Every election is a climate election. The midterms were no exception

This is the Nov. 10, 2022, edition of Boiling Point, a weekly newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. “The fact that Republicans were not running against climate change, I think was the single most telling thing in this election,” said Edward Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. Rather than highlight popular clean energy spending in the Inflation Reduction Act — including financial incentives for technologies that can save people money, such as rooftop solar panels, electric cars and electric heat pumps — many Democrats “ran scared,” Maibach said, playing defense against Republican attacks on issues such as inflation, gas prices and crime. Mary Creasman, chief executive of California Environmental Voters, told me she was “heartbroken” by the defeat of Proposition 30, which she said “would have been the biggest thing California had ever done on climate.” At the same time, she was heartened that none of her advocacy group’s “priority” candidates for state Legislature and Congress had lost — at least not yet. Desalination is also a hot topic on the Gulf Coast — including Corpus Christi, Texas, where Inside Climate News’ Dylan Baddour reports that officials have promised to invest in desalination to supply a plastics manufacturing plant being built by ExxonMobil, as well as other new industrial facilities — even as the city runs low on water.