Senate Climate Hawks Aren't Ready To Stop Talking About It

“We need to talk about it in ways that connect directly to voters’ lives right now,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a top environmentalist, said of global warming.

WASHINGTON — Top environmental advocates in the Senate aren’t ready to stop talking about the threat of climate change, even as they acknowledge the environmental movement needs to pivot its messaging to better connect to pocketbook concerns amid skyrocketing electricity bills and the Trump administration’s crackdown on renewable energy projects across the country.

The pivot comes as centrists in the party push to downplay an issue that has been at the center of Democratic messaging for years, arguing it’s unnecessarily polarizing and has hurt the party’s brand in key states.

“You have to live in the moment that you’re in,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said in an interview with HuffPost. “Climate is still a giant problem for most states – I’ve had friends whose fire insurance has been canceled because the insurance companies can’t afford it anymore. So it’s not going away, but we need to talk about it in ways that connect directly to voters’ lives right now.”

“If you shut down clean energy projects, you’re raising people’s electric rates,” Heinrich added. “I’m not stepping back [from talking about climate] at all, but I am connecting the dots in a way that I think people really respond to.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that climate is a driving priority,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), another leading climate hawk in the Senate, told HuffPost. “I just think how we talk about it and whether or not we emphasize it in our ads is sort of a different question.”