We are roughly one month away from the November elections and after roughly 200 campaign text messages, 20 phone calls and innumerable ads, I am entering election fatigue. With New Hampshire being a battleground state, we residents are targeted by electoral campaigns in ways that feel increasingly intrusive and distracting.
At this point, the work of politics in the state, from a healthy dialog on how to govern ourselves through the legislative process, turns into a larger political game. This is the time when politics resorts to its most vicious tactic: divisiveness. Divisiveness works in simple ways, politicizing every issue, tapping into our viscerally held beliefs and escalating the tones of the dialog.
Through strategic divisiveness, natural differences in our perspectives on ways to achieve community and societal goals become insurmountable differences. Electoral politics thrives on discord, but it is ultimately us, everyday citizens, who bear the consequences of this game. To start with, it is us who need to work harder and harder to mend relationships in our own families, fractured along ideological lines, not just at Thanksgiving but for the rest of the year.
Last winter, sitting around a table with friends, our host told me that since the 2024 elections, he and his brother are not able to enjoy each other anymore, to the point that they stopped talking. They used to go fishing together, do s’mores around bonfires at yearly family gatherings and have regular calls to check in with each other. Now all of that is gone.
If two loving brothers can’t find a way to be with each other anymore, if the strongest of bonds is compromised, what is at play that is so powerful? While my friend and his brother are slowly working on their relationship, the question remains: to what end is discord cemented in our most intimate relationships?
Author and educator Donella Meadows said “Some day, when everyone understands that nearly all of us truly want the same kind of world, it will take surprisingly little time or effort to have it.”
Getting to that realization, though, like my friend and his brother, requires intentional work or otherwise the political tricks will strip us of what we hold most dear.
We can start by paying attention to the ways politics reinforces its own grip for the sake of political control, instead of the good of the citizens.
The place where fabricated divisiveness becomes really harmful is the politicization of climate change. As community members we work, we drive, we farm, we shop, we recreate; in sum we are out and about and we see and feel the effects of a changing climate.
Not all regions are equally vulnerable to it. We in the Northeast have been blessed with a gentle summer this year, but we just need to look out West or in central Europe or in the Himalayas to see the acute and tragic effects of climate change. Something so tangible, so real, with consequences for lives and economies, is treated by politics as an “issue” instead of as a threat to national security. Even the phrase “climate change” has been avoided like a political death sentence in political discourse.
The political trick that has cemented divisiveness between my friend and his brother is at play here too, severing us from the relationship with our climate, keeping us from talking about it across the aisle and in our communities, stifling timely action.
Common assets that are essential to our lives, to our jobs and, most importantly, to our survival, like a safe climate, should be safeguarded for good.
We citizens should receive reassurance that whatever our positions are on various “issues,” climate change is taken seriously by all we elect. Climate should be a non-partisan issue, it should be worked at from all political beliefs. In other words, politics should happen at the margin of what is essential to our survival.
During these midterm elections, as millions of campaign dollars pour into our state, we have an opportunity to engage differently. I urge the New Hampshire political candidates, Democrats and, especially, Republicans, to embrace fiercely the best interest of their constituents at times of an undeniably changing climate.
I urge the candidates to demonstrate their truthful commitment to safeguarding our climate by publicly refusing oil money and by working with our communities in building resilience and affordable energy alternatives. There has never been a better time to pivot toward renewable energy sources: they are cheaper to produce than traditional fuels, and they guarantee independence from oil wars around the world.
To the New Hampshire voters of any political belief I say: Place your honest concerns out there, ask the uncomfortable questions and push the candidates to be precise on matters of climate. Most importantly, support the folks who are active on many affordable renewable energy solutions in your community. We can’t afford the costs of estranging our kin and our climate, we need real politics at a time of real challenges.
Marta Ceroni is a member of the Enfield Energy Committee.