For the last 15 years, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, has been Congress’s most outspoken member on climate change. In 2012, he had a sign made up that showed the Earth as seen from space. “Time to Wake Up,” it said. The sign became a prop for a series of speeches the senator delivered on the urgency of the climate crisis. Not long ago, Whitehouse gave his 307th “Time to Wake Up” speech on the Senate floor.
Over the last few months, Whitehouse has been speaking out against the notion that Democrats shouldn’t talk about climate change ahead of the midterm elections. (Some pollsters and academics have been advocating this sort of silence, which has become known as “climate hushing.”) Recently, Whitehouse spoke to e360 contributing writer Elizabeth Kolbert about how climate change is affecting red state voters, why for many Americans it is becoming a pocketbook issue, and how he would frame the issue to give it more bipartisan appeal.
“This story has literally central-casting-quality villains, mustache-twirling quality villains,” Whitehouse said. “The two big villains are the climate denial fraud operation that the fossil fuel industry runs and the dark money corruption operation that the fossil fuel industry runs. People don’t like to be fooled and defrauded, and they sure don’t like dark money. That’s bipartisan and fiercely powerful.”
Whitehouse delivering his 307th “Time to Wake Up” speech in the Senate earlier this month. Courtesy of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Elizabeth Kolbert: You’ve been speaking out recently about a phenomenon you call “climate hushing.” What do you mean by that?
Sheldon Whitehouse: Climate hushing is the term that’s been used by people who don’t understand climate to encourage Democrats not to talk about climate. It’s sort of like a bad conclusion drawn by bad pollsters and people who follow polls. It just means don’t mention climate change.
Kolbert: Why do you think that’s a bad idea?
Whitehouse: It’s a terrible idea because it forecloses really powerful arguments, particularly ones around home insurance costs, which are top of mind concerns in battleground states like Florida and Texas. And it forecloses arguments like your electric rates are going up on purpose because Trump is so corrupted by the fossil fuel industry that he’s meddling to keep cheap energy off your grid.
Kolbert: One argument being made is “Don’t talk about climate change, just talk about affordability…” Just say, “Well, your energy bills are too high.”
Whitehouse: Then you’re missing the punchline. If you just want to do the cost part, and there we are sitting around commiserating, “Oh, your electric rates are too high,” then we’re not in there punching and saying, “And the reason your electric rates are too high is because the fossil fuel industry has corrupted the Trump administration and is using the powers of government to keep cheap clean energy off your grid.” You’ve foreclosed that argument. Ditto, your home insurance costs are too high. And the other side isn’t going to do a thing about it, because it comes back to climate-driven extreme weather, and their pockets are stuffed with fossil fuel money, so they can’t talk about that.
Ninety-two percent of Texans see homeowners’ insurance as a cost concern. That’s a higher response than groceries got. That’s a higher response than health care got. When the issue is so important to red-state Texas that people who aren’t homeowners are telling pollsters they’re concerned about home insurance costs, you know that is a flaming hot issue. And 66 percent of Texans connect the home insurance cost concern to climate-driven extreme weather.
“People don’t like to be fooled and defrauded, and they don’t like dark money. That’s bipartisan and fiercely powerful.”
Kolbert: You’ve said that Democrats’ messaging and environmental group’s messaging on climate change has been “crap.” What’s been wrong with it, and what should the messaging be?
Whitehouse: The worst part of it has been that we’ve left the villain out of the story. Every story is better with a villain. This story has literally central-casting-quality villains, mustache-twirling-quality villains. The two big villains are the climate denial fraud operation that the fossil fuel industry runs, and the dark money corruption operation that the fossil fuel industry runs. People don’t like to be fooled and defrauded, and they sure don’t like dark money. That’s bipartisan and fiercely powerful.
When we just don’t bother to talk about those aspects of it and act as if climate change is something about polar bears and somebody else’s green job, you’re missing the story. You’re missing what’s really going on. What’s really going on is that the American government has been sickeningly corrupted by the fossil fuel industry, and people get that. We just saw polling that came out the other day that said the top three concerns of undue influence are billionaire CEOs, wealthy donors, and large corporations. And the top industry Americans are concerned about abusing its influence is oil and gas companies.
A damaged home in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, October 2022. Eva Marie Uzcategui / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Kolbert: There’s another area where climate hushing may be going on — news coverage of climate change. That coverage is way down. Major U.S. TV networks reduced their airtime devoted to climate change by 35 percent last year. What’s going on there?
Whitehouse: There’s enough right-wing media ownership that they’re trying to suppress it. But my personal experience is that there’s massive public interest in all of this.
Sinclair [the conservative broadcasting group] asked to do a story with me about home insurance and climate risk. And my office went to DEFCON 2 [high alert] that this was going to be a [hatchet] job — they were going to set me up, the whole thing was going to be phony baloney. We decided it was totally worth doing it, but we were on high alert for this being basically a sham interview designed to try to do “Gotcha.” Not at all. Not only was it completely straight up, but after it ran, they kept going back to segments of it and re-plugging it.
