2018 election
Credit: Tim Evanson/flickr
Peter Dykstra: Midterms go eco-AWOL
Climate and environmental issues were deeply impacted by the midterm elections, but once again, were absent from any prominent discussion
Every 45 minutes or so on Election Day, I was treated to the televised strains of "Come Fly With Me," a 1957 crooners' standard made famous by Frank Sinatra.
The occasion? It was the sound bed for an American Petroleum Institute ad reminding Democracy lovers how indispensable its members' products are.
And the relevance? The oily, gassy API ads were the closest anyone came on Election Day to mentioning what many of us regard as the key issue of our lifetimes. And it's not just "us."
In an October Fox News poll of likely midterm voters, more than one-third of respondents rated climate change as "extremely" important to their voting decisions. One-third may seem distressingly low to some of us, but doesn't it rate at least a little bit more than near-silence?
In truth, ignoring climate change is a time-honored tradition in national politics. October 15 this year was the tenth anniversary of the last time a presidential debate included a climate question – and the veteran moderator botched the question: Bob Schieffer of CBS News asked Senators Obama and McCain about "climate control," – a term favored by plumbers measuring building temperature, not scientists measuring disappearing glaciers. (McCain quickly corrected him.)
But let's move from a rant to how some climate-relevant legislators fared at the polls. Marsha Blackburn, a Tea Party-ish Tennessee congresswoman, captured a Senate seat. A staunch climate denier, the Senator-elect's most shining moment occurred in 2012, when she fought a gallant battle against more energy efficient light bulbs on the grounds that our soldiers have fought and died to protect our freedom to be dim bulbs.
Dave Brat, and his 1 percent career score from the League of Conservation Voters, was ousted from his Virginia district by newcomer Abigail Spanberger.
In California, Dana Rohrabacher's 30-year career of repping Orange County came to an end. A lover of surfing and foe of the Clean Water Act, Rohrabacher also professed to love science but hate climate science. Democratic businessman Harley Rouda narrowly beat him.
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