This column is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by CJR and The Nation to strengthen coverage of the climate story. The author is CCNow’s deputy director.
Last week, on the prank and frat-culture podcast Full Send, special guest Donald Trump was asked about the war in Ukraine and how he predicts it will unfold. “Well, and I said this a long time ago,” the former president began, “if this happens, we are playing right into their hands. Green energy. The windmills don’t work. They’re too expensive. They kill all the birds. They ruin your landscapes. And yet the environmentalists love the windmills.”
It was a jarring non sequitur, but it served a purpose. Since even before Russia’s formal invasion of Ukraine commenced, the political right has used the conflict and attendant energy crisis as platforms to excoriate Democratic energy policies and vilify climate action. Pointing to gas prices, which have reached record highs in recent weeks, they’ve blamed Joe Biden for, in their words, banning domestic fossil fuel production and specifically killing the Keystone XL pipeline. Summoning ghosts of slogans past, the solution to rising energy prices, they say, is to “drill, baby, drill.”
These talking points, in addition to being the new subjects of Republican political advertising, have featured prominently in right-wing media—Fox News, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal opinion section, and all the rest. They’ve received a boost, too,...
A person in his 30s who demanded compensation for alleged foreign substances in cup noodles and the absence of meat in stir-fried pork was sentenced to prison in both the first trial and the appel...