On one of the most consequential nights in the 2024 presidential race, the fate of our entire planet received all of 120 seconds. In fact, Harris several times praised the expansion of oil and gas development under President Joe Biden’s administration and doubled down on her promise not to ban fracking. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump were each allotted one minute to discuss their plans for fighting the climate crisis during the September 10 presidential debate.
Gore ran on it and lost the election. So Obama learned to stay the fuck away from it. Hillary said she’d have a map room to fight it and lost the election. So Biden learned to stay the fuck away from it. But in office Biden did green energy anyway, and polls said he was going to lose the election. So Kamala learned to stay the fuck away from it. It’s a losing issue because the voters never show up for it. I think it’s important, but voters never show up.
Plus, there’s so much disinformation from the other side that you’re apt to lose voters that consume any amount of that crap.
If something doesn’t energize your base and it makes you lose votes from outside your base, it’s a net loss to campaign on. It seems that climate change is currently one of those issues.
Both to campaign on and to act on, unfortunately. If people want this to be acted on, then Dems need to win.
Oh, absolutely.
I think there’s a big difference between them making the small (but good) progress with legislation they’ve done this term compared to making climate a part of their campaign and bringing it up all the time. Idiots on the right will attack opponents on anything, but currently, I imagine most of the population is put off by the “she’s gonna ban ur meat and stove!!1” weirdos. Sometimes not engaging is the most effective way to keep bad arguments out of the public sphere.
It’s an issue that young voters want to talk about but they don’t show up to vote no matter how much politicians cater to them (look at other countries to prove it) and the changes necessary to protect the environment aren’t popular with the people that actually vote…
The youth seem to generally have the best moral compass vs other demographics. If they backed it up with actually turning out to vote, countries might stop slipping on the wrong direction.