Kolbert: Interesting.
Whitehouse: Sinclair does not like the climate change topic. They were going back to it because they were getting the clicks and the eyeballs when they went to it. So there is huge, huge, huge media opportunity out there with the public. And if the media isn’t meeting it, that’s on them. Our experience is that the public is really interested in these topics because it’s now landed in their homes through their mail slots in the form of an insurance non-renewal or an electric rate hike.
“My least favorite word in the climate conversation was ‘ambition.’ I don’t give a damn about your ambition. What are you doing?”
Kolbert: You’ve certainly been out there. I believe you’ve just given your 307th speech in the Senate about climate change. Don’t you sometimes feel frustrated at this point? I mean, is this message getting out there?
Whitehouse: I’ve felt frustrated on this issue for 15, 16 years now. I’ve felt extremely frustrated ever since Citizens United [the 2010 Supreme Court decision on campaign finance law]. I was in the Senate before Citizens United when climate change was a bipartisan issue, before our captive Supreme Court delivered the immense political weaponry to the fossil fuel industry of unlimited dark money, and then they came in and hammered my colleagues on the Republican side into the ground like a bunch of tent pegs until no head was standing to talk about climate. And then they said, “Oh, it’s a partisan issue.”
Kolbert: So you’ve been frustrated for a long time. What are you feeling now?
Whitehouse: If I had to have a motto, it would be “Persist through frustration.”
Kolbert: We also see this huge retreat by businesses that used to be out there touting their commitment to reducing their carbon emissions, to getting to net-zero. They’ve really gone silent. What’s that about?
Source: Media Matters for America. Yale Environment 360 / Made with Flourish
Whitehouse: I would say two things. One is, chickening out in front of a Trump administration that is run from the inside by the fossil fuel industry and is willing to exact punishments. And two is, there was a lot of hot air in the world of corporate promises and goals and ambitions and benchmarks that was the narrative of climate action.
One of my frustrations is that we were very often satisfied with expressions of ambition rather than actual acts — rather than things like putting a price on carbon so it’s not free to pollute, things that would actually make a difference in the real world. A lot of these corporate pledges, many of the financial pledges, a lot of this was like a big, fat, inflated souffle that was full of corporate hot air, full of enthusiasm, but not real because the stuff to actually accomplish those benchmarks and goals wasn’t being done.
And one of the failures of the climate movement has been to be satisfied with that all along and not calling out that most of this stuff is bullshit. My least favorite word in the climate conversation was “ambition.” I don’t give a damn about your ambition. What are you doing? I have an ambition to be an Olympic athlete in 2028, but I’m sitting around eating donuts. So how serious is my ambition? Nobody wants to hear about my ambition. Are you on the bike? Are you running the miles?
Kolbert: We seem to be in a moment where people are generally acting like maybe this is just going to go away.
Whitehouse: Yes, which is idiotic in the extreme. When you’re not listening to the head of the Federal Reserve, the former chief risk guy at Goldman Sachs, the chief economist for Freddie Mac, the International Financial Stability Board, the Mortgage Bankers Association — the warnings abound, and they’re backed by actual facts. Florida did in fact lose more real estate value last year than any other state. And this year it’s predicted to lose even more with some counties predicted to lose double-digit percentages. It’s happening. You can see it. You can measure it.
It’s a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad time for corporate credibility and corporate leadership. There’s a lot to apologize for, and I think the notion of corporate leadership is being irrevocably damaged by corporate leadership right now.
“American oil companies are more than happy to pocket obscene profits at the expense of the customer at the pump.”
Kolbert: The war in Iran, high gas prices, how does that play into things?
Whitehouse: It puts a sharp glare on a lot of things. One is that American oil companies are more than happy to ride international oil prices up and pocket obscene profits at the expense of the customer at the pump. The notion that fossil fuels can make us energy independent is completely belied by the grasping greed of our domestic fossil fuel industry. Solar prices didn’t go up. Wind prices didn’t go up. Battery prices didn’t go up, because those are real markets with real products that aren’t a cartel that is responsive to OPEC and to international incidents. That all becomes crystal clear.
Kolbert: Okay. How do we ever break this logjam? Can we ever do something to make climate change a bipartisan issue again? There’s so much research that shows how hard it is to change someone’s mind if they have to change their whole tribal identity. And this has become sort of tribal at this point.
Whitehouse: I think that as the cost problem associated with fossil fuel becomes more and more apparent to people, you create an incentive for some people to defect and to be different.
You see places like Louisiana where they’re just in huge trouble and where local universities are doing studies about how fast land loss is happening to sea level rise. The home insurance problem in Florida is the worst. Louisiana is one step behind. Louisiana is really suffering from this. And when people are suffering economically, when homes can’t be sold, when people are having to abandon homes, in some cases, whole communities, there’s only so long that the fossil fuel industry can prop up a campaign of lies about that stuff.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
