Datacentres, high fuel prices, and the cost of living crisis were some defining issues for the US electorate in the recent US midterm elections, but why didn’t politicians link these concerns to the environment and climate change?
Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio University, Dr. Nancy Manring Ph.D, joins Bertie to discuss framing of climate issues and environmental politics in the United States – the central theme of her latest book ‘A World of Wounds: Rebuilding a Bipartisan Environmental Movement and Cultivating Hope.’
Listen to Nancy explain why she believes American politicians are missing an opportunity to strengthen the salience of environmental politics: “I would argue that a braver and more visionary leader would have put together energy, climate, utility bills, data centres, all in one big argument about climate change.”
Further reading:
- Nancy J. Manring, A World of Wounds: Rebuilding a Bipartisan Environmental Movement and Cultivating Authentic Hope (Standford University Press, 2025) — the overarching historical and political analysis.
- Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change (Bloomsbury Press, 2010) — the deliberate manufacture of scientific uncertainty.
- Kari Marie Norgaard, Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotion and Everyday Life, (MIT Press, 2011) — collective silence, emotional avoidance, and socially organized denial.
- Brulle, R. J. Institutionalizing delay (2014): Foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations. Climatic Change, 122(4), 681–694. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-1018-7 — the organizational and financial infrastructure of the climate-countermovement.
- Center for International Environmental Law. (2019). Fuel to the Fire: How Geoengineering Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Accelerate the Climate Crisis — the political relationship between geoengineering and fossil-fuel interests.
- Biermann, F., et al. (2022). Solar geoengineering: The case for an international non-use agreement. WIREs Climate Change, 13(3), e754. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.754 — the ethical and governance debate over solar geoengineering.