It’s a mistake for Democratic politicians not to talk about climate change, and the reason they don’t is “because they don’t know how to talk about it”, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, said on Wednesday in an interview with the Guardian and the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting and New York Climate Week, Newsom also predicted that the midterm elections in November would bring “the end of Donald Trump’s presidency as we know it”. To prevent Trump from stealing those elections, voters must turn out in such overwhelming numbers that he “couldn’t possibly contest” the outcome. If the US president nevertheless declares a national emergency or otherwise attempts to invalidate the results, Newsom said, then “we the people have to step up. The courts have to intervene. Congress has to do its job and stand up for the rule of law.”

Although Newsom said in an interview with CNN last week that he would not run for president if Kamala Harris did, on Wednesday he did not rule out running if US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decides to run.

Commenting on Covering Climate Now and the Guardian reporting that 80% to 89% of the world’s people and 74% of Americans want their governments to take stronger climate action, Newsom condemned the “climate hushing” most Democrats have practiced since Trump returned to the White House in 2025. “I talk about [climate change] all the time,” he said. He agreed that Democrats must be “laser-focused” on voters’ affordability concerns, but the key is to “connect the dots” between those concerns and the economic impacts of extreme heat, droughts, floods, and other consequences of overheating the planet.

“People say, ‘Why are you talking about climate change? You should be talking about kitchen table [issues],’ Newsom said. “I say, ‘I am. You haven’t connected the droughts to the cost of beef, to the cost of coffee? You have to connect climate risk with financial risk, with our trade policy. These are kitchen table issues.”

“My biggest frustration during the Biden years,” he added, was that the Biden administration passed strong climate policies, including the Inflation Reduction Act, but then didn’t communicate that to the public. “Democrats fall prey to the Enlightenment Fallacy, that somehow good ideas sell themselves,” Newsom said. “We have to deliver not just good policy, we’ve also got to connect that policy to people’s lived experience and sell the hell out of it … Don’t just talk about extreme heat, talk about that farmworker in the warehouse [experiencing] that heat.” Citing scientists’ finding that the hotter climate has supercharged the natural El Niño phenomenon into a super-El Niño, Newsom last week declared a state of emergency in California “so we can pre-position assets” to protect the state’s inhabitants