Climate and environment

As massive wildfires destroy the American west, Europe suffers through unprecedented heat waves, and the southwest runs out of water, climate change has disappeared from the news media and political discourse. The dangers of global warming continues to grow.  Yet many political leaders—Democrats included—ignore the issue. ​ The phenomenon has acquired a name: climate hushing. Rather than denying climate change, politicians acknowledge it but avoid emphasizing its magnitude or connecting individual policies to the larger climate emergency. Climate policy is repackaged as energy affordability, job creation or technological innovation. The strategy reflects a belief among some political advisers that climate change is not a sufficiently important—or is potentially a politically costly—issue for persuadable voters. The role of leadership is to persuade the public to take action on critical collective issues. By failing to build a consensus for meaningful action on climate change, climate hushing avoids the responsibility of leadership. ​ This matters in the Democratic primary between Rep. Maggie Goodlander and state Rep. Paige Beauchemin. Both accept the urgency of climate change and support clean energy. However, what they would do to address this issue is not clear. To find out about their respective positions on climate change, I emailed both candidates a series of questions on this topic.  Their responses reveal different understandings of what the crisis requires. ​ The benchmark for climate policy must be the science.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that meeting the goals of the Paris Accord requires deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. The IPCC has also found that emissions from existing and planned fossil-fuel infrastructure are already inconsistent with meeting these goals.  The physics of climate change are clear.  We need to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.  Adding more renewable energy does not impact global warming.  A meaningful climate policy must embrace a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. ​ Against that standard, the differences between Goodlander and Beauchemin are significant. ​ Goodlander has a genuine environmental record. She identifies climate change as affecting New Hampshire’s economy, public health, energy costs and way of life. During her first term, she has worked on hydropower, geothermal development, forest conservation, weatherization and energy assistance, and opposed efforts to dismantle Inflation Reduction Act clean-energy investments.  These are worthwhile measures. They also reveal Goodlander’s governing philosophy. She frames climate action in terms of lowering energy costs, strengthening American energy independence, creating jobs and finding bipartisan solutions.  What’s missing is the critical policy action: the deliberate and rapid decline of fossil-fuel dependence. ​ Beauchemin is more explicit. She calls for moving away from fossil fuels, ending federal fossil-fuel subsidies, strengthening pollution controls, expanding clean-energy incentives, developing high-speed passenger rail and moving toward a fully clean-energy economy. She has pledged to support the Green New Deal.  More importantly, she identifies political power as an obstacle. Beauchemin argues that corporations and wealthy interests exercise excessive influence over government and that serious climate action requires confronting that influence. “We will not be able to end our destructive environmental habits,” she writes, “until we rid our political system of corporate influence.” ​ That distinction becomes clearest when the candidates are asked about the fossil-fuel industry. ​ Asked whether major fossil-fuel companies should help pay for climate damages through federal Polluters Pay or climate-superfund legislation, (similar to the law passed in Vermont) Beauchemin answered: “Yes and absolutely.” Asked whether Congress should investigate what fossil-fuel companies knew about climate change and whether they misled the public, investors or policymakers, she was equally direct: “Yes and definitely. They need to be held accountable.” ​ Goodlander favors accountability too, but her response is more conditional. She says polluters should bear responsibility when they impose costs on communities. On congressional investigations, she states that if credible evidence demonstrates corporations knowingly misled the public or concealed information about climate risks, Congress should conduct appropriate oversight.  This is notable because Goodlander spoke more forcefully during her September 2024 congressional campaign, identifying big oil companies as culprits in the climate crisis, saying they had escaped accountability and declaring that Congress could do something about it.  When I asked whether her 2026 response represented a change in position, Goodlander’s office explicitly said it did not. That clarification should be respected. ​ But the central question remains unanswered: Does Goodlander believe the evidence already assembled concerning fossil-fuel industry conduct warrants a congressional investigation, and would she advocate for one now?  Beauchemin answered that question. Goodlander did not.  Congressional oversight is one way political parties can promote an issue before the public and mobilize support for Congressional action.  The evidence of deception by fossil fuel interests is clear, and Congress need not wait until every disputed fact is established in court before investigating industry deception or obstruction. ​ More fundamentally, the exchange exposes two different theories of climate politics.  Goodlander’s theory is that progress comes through practical legislation: build clean energy, improve efficiency, protect forests, reduce household costs, modernize infrastructure and construct bipartisan coalitions.  Beauchemin agrees with much of that agenda but argues that it is insufficient without confronting the economic interests that benefit from continued fossil-fuel dependence. ​ The IPCC’s findings make this distinction consequential. If we merely needed gradually to make renewable energy cheaper, incremental policymaking might be enough. But the remaining carbon budget requires dramatic emissions reductions now. Existing fossil-fuel infrastructure already presents a serious problem, and adding more long-lived infrastructure makes the transition harder.  Climate policy therefore inevitably involves political conflict. Fossil-fuel companies have enormous investments tied to continued extraction and consumption. A serious climate policy cannot indefinitely avoid the question of whether protecting those investments takes precedence over maintaining a stable climate. ​ Climate hushing obscures that choice. It allows politicians to talk about clean-energy additions without discussing fossil-fuel subtraction and thus serves to distract from the central issue of the need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Goodlander clearly takes climate change seriously. But seriousness must ultimately be measured against what the science says is necessary, not simply by what is politically popular.  Leadership requires politicians to honestly articulate the challenges we face. Beauchemin has articulated the more complete diagnosis. Climate change is an energy problem, but it is also a problem of political power. Addressing it requires rapidly reducing fossil-fuel dependence, building out clean energy, and confronting the interests that have obstructed that transition. ​ The choice in this primary is therefore larger than a disagreement over individual environmental programs. It is a choice between managing climate change within the boundaries of existing politics, which has failed for nearly forty years, or challenging the political forces that helped create those boundaries.  The science tells us we need “deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” Ignoring the climate crisis is unacceptable for any politician.