reminded of two years ago, when Hyundai stole the L.A. show with a different EV: The reveal of Ioniq 6, its “streamliner” aerodynamic sedan that looked like nothing else on the market. By comparison, Ioniq 9 is a little more banal. It’s a crucial vehicle that will occupy the large end of Hyundai's excellent and growing lineup of electric cars, and one that may sell in impressive numbers to large families that want to go electric. Even with all the sleek touches, though, it’s not quite interesting. But it is big, and at this moment in electric vehicles, big is what’s in.
The L.A. show is one the major events on the yearly circuit of car shows, where the car companies traditionally reveal new models for the media and show off their whole lineups of vehicles for the public. Given that California is the EV capital of America, carmakers like to talk up their electric models here.
Hyundai’s brand partner, Kia, debuted a GT performance version of its EV9, adding more horsepower and flashy racing touches to a giant family SUV. Jeep reminded everyone of its upcoming forays into full-size and premium electric SUVs in the form of the Recon and the Wagoneer S. VW trumpeted the ID.Buzz, the long-promised electrified take on the classic VW Microbus that has finally gone on sale in America. The VW is the quirkiest of the lot, but it’s a design we’ve known about since 2017, when the concept version was revealed.
Boring isn’t the worst thing in the world. It can be a sign of a maturing industry. At auto shows of old, long before this current EV revolution, car companies would bring exotic, sci-fi concept cars to dial up the intrigue compared to the bread-and-butter, conservatively styled vehicles that actually made them gobs of money. During the early EV years, electrics were the shiny thing to show off at the car show. Now, something of the old dynamic has come to the electric sector.
Acura and Chrysler brought wild concepts to Los Angeles that were meant to signify the direction of their EVs to come. But most of the EVs in production looked far more familiar. Beyond the new hulking models from Hyundai and Kia, much of what’s on offer includes long-standing models, but in EV (Chevy Equinox and Blazer) or plug-in hybrid (Jeep Grand Cherokee and Wrangler) configurations. One of the most “interesting” EVs on the show floor was the Cybertruck, which sat quietly in a barely-staffed display of Tesla vehicles. (Elon Musk reveals his projects at separate Tesla events, a strategy more carmakers have begun to steal as a way to avoid sharing the spotlight at a car show.)
The other reason boring isn’t bad: It’s what the people want. The majority of drivers don’t buy an exotic, fun vehicle. They buy a handsome, spacious car they can afford. That last part, of course, is where the problem kicks in.
We don’t yet know the price of the Ioniq 9, but it’s likely to be in the neighborhood of Kia’s three-row electric, the EV9, which starts in the mid-$50,000s and can rise steeply from there. Stellantis’ forthcoming push into the EV market will start with not only pricey premium Jeep SUVs, but also some fun, though relatively expensive, vehicles like the heralded Ramcharger extended-range EV truck and the Dodge Charger Daytona, an attempt to apply machismo-oozing, alpha-male muscle-car marketing to an electric vehicle.
You can see the rationale. It costs a lot to build a battery big enough to power a big EV, so they’re going to be priced higher. Helpfully for the car brands, Americans have proven they will pay a premium for size and power. That’s not to say we’re entering an era of nothing but bloated EV battleships. Models such as the overpowered electric Dodge Charger and Kia EV9 GT will reveal the appetite for performance EVs. Smaller models like the revived Chevy Bolt and Kia’s EV3, already on sale overseas, are coming to America, tax credit or not.
The question for the legacy car companies is where to go from here. It takes years to bring a vehicle from idea to production, so the models on offer today were conceived in a time when big federal support for EVs was in place to buoy the industry through its transition. Now, though, the automakers have some clear uncertainty about what to say.
Chevy, having revealed new electrics like the Equinox EV elsewhere, did not hold a media conference at the L.A. show. Ford, which is having a hellacious time losing money on its EVs, used its time to talk up combustion vehicles including a new version of the palatial Expedition, one of the oversized gas-guzzlers that defined the first SUV craze of the 1990s.
If it’s true that the death of federal subsidies will send EV sales into a slump, we may see messaging from Detroit and elsewhere that feels decidedly retro, with very profitable combustion front-and-center and the all-electric future suddenly less of a talking point. Whatever happens at the federal level, EVs aren’t going away. But as they become a core part of the car business, they are going to get less exciting.
