The US Midterm Election Results Remind Us To Focus On The “Foundation Of Our Democracy”

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription, on Patreon, or on Stripe. Help us produce all of the high-quality, original content we publish week after week despite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.

The country feels different as the US midterm election results come rolling in. When all of the votes are counted, Democrats are set to win the national popular vote in all House races by about 13 percentage points. The voters have spoken in huge numbers: they want leaders who make everyday life a little bit easier.

Now the politicians must answer, and, essentially, they need to design policies that lower costs for ordinary people in the US. It’s not about revenge: revenge is too distinct from US consumers’ lived experiences.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, says that one of the main things “Democrats need to do now is hold not just Trump’s officials, but also his enablers, accountable.” Representative Robert Garcia of California posted on social media in the same vein: “Lawyer Up” to the MAGA losers.

No, that’s playground antics. Instead, the next two years must demonstrate a willingness to listen to US citizens as each family struggles to make ends meet with groceries, household utilities, healthcare, and other daily costs.

Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign in North Carolina had a mantra that permeated every stop on his statewide tour: Make Stuff Cost Less.

That’s it.

James Talarico, Jon Ossoff, Roy Cooper, among others, grounded their campaigns in economic populist agendas. They harangued against President Trump’s economic record and called out corruption for what it is — self-promotion over the interest of US citizens.

Georgia’s Senator-elect Jon Ossoff made Trump’s assault on the rule of law practical. In everyday terms he pointed out to voters how democracy and economic distress depend on each other. He argued that “corruption is why nothing works for ordinary people.”

We are ready as a nation to reintroduce the importance of science to accomplish these goals.

In a recent commentary in the journal, Nature, a group of authors argue that “science is an essential backbone of democracy.” Science as a source of discovery, expertise, and innovation is intertwined, they continue, with democracy as a set of institutions, rules, and procedures. They put forward three pillars through which science enables democracy:

• establishing shared factual baselines;
• aiding trust in institutions; and,
• providing tools to adapt policies and organizations in response to changing circumstances.

Citizens have legitimate concerns, the scientists agree, “about economic restructuring, regional inequities, how migration is governed, technological changes, ageing populations, climate risks and geopolitical instability.” Then again, “expertise strengthens democratic legitimacy when it is transparent, diverse, independent and open to scrutiny — as prescribed by the rules of science.”

Democracy — when it lives up to its responsibility as the rule of law — contributes to a decrease in CO2 emissions. Climate change, like voting in a democracy, is a collective action problem — a conflict between the individual interest and the group interest.

How Can Embrace of Science Translate into a Populist Message?

Congress can look ahead and back science-based clean energy in a variety of ways, from policies to investment, all of which will address the affordability crisis, improve public health, and protect the environment, says Gretchen Colman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. That will include renewables and clean transportation, modernizing the power grid, protecting our air and water, and more.

Science-based legislating, Colman continues, must be based “on facts and evidence, not political whims. We’ll petition Congress to restore funding for science, protect federal science agencies, and re-establish safeguards for federal scientists to carry out their work and communicate about it free from political interference.”

A national return to scientific reasoning is underway. Gina Hinojosa, elected as the first Texas Democratic governor, has called for an immediate moratorium on data center development. She has accused developers of “raising our utility rates and depleting our water.” As reported on Bloomberg Green, she’s vowed to halt approvals until “a legislative session that puts Texans first so that we don’t have any more communities in Texas who are powerless against these global corporations.”

Indeed, the output of data centers must also be questioned. Few AI-generated findings are peer-reviewed or tested in laboratories. Talk about mixed messages! We return to a nostalgic past by foregrounding large language models that are programmed to present particular, narrow, and self-serving points of view — generally by billionaires seeking to protect their wealth. It’s time to tax these rare individuals accordingly, eliminate any incentives for their built structures, and require them to provide major renewable energy contributions to communities that house them.

Yes, energy plays an increasingly important role in today’s world. Instead of treating electrification as an option to move us toward decarbonization, it’s time to see it is essential — we need to electrify everything quickly. In the US, more than 60 state and local governments are similarly in court to seek damages from oil companies. These are the lawsuits that Democrats in Congress should be pursuing as complements to transitioning virtually all building, transportation, and industrial systems to electric. This means subsidizing heat pumps and EVs and solar panels and home battery storage — subsidies are far cheaper than funding wars for oil.

Final Thoughts

The ground-breaking election events have hoisted non-traditional candidates to levels of power and influence, as the New York Times chronicles:

• The first Muslim senator, Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan;
• the first Black female governor, Keisha Lance Bottoms of Georgia;
• the first openly gay male senator, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire;
• the first Hispanic governors elected in Texas, Gina Hinojosa, and California, Xavier Becerra;
• the first female governor of Ohio, Amy Acton; and,
• the first female Native American governor, Deb Haaland of New Mexico.

Political analyst Chris Armitrage suggests another important positive trend. “The thing that lasts past January 2027 is the voter who had never voted in a midterm, did it in 2026, and now has the habit,” he concludes.

The urgency of climate change has brought democracy to a critical moment in time. Whether longtime, non-traditional, or new voters, we must continue to argue for inclusive and participatory democracy to address climate change. Shaped by democratic governance, a robust civil society, and innovative advocacy strategies, collective climate action can be a force for the right to a healthy planet.