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Kolbert writes: "After decades of complaining about the influence of big money on politics, environmentalists in this election cycle are spending big money on politics."

Tom Steyer. (photo: Jason Henry/NYT)
Tom Steyer. (photo: Jason Henry/NYT)


Do Voters Care About the Environment?

By Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker

29 October 14

 

fter decades of complaining about the influence of big money on politics, environmentalists in this election cycle are spending big money on politics. Tom Steyer, the hedge-fund manager turned environmental champion, has put fifty-eight million dollars into various midterm campaigns, mostly through his super PAC, NextGen Climate Action Committee. This has made Steyer the biggest single donor in this year’s election, or at least, as NPR recently put it, the biggest “that we know of.” (Much of this cycle’s so-called dark money is being funnelled through groups that are not required to disclose their contributors, so it’s entirely possible—indeed, it’s likely—that other individuals have given more than Steyer; it’s just that we’ll never know.)

Meanwhile, according to a memo that was recently leaked to the Washington Post, other groups, including the League of Conservation Voters and the Environmental Defense Action Fund, are planning to spend an additional thirty million dollars in support of “pro-environment” candidates, which would bring the total spending to somewhere around eighty-five million dollars.

As its name suggests, NextGen Climate Action has focussed its appeals on climate change. The group has poured the bulk of its money into gubernatorial races in Florida and Maine, and into Senate races in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Colorado. All of these races pit candidates with at least some claim to environmental stewardship against candidates with none. In the Colorado Senate race, for example, the incumbent Democrat, Mark Udall, has earned a ninety-seven-per-cent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, while his challenger, the Republican representative Cory Gardner, has scored nine per cent. In Florida, the incumbent, Rick Scott, likes to say, when he is asked about climate change, “I’m not a scientist.” Meanwhile, his opponent, Charlie Crist, has fought—albeit intermittently—to change Florida’s energy mix. In the Sunshine State, NextGen staffers have been towing around a wooden ark designed to illustrate the point that Scott, a Republican, won’t talk about climate change, even though his state is particularly vulnerable to its effects. A NextGen-sponsored ad airing in the state shows a group of white-coated “scientists” representing the consensus that “climate change is real.” The scientists confront three “cavemen,” one of whom mutters, “We like it hot.”

“Governor Scott thinks the scientists are wrong,” the ad says, while one white-coated woman shakes her head sadly.

As with any election campaign, there are two possible outcomes to Steyer’s efforts, which is why, on environmental grounds, they are to be commended and also to be feared.

The first is that, next Tuesday, the candidates backed by NextGen and the other “green” groups will be victorious, or at least more victorious than not. This result would seem to confirm Steyer’s claims that voters want action on climate change, and that denying there’s a problem has become a political liability. Doubtless Steyer’s opponents would claim that NextGen’s fifty-eight-million-dollar campaign produced this result, and they might even be right. But, in doing this, they’d have to acknowledge the potential of the issue to turn elections, which is presumably just what Steyer set out to prove. In 2013, Steyer spent eleven million dollars on Terry McAuliffe’s campaign for governor of Virginia. McAuliffe won, and Steyer declared that “denying basic science is over.”

The second possible outcome is that, on November 4th, the pro-environment candidates could lose, or at least lose more than they win. Such an outcome might or might not have anything to do with climate change; still, by Steyer’s own logic, it would clearly be a big defeat. It would suggest that denying there’s a problem is not a liability, and that not even a lot of money on the other side can change the political calculus. To say that this outcome would dangerously set back the cause of acting on climate change is simply to state the obvious.

Environmentalists have long yearned for a patron with deep pockets, one who could counter some of the spending by the Koch brothers and their ilk. In Steyer and NextGen, they have found this, which brings to mind the old saying “be careful what you wish for.” For anyone who cares about the climate—which should be everyone but, as the most recent polls suggest, certainly is not—it’s going to be anxious week.

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