To do list: name fossil fuel corruption, localize the impacts and use cost-of-living pain to rally voters.
Seven months into President Donald Trump’s second term in office, the environmental movement has suffered a rolling wave of defeats.
From the proposed repeal of the EPA’s key “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases to the Big Beautiful Bill’s accelerated phaseout of wind and solar tax credits, the current administration has sided with the fossil fuel industry in its quest for “energy dominance” and sought to undo many of the movement’s most prominent accomplishments.
Shut out of power in both chambers of Congress and the White House, Democrats have been unable to stem that tide of environmental setbacks.
Amid those losses, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) delivered his 300th “Time to Wake Up” speech in mid-July. It was the latest in a series of climate speeches dating back to 2012, the topics of which ranged from the need to regulate methane emissions to the environmental impacts of “court capture” by dark money groups.
From the Senate floor, he again implored his colleagues last month to take steps to mitigate the looming climate crisis.
Whitehouse, considered a climate hawk and a firm progressive, joined the Senate in 2007 and has watched firsthand as the climate movement—and crisis—has evolved over nearly two decades.
As the U.S. enters what he describes as the “era of consequences” for the climate, Whitehouse spoke to Inside Climate News about the fallout from regulatory rollbacks—and what’s next for Democrats and environmental advocates. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
AIDAN HUGHES: Last month, you gave your 300th “Time to Wake Up” speech urging Congress to take action against the threat of climate change. You said that you weren’t sure whether the number of speeches you’ve given on the topic represented a “triumph of persistence or an exposition of failure or a little bit of both.” … How has Congress’s attitude and response to the climate crisis changed since your first speech in 2012?
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: I think it’s been pretty constant failure. The closest we got was cap-and-trade—bravo, Speaker Pelosi—and a Democratic-controlled Senate refused to even take it up even though in the [2007-2009] years, there have been multiple bipartisan, significant Senate climate bills being worked on.
So that was very unfortunate. And then obviously when Republicans are elected, not much useful happens.
Obama didn’t—they didn’t do a very good job with the Clean Power Plan, and the court just crushed it twice for good measure.
And then we finally got around to the Inflation Reduction Act. But as you know, useful as that was, nobody believed that it was adequate to put us on a pathway to climate safety. It was just a rung on a ladder that we would have to climb, and now that rung is being smashed at by the fossil fuel-funded Republicans.
So it’s a triumph of corruption and disinformation.
HUGHES: You said in your speech that the common failure of Democrats in response to the “climate-denial operation” and other political crises was showing up too late. What should “showing up” look like for Democrats, who don’t currently have much power to impact federal policy?
WHITEHOUSE: Well, I see three things happening.
One is that the public intolerance for corruption, I think, was fairly constant. And we’ve never done a good job of connecting the climate-denial operation with the fraud and corruption that it represents. We’ve never made the climate-denial operation a target itself.
The second is that it’s not about green jobs and polar bears any longer. It’s already upending home insurance markets in multiple regions of the country, and that is only going to get worse … So we’re headed into, quite soon, a period of time in which the consequences of climate change are going to start hitting people in their insurance, in their mortgages and in their property, their home’s value. So it’s not just a theoretical question at this point. It’s not just a danger in the future.
It’s now punching families in the face with doubled and tripled premiums, with non-renewal notices, with having to lower the price to sell your house because it carries these new costs and risks, all of that. So that’s the second, is the homeowners insurance crisis moving at us.
The third is the CBAM, the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. That actually puts a price on carbon. The only way we solve this is to put a price on carbon pollution. The free-to-pollute business model of the fossil fuel industry is wrong in every dimension, and it simply must end and the only potentially global, or at least international, mechanism for doing that is the CBAM.
So to me, those are the three big forces that are out there. We can begin to call it what it is, which is fraud and corruption. It’s going to start hitting people in their pocketbooks and wallets in a really serious way, and we have at least one price on pollution that will affect the international economy.
HUGHES: What can Democrats do while they aren’t in power to advance those policy goals that you just mentioned?
WHITEHOUSE: Well, I think the first thing is to take the high ground of calling it what it is, which is fraud and corruption on an industrial scale.
Whether it’s Trump asking for a billion dollars from fossil fuel executives in return for all the freebies he’s been giving them, or whether it’s the huge dark money expenditures that prop up House and Senate Republicans, or whether it’s the obedience of Republican attorneys general to provide free legal services to the fossil fuel industry, masquerading as attorneys general when they’re really just carrying water for fossil fuel.
You know, there’s a lot to point out to the American public, and it’s a fraudulent operation, semi-covert on a massive scale, and we need to start calling it that, because that is what it actually is.
And I think that puts us in a good sort of fighting stance to then go after these other things and make sure that, you know, Florida members of Congress own the fact that the Florida homeowners insurance market is completely melting down, and what rickety structure remains is vulnerable to a general collapse almost any day now.
And that’s just Florida … I just got back from South Texas, where we organized a poll that shows that 92 percent of Texans are concerned about homeowners insurance costs. Higher than health care, it’s higher than mortgages, it’s higher than rent, it’s higher than any other cost concern, and 63 percent are very concerned, and two thirds connect it to climate change.
