388: JUST IN: Trump’s midterm wipeout. Was climate secretly on the ballot?
“I wasn’t on the Ballot, and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” So says President Trump, who was “a little bit surprised” by the midterms. The results were unambiguous. Democrats comfortably took the House and the Senate, and won the popular vote by 13 points: the widest margin in a nationwide election in half a century. This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson pick through the Blue-nami. Trump blames fuel prices, pushed up by the war in Iran. Nobody on the campaign trail called that a climate issue, but Christiana doesn’t think they needed to. So is climate now winning elections without ever being named? And with plenty of the new Democrats running on “all of the above” energy, what does the win actually mean for the second-biggest emitter on the planet?
About this episode
From January, Democrats can block Trump’s bills, hold the purse strings and investigate his administration. But he keeps the veto, and he still runs foreign policy - including whatever the US does, or doesn’t do, at COP31.
And with COP31 opening in Antalya on Monday, Christiana talks to Chris Bowen, Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy and the man running the negotiations (while Türkiye hosts ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). Can he convince Christiana that a split presidency can work?
Learn More
📺The full conversation with Chris Bowen on our YouTube channel (coming soon).
🔎 Marianne Lavelle at Inside Climate News on why climate is on the ballot, even if it's not in candidates' campaign messages
⚖️ Dan Farber at Legal Planet on why the midterms matter for energy and environment, and which climate rollbacks a new Congress can and can't stop. Not discussed in the episode, but it sets out the detail behind Christiana's list of what Congress can do.
📊 The UN Environment Programme's Emissions Gap Report 2026, the overshoot findings Chris Bowen responds to
🔗 Turkish Minute on how the Türkiye-Australia leadership split raises questions over COP31, including Murat Kurum's view of who has the final say
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
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Production credits
Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson
Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
