Colin McKnight
Well, that’s finally over. As much as I am interested in politics, and reading and studying about the candidate field, it’s nice to finally be able to breathe after the inflammatory, exhausting past few months of campaign ads and candidates at each other’s throats.
Candidates were strong this year, and thus the results were much closer than in previous midterms. Campaigns relied heavily on hot-button topics that had occupied the minds of a large chunk of Americans recently: healthcare, immigration, guns and other controversial discussions.
Noticeably, however, a certain topic remained largely missing this year in the debates, just like years past, despite spending more time being discussed by political bigwigs and A-list celebrities: the environment.
Sure, politicians will bring up environmental issues when strategically valuable; I don’t want to think about how many times all of us heard about GenX being dumped in the water. But with GenX, and similar green controversies, those are put on display because they sell well, and it’s easier to target an opponent with such a clear, easy-to-digest piece of criticism rather than go after their entire environmental ideology and policy.
One of the top reasons that environmental policy is often less of a plank and more of a splinter in platforms is that, despite the monumental and ever-growing mountain of evidence for certain arguments over others, the topic is still divisive. A Gallup poll from this year on climate change shows a worrying amount of Americans — and almost 70 percent of Republicans surveyed — believe that climate change is a hoax, or is nowhere near as serious as scientists claim.
In order to avoid alienating many constituents who falsely believe the climate is not changing, candidates are forced to take a more lax, uncontroversial take when approaching green policy. But while this approach may be rational in some aspects, potential voters are left wondering about candidates who may have strong feelings about bigger buzzwords like “funding,” “healthcare” and “my opponent” but are scared to tackle environmental policy in the public eye.
Of course, the whole of the blame isn’t just on the politicians and their campaign teams; in fact, the majority of it is on us, as the audience. With our words and our social media, we’ve made it clear what we do and don’t care about in politics: while healthcare and immigration are still as important as always to voters, a Gallup poll shows that barely half of those surveyed viewed climate change as a very important factor in their political decisions.
As mentioned previously, North Carolina did get a decent helping of environmental talk in our ads this cycle, but it was primarily attack ads over front-page topics, like GenX. These are certainly very important when criticizing the leadership of your opponent, but imagine a candidate going further than that.
They wouldn’t be the first, but a candidate who built more than just one or two planks of their platform on the environment would certainly stand out from the run-of-the-mill campaigns, especially in the wake of heavily talked-about affairs like the 2030 deadline and the impacts felt by farmers, which are speculated to increase in frequency.
The longer we wait to fully focus our attention on the environment, the more difficult it’s going to be when we start truly feeling the consequences. Likewise, the more painful the switch to greener policies will be. We need to demand more from those that want a government office, and we need to start deeming those that refuse to face the big issues because they “don’t exist” or “aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be” unfit and keep them as far away from a position of leadership as possible.