Caroline Spears

They are often overlooked in our policy sphere, but they have outsized impact and are incredibly important.

That's Caroline Spears of Climate Cabinet Education.

The group is helping people access this information with a free online tool called the Climate Vote Explorer.

It allows people to see recent climate-related bills in 10 states and how each elected leader voted on them.

So today, just as we did in the run up to the 2024 election, we are talking to someone who specializes in looking at those state level climate races that matter.

Caroline Spears is the founder and executive director of Climate Cabinet.

It's an organization that selects and highlights the most important state-level races for climate policy.

We talk about what's at stake this election, what state races might matter the most, and what races to watch on the night of to see how things are going.

It's a fun, quick episode.

I'm Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of HeatMap News, and it's all coming up on ShiftKey.

Caroline Spears, welcome to Shift Key.

Thanks for having me.

With that intense focus, we're seeing the real action shift perhaps away from just Washington and into state legislatures, local races, even public utility commissions.

Joining me to discuss it all today is Caroline Spears, founder of Climate Cabinet.

Caroline, welcome.

[upbeat music] So Caroline, 2026 may well be our most energy-heavy election we've had in the United States, and, and under that backdrop, what do you find are some of the approaches or notions about energy that political candidates in these races are still getting wrong right now?

Yeah, Sam and I are very close friends.

And whenever we find somebody in the activist space, like Caroline Spears, for example, who runs Climate Cabinet, it's like a way that you can think about how to donate to different candidates and state and local races who are climate champions and find out who they are.

She's awesome.

And we're always like, oh my gosh, thank God Caroline Spears exists because she's off doing that thing, right? Like activism is an improvisational act.

You know, nobody's going to tell you we need you to go do X.

What it really involves is people kind of raising their hand and saying, hey, We should have a way that people can figure out who to donate to who are climate champions.