So if we can’t—as a political party and as an environmental movement—pull those pieces together to bring voters our way and turn against the climate-denying Republicans with their pockets stuffed with fossil fuel money, that’s malpractice.
HUGHES: You said in your speech last month regarding the climate crisis, “How often have we been told in the Senate, ‘That issue isn’t very high up in importance to voters.’ What a dumb and irresponsible way to think … If you wait to fight until the polls tell you an issue is important, the battle can be over before you show up.”
That statement does also acknowledge, though, that the environment really isn’t top of mind for many voters. So my question is, how do you get voters to prioritize the environment at the ballot box when so much else is going on?
WHITEHOUSE: Talk to them about it.
I think that there’s a reciprocal relationship between what the elected officials in the Democratic Party talk about and what others consider to be important when we’re all talking about something and [are] up in arms about something, Democrats respond across the country.
And if we refuse to talk about something, they take the message from that, which is “Huh, well, if our leaders don’t think that’s important, then maybe I shouldn’t think that’s important.”
So simply by doing our jobs correctly, as this crisis looms, I think you’ll see voter response.
HUGHES: The environment is also becoming an increasingly polarized issue for voters, with 66 percent of Democrats saying this year that they worry a great deal about the quality of the environment compared to only 19 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup poll.
So why isn’t the Democratic Party’s message on the environment resonating with Republican voters like it is with Democrats? And what needs to change to reach Republican voters more effectively on this issue?
WHITEHOUSE: I think when you’re talking about an abstraction like the environment, it’s easy for that to be populated with political overtones.
So I think to a very significant degree, it’s important to make this local … You can attach it to things that are happening in real life, in areas that matter to people. The trout stream that’s too warm for trout out West. The beach that is submerged at high tide on the Atlantic seashore.
Make it immediate, and make it local and make it real. And then I think you’ll find that Republicans are just as concerned about the quality of their lives and their children’s experiences and all of that as anybody else.
I would also say, don’t be shy. Go right at it … In fact, the strongest response on climate issues is when you don’t try to couch them as green jobs issues, or make it a bank shot, when you just go right at it and say, “Look, fossil fuel pollution is changing our natural systems, and we need to fix it.”
Plus it shouldn’t be free for anybody to pollute. Everybody knows you should clean up your own messes. That’s not complicated. And I think it’s a winning message if we bother to pick it up.
“Make it immediate, and make it local and make it real.”
In the Senate, we’ve targeted three themes for this election: cost, chaos and corruption—and the climate thing hits all of them.
The cost increase—for many families, the biggest cost increase that they see right now is the cost of their home insurance going up. When you start at $7,000 and go to $14,000 that’s a bigger deal [than] the peanut butter going up by 13 cents.
Nothing is more chaotic than being caught in a storm or a wildfire or some other emergency.
And the corruption is so obvious. It’s sitting right in front of us in plain view that the fossil fuel industry has bought the Trump administration, and its stooges have been given official positions, and now you see nothing but crooked payback to the fossil fuel industry from these Trump officials.
HUGHES: There are at least a couple of Republicans in the Senate who seem unhappy with the direction that the administration and their party are taking on the environment. Senators John Curtis and Chuck Grassley, for example, recently placed holds on Treasury nominees over concerns about the phaseout of wind and solar tax credits.
Are there any climate measures that you see as priorities that could get bipartisan support in Congress today?
WHITEHOUSE: Well, I’ll say first that Trump operates in a political environment of old-fashioned thuggery. So Republicans are very anxious to stick their heads above the parapet and come out in any kind of opposition. So a lot gets done quietly to avoid the attack of the thugs.
But there was considerable pressure from within the Republican caucus to undo some of the stupider stuff in the “Beautiful for Billionaires Bill” and to protect some of the tax credits for American energy investments.
So you see it happening, but nobody wants to own it very much.
I think if there’s one thing that stands out to me, it’s that through thick and thin, Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham have stuck by their carbon tariff.
It makes logical sense. It makes economic sense. The trade personnel in the Trump administration, both in 1.0 and 2.0, were on principle firmly agreed that when another country doesn’t have pollution standards equivalent to ours, we’re entitled to tariff a product in order to offset the competitive advantage that provides the other country.
So all you’re doing is fitting the climate and carbon pollution facts into an already accepted structure.
HUGHES: I’m familiar with Senator Curtis’s work to slow the phaseout of the wind and solar tax credits. Are there any other examples that you can highlight for me where Republicans stepped in to try to soften the impact of the environmental rollbacks of the Big Beautiful Bill?
WHITEHOUSE: I would prefer not to, because I don’t want to force their head above the parapet and cause them trouble.
I don’t want to understate Senator Curtis’s leadership. So nothing I say takes away from that. But there were a considerable number of other senators who were engaged, particularly around the industrial tax credits and wind and solar support.
HUGHES: Where [do] you see the environmental movement going forward under the current Congress and Trump administration?
WHITEHOUSE: I think we in the environmental movement have always underestimated ourselves and underestimated the power of this issue, and let the fossil fuel industry front groups get away with genuine fraud without properly calling it out.
So I think we have a real opportunity to make this a winning issue and change the present trajectory without having to do anything that’s new or magical—just doing the things that we could have been doing all along.
