Today 12:02 AM
https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/th...oming-from
INTRO: In January, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse coined the term “climate hushers” to describe his fellow Democrats who stopped talking about climate change in recent years. Inside Climate News recently quantified this trend, observing a marked decline in congressional press releases that mention “climate change” since 2022.
Whitehouse and his allies have chalked up climate hushing to bad advice from a cowardly pundit class. In April, Bill McKibben called the phenomenon “a product of political consultants looking at polling data.” Last week, Kate Aronoff described hushing as “received wisdom among party pollsters and pundits,” while Aaron Regunberg attributed the trend to “a host of think tanks and pundits—mostly corporatist outfits like WelcomePAC, the Searchlight Institute, and the Breakthrough Institute.”
Most of the coverage of climate hushing has tended to invoke this polling and the punditry. In particular, the anti-hushers are furious about a September 2025 analysis from the Searchlight Institute counseling Democrats “Don’t Say Climate Change,” and a May 2026 op-ed in the New York Times in which the socialist scholar Matt Huber wrote “American voters broadly agree that climate change is a real concern and support addressing it, but they largely do not see it as a top priority.”
And, as the author of the original essay on what we now call climate hushing, I feel some standing to intervene here. So let me be clear: Climate hushing is not principally a punditry phenomenon. It’s an increasingly widespread stance taken not just by moderate strategists, but by the progressive politicians and environmental movement leaders who shape the Democrats’ climate and energy agenda. And it’s happening because the world is changing faster than the anti-hushers can keep up with... (MORE - details)
INTRO: In January, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse coined the term “climate hushers” to describe his fellow Democrats who stopped talking about climate change in recent years. Inside Climate News recently quantified this trend, observing a marked decline in congressional press releases that mention “climate change” since 2022.
Whitehouse and his allies have chalked up climate hushing to bad advice from a cowardly pundit class. In April, Bill McKibben called the phenomenon “a product of political consultants looking at polling data.” Last week, Kate Aronoff described hushing as “received wisdom among party pollsters and pundits,” while Aaron Regunberg attributed the trend to “a host of think tanks and pundits—mostly corporatist outfits like WelcomePAC, the Searchlight Institute, and the Breakthrough Institute.”
Most of the coverage of climate hushing has tended to invoke this polling and the punditry. In particular, the anti-hushers are furious about a September 2025 analysis from the Searchlight Institute counseling Democrats “Don’t Say Climate Change,” and a May 2026 op-ed in the New York Times in which the socialist scholar Matt Huber wrote “American voters broadly agree that climate change is a real concern and support addressing it, but they largely do not see it as a top priority.”
And, as the author of the original essay on what we now call climate hushing, I feel some standing to intervene here. So let me be clear: Climate hushing is not principally a punditry phenomenon. It’s an increasingly widespread stance taken not just by moderate strategists, but by the progressive politicians and environmental movement leaders who shape the Democrats’ climate and energy agenda. And it’s happening because the world is changing faster than the anti-hushers can keep up with... (MORE - details)