Current conditions: Parts of southwest France that were freezing last week are now experiencing record high temperatures • Forecasters are monitoring a storm system that could become Australia’s first named tropical cyclone of this season • The Colorado Rockies could get several feet of snow today and tomorrow.
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season caused an estimated $500 billion in damage and economic losses, according to AccuWeather. “For perspective, this would equate to nearly 2% of the nation’s gross domestic product,” said AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter. The figure accounts for long-term economic impacts including job losses, medical costs, drops in tourism, and recovery expenses. “The combination of extremely warm water temperatures, a shift toward a La Niña pattern and favorable conditions for development created the perfect storm for what AccuWeather experts called ‘a supercharged hurricane season,’” said AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva. “This was an exceptionally powerful and destructive year for hurricanes in America, despite an unusual and historic lull during the climatological peak of the season.”
AccuWeather
This year’s hurricane season produced 18 named storms and 11 hurricanes. Five hurricanes made landfall, two of which were major storms. According to NOAA, an “average” season produces 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes. The season comes to an end on November 30.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced yesterday that if President-elect Donald Trump scraps the $7,500 EV tax credit, California will consider reviving its Clean Vehicle Rebate Program. The CVRP ran from 2010 to 2023 and helped fund nearly 600,000 EV purchases by offering rebates that started at $5,000 and increased to $7,500. But the program as it is now would exclude Tesla’s vehicles, because it is aimed at encouraging market competition, and Tesla already has a large share of the California market. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has cozied up to Trump, called California’s potential exclusion of Tesla “insane,” though he has said he’s okay with Trump nixing the federal subsidies. Newsom would need to go through the State Legislature to revive the program.
President-elect Donald Trump said yesterday he would impose steep new tariffs on all goods imported from China, Canada, and Mexico on day one of his presidency in a bid to stop “drugs” and “illegal aliens” from entering the United States. Specifically, Trump threatened Canada and Mexico each with a 25% tariff, and China with a 10% hike on existing levies. Such moves against three key U.S. trade partners would have major ramifications across many sectors, including the auto industry. Many car companies import vehicles and parts from plants in Mexico. The Canadian government responded with a statement reminding everyone that “Canada is essential to U.S. domestic energy supply, and last year 60% of U.S. crude oil imports originated in Canada.” Tariffs would be paid by U.S. companies buying the imported goods, and those costs would likely trickle down to consumers.
Amazon workers across the world plan to begin striking and protesting on Black Friday “to demand justice, fairness, and accountability” from the online retail giant. The protests are organized by the UNI Global Union’s Make Amazon Pay Campaign, which calls for better working conditions for employees and a commitment to “real environmental sustainability.” Workers in more than 20 countries including the U.S. are expected to join the protests, which will continue through Cyber Monday. Amazon’s carbon emissions last year totalled 68.8 million metric tons. That’s about 3% below 2022 levels, but more than 30% above 2019 levels.
Researchers from MIT have developed an AI tool called the “Earth Intelligence Engine” that can simulate realistic satellite images to show people what an area would look like if flooded by extreme weather. “Visualizing the potential impacts of a hurricane on people’s homes before it hits can help residents prepare and decide whether to evacuate,” wrote Jennifer Chu at MIT News. The team found that AI alone tended to “hallucinate,” generating images of flooding in areas that aren’t actually susceptible to a deluge. But when combined with a science-backed flood model, the tool became more accurate. “One of the biggest challenges is encouraging people to evacuate when they are at risk,” said MIT’s Björn Lütjens, who led the research. “Maybe this could be another visualization to help increase that readiness.” The tool is still in development and is available online. Here is an image it generated of flooding in Texas:
Maxar Open Data Program via Gupta et al., CVPR Workshop Proceedings. Lütjens et al., IEEE TGRS
A new installation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris lets visitors listen to the sounds of endangered and extinct animals – along with the voice of the artist behind the piece, the one and only Björk.
How Hurricane Helene is still putting the Southeast at risk.
Less than two months after Hurricane Helene cut a historically devastating course up into the southeastern U.S. from Florida’s Big Bend, drenching a wide swath of states with 20 trillion gallons of rainfall in just five days, experts are warning of another potential threat. The National Interagency Fire Center’s forecast of fire-risk conditions for the coming months has the footprint of Helene highlighted in red, with the heightened concern stretching into the new year.
