Orange Sky Alert

Who Tells the Story?

Orange Sky Alert is an independent project that scores whether Core Democratic Officials name Republican Obstruction of Climate Action after climate-related disasters.

Climate change is making “natural” disasters more frequent and more severe. Americans are seeing wildfires, smoke, drought, floods, and hurricanes more often, but most don’t know that, for decades, Republicans have blocked actions to prevent climate change.

The question

Orange Sky Alert begins with a question that should get harder to ignore every year:

Why hasn’t climate change become one of the dominant political issues in the United States, despite increasingly visible impacts on people’s lives?

For decades, climate has ranked below the economy, immigration, healthcare, and crime in public priorities. The perception that adverse effects are years off could explain the low salience. It is less plausible when millions of Americans now live with record heat, wildfire smoke, floods, fires, and rising insurance costs tied to a warming climate.

That raises a follow-up:

If the harm is more immediate, why hasn’t political salience risen accordingly?

The argument

What follows is the editorial perspective behind the project — not the hypothesis Findings tests.

Three claims shape how to understand the party differences:

  1. Leadership and messaging matter. Issues rarely become national priorities on their own. Parties, leaders, and media elevate them through repetition, framing, and named accountability. Republicans have shown how that works: election integrity, immigration, “Defund the Police,” transgender athletes, etc. became central debates through sustained messaging.
  2. Democrats have not been silent on climate. However, Core Democratic Officials almost never name Republican Obstruction of Climate Action in the seven-day observation window after a disaster, when people are paying attention. Many Democrats have warned about the danger long before recent disasters and they’ve fought for policy when they could. They know that Republicans have obstructed climate action since around 2000. They say so in policy fights. After a hurricane, flood, or fire, they almost never connect what people can see downstream to who blocked prevention upstream.
  3. Real leadership sometimes means educating the public and making an issue salient — not only reflecting the latest polls. Core Democratic Officials already recognize the danger. They cannot wait for the public to name who blocked prevention if they will not name it themselves.

A thought experiment

For more than twenty-five years, Republicans have sided with big oil and coal, and reversed, blocked, or delayed climate action. That has stymied action to address the problem in the United States and worldwide. Democratic leaders mention that record in fights over bills, but rarely after climate-related disasters.

Suppose the roles reversed. If Democrats had spent twenty-five years blocking climate bills while disasters grew worse, Republicans would not treat each wildfire, flood, or heat wave as a one-off. After every one, the line would be some version of this:

This didn’t have to happen. Democrats ignored the warnings, blocked common-sense solutions, and now American families are paying the price.

The database currently includes 1,363 reviews (51–54 Core Democratic Officials per disaster × 26 disasters). So far, 53 of 1,363 reviews (3.9%) scored Disaster Mention; 12 of 1,363 (0.9%) scored Climate Connection; and 1 of 1,363 (0.1%) named Republican Obstruction of Climate Action. Each rate uses all reviews as the denominator; climate and obstruction yeses still require naming the disaster in the window (see Methods).

In brief, we reviewed statements of Core Democratic Officials over 26 disasters that met our inclusion rules since 2023. The Core officials include all Democratic senators plus Independents who caucus with Democrats (King, Sanders), House Democratic leadership, and the chair of the Democratic National Committee. The roster is 51–54 officials depending on who held office on the disaster’s start date. The research methods are explained fully on the Methods page.

The project will grow as new disasters meet the inclusion rules.