Heres what can come next with climate-change fever finally breaking

Something was conspicuously missing from California’s primary this month.In the state that built its political identity around fighting climate change, the issue barely registered.Voters fixated on affordability and housing. About 44% named the cost of living, jobs and inflation as the state’s most important problem, with just 1% citing climate change.Even Tom Steyer, the billionaire who made his name funding climate activism, ran a campaign centered on lowering household costs.In America’s greenest state, climate has become a footnote.That is no isolated signal.

Just days before voters went to the polls, California’s own Air Resources Board voted to hand as much as $4 billion in free allowances to oil refiners and other industrial polluters to ease compliance with the state’s carbon market.New York, meanwhile, is rewriting its landmark climate law, pushing back deadlines and softening its binding 2030 emissions target.When the bluest of blue states quietly retreat, it tells you that politicians have concluded voters care more about their wallets than distant climate targets.Who, in fact, are still panicking about the climate “catastrophe”? Fewer and fewer.Gallup’s latest survey of the world’s most important problems found that the median share of people naming the environment or climate as their country’s top concern was just 3%.Economic and governance worries dwarfed it.Even the money has moved on: A new Times of London survey of 200 institutional-fund managers found climate change had tumbled from their No.

1 environmental, social and governance concern to fifth place, behind human health, AI ethics, corruption and corporate conduct.How did so many people who were terrified by climate change a few years ago come to care so much less about it? Four reasons.First, we remembered the world has many problems.After the Cold War, it became fashionable to call climate the last great challenge.It never was.COVID, wars, budget deficits, immigr...