While the flip from intense precipitation to wildfire warnings might seem strange, experts say it speaks to the weather whiplash we’re now seeing regularly. “What we expect from climate change is this layering of weather extremes creating really dangerous situations,” Robert Scheller, a professor of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University, explained to me.
Scheuller said North Carolina had been experiencing drought conditions early in the year, followed by intense rain leading up to Helene’s landfall. Then it went dry again — according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, much of the state was back to some level of drought condition as of mid-November. The NIFC forecast report says the same is true for much of the region, including Florida, despite its having been hit by Hurricane Milton soon after Helene.
That dryness is a particular concern due to the amount of debris left in Helene’s wake — another major risk factor for fire. The storm’s winds, which reached more than 100 miles per hour in some areas, wreaked havoc on millions of acres of forested land. In North Carolina alone, the state’s Forest Service estimates over 820,000 acres of timberland were damaged.
“When you have a catastrophic storm like [Helene], all of the stuff that was standing upright — your trees — they might be snapped off or blown over,” fire ecologist David Godwin told me. “All of a sudden, that material is now on the forest floor, and so you have a really tremendous rearrangement of the fuels and the vegetation within ecosystems that can change the dynamics of how fire behaves in those sites.”
Godwin is the director of the Southern Fire Exchange for the University of Florida, a program that connects wildland firefighters, prescribed burners, and natural resources managers across the Southeast with fire science and tools. He says the Southeast sees frequent, unplanned fires, but that active ecosystem management helps keep the fires that do spark from becoming conflagrations. But an increase like this in fallen or dead vegetation — what Godwin refers to as fire “fuel” — can take this risk to the next level, particularly as it dries out.
Godwin offered an example from another storm, 2018’s Hurricane Michael, which rapidly intensified before making landfall in Northern Florida and continuing inland, similar to Hurricane Helene. In its aftermath, there was a 10-fold increase in the amount of fuel on the ground, with 72 million tons of timber damaged in Florida. Three years later, the Bertha Swamp Road Fire filled the storm’s Florida footprint with flames, which consumed more than 30,000 acres filled with dried out forest fuel. One Florida official called the wildfire the “ghost” of Michael, nodding to the overlap of the impacted areas and speaking to the environmental threat the storm posed even years later.
Not only does this fuel increase the risk of fire, it changes the character of the fires that do ignite, Godwin said. Given ample ground fuel, flame lengths can grow longer, allowing them to burn higher into the canopy. That’s why people setting prescribed fires will take steps like raking leaf piles, which helps keep the fire intensity low.
These fires can also produce more smoke, Godwin said, which can mix with the mountainous fog in the region to deadly effect. According to the NIFC, mountainous areas incurred the most damage from Helene, not only due to downed vegetation, but also because of “washed out roads and trails” and “slope destabilization” from the winds and rain. If there is a fire in these areas, all these factors will also make it more challenging for firefighters to address it, the report adds.
In addition to the natural debris fire experts worry about, Helene caused extensive damage to the built environment, wrecking homes, businesses, and other infrastructure. Try imagining four-and-a-half football fields stacked 10 feet tall with debris — that’s what officials have removed so far just in Asheville, North Carolina. In Florida’s Treasure Island, there were piles 50 feet high of assorted scrap materials. Officials have warned that some common household items, such as the lithium-ion batteries used in e-bikes and electric vehicles, can be particularly flammable after exposure to floodwaters. They are also advising against burning debris as a means of managing it due to all the compounding risks.
Larry Pierson, deputy chief of the Swannanoa Fire Department in North Carolina, told Blueridge Public Radio that his department’s work has “grown exponentially since the storm.” While cooler, wetter winter weather could offer some relief, Scheuller said the area will likely see heightened fire behavior for years after the storm, particularly if the swings between particularly wet and particularly dry periods continue.
Part of the challenge moving forward, then, is to find ways to mitigate risk on this now-hazardous terrain. For homeowners, that might mean exercising caution when dealing with debris and considering wildfire risk as part of rebuilding plans, particularly in more wooded areas. On a larger forest management scale, this means prioritizing safe debris collection and finding ways to continue the practice of prescribed burns, which are utilized more in the Southeast than in any other U.S. region. Without focused mitigation efforts, Godwin told me the area’s overall fire outlook would be much different.
“We would have a really big wildfire issue,” he said, “perhaps even bigger than what we might see in parts of the West.”