My column today in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Special to the Post-Gazette

Mar 26, 2026

4:30 AM

Why has there been so little progress combatting climate change in America? It’s not because the whole thing is a hoax, as President Donald Trump likes to claim. Humans are warming the Earth by emitting greenhouse gases and this is both harmful now and catastrophic for the future.W

Not only are we doing little to end carbon dependency, the Environmental Protection Agency recently rescinded its 2009 finding of climate change endangerment that enabled the agency to fight climate change through automobile mileage standards, power plant regulations and methane rules.

The question is not whether the EPA was wrong — of course climate change endangers the public — but why this matter was left to the EPA in the first place.

What Congress hasn’t done

Unlike air and water pollution, Congress has never adopted legislation finding that climate change is real, is happening, is dangerous and authorizing federal action to curb it. That is the measure of America’s lack of progress on climate change.

And the reason for this lack of progress is the Democratic Party’s fear of losing Pennsylvania.

The Democratic Party has never advanced comprehensive climate change legislation and has never initiated a full-scale debate about climate change. Climate change language was slipped into President Joe Biden’s signature spending bill that provided incentives to transition to carbon neutrality, but that language was buried in a budget reconciliation bill. America has never had a full-scale debate about climate change.

This absence of public debate is why Trump and his allies can continue to claim that there is some doubt about whether climate change is caused by humans and is harmful. The EPA originally described the scientific consensus on the harm of climate change as contested. The agency quietly dropped that claim in its final rule, undoubtedly for fear of having to defend that characterization in court.

This lack of public debate on climate change plays out in presidential elections. Climate has not played a major role in the campaigns of Democratic Party nominees.

In 2020, the Democratic Party platform was softened to emphasize green energy jobs rather than the threat from fossil fuels. In 2024, Democratic Party presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, challenged Trump on many issues but hardly said a word about Trump’s absurd stance on climate change. Harris said that climate change is real, but climate was not a focus of her campaign.

What the Democrats really want

There is no mystery as to why the Democratic Party does not go all in on climate change. No Democrat since Harry Truman in 1948 has won the White House without winning Pennsylvania. 

And Truman was only able to do that because he retained enough of the solid South, especially prevailing in Texas, to win without Pennsylvania. No Democratic presidential candidate today has that luxury.

While it is not numerically impossible for a Democrat to win without Pennsylvania, the last three presidential elections tell the tale of the state’s electoral importance. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 and 2024 and won the presidency. He lost the state in 2020 and lost the presidency.

The political significance of Pennsylvania is the major reason why Gov. Josh Shapiro is a credible candidate for president or vice president in 2028.

Pennsylvania is no longer a major producer of crude oil nationally. But the state is the nation’s second leading source of natural gas production, after Texas. Pennsylvania produces almost 20% of the nation’s natural gas and most of that is extracted through hydraulic fracking in the Marcellus Shale. 

Fracking not only produces natural gas, itself a fossil fuel, but also produces much more methane as a byproduct than does traditional gas drilling. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas.

Climate change cannot realistically be limited without a ban on fracking.

In 2019, running in the Democratic presidential primaries, Harris endorsed a ban on fracking. But in the 2024 election, when Trump accused her of backing such a ban, Harris stated unequivocally in Philadelphia that she would not ban fracking if elected president.

That flip flop not only cost Harris environmentally oriented voters nationally, it illustrated for many her lack of decisiveness, a quality Trump certainly exhibits. Nor did her abandonment of principle work — proponents of fracking were always going to vote for Trump. Harris lost Pennsylvania anyway.

What the Democrats must do

America will never come to terms with climate change unless the Democratic Party takes a clear stand.

The first point has to be that climate change is real and that humans are causing it. The party must confront Republican waffling on those facts. Every Republican representative in Congress must be forced through public debate to declare whether climate change is real or not.

The second point the party must make is that climate change is harmful and expensive. It is ridiculous that Republicans are allowed to argue that regulating fossil fuels will cost jobs without having to acknowledge the economic damage that climate change is already causing.

Reasonable people will disagree about what to do about climate change. Fracking could be phased out over time, for example. That is the debate that America needs to have. But thus far, America is still in denial and Democrats are complicit in that denial.

Bruce Ledewitz, a contributing writer for the Post-Gazette’s editorial page, is professor of law emeritus at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University. He writes every other Monday. The views expressed do not represent those of Duquesne University. His previous article was “Trump chose an endless war with Iran.”

First Published: March 26, 2026, 4:30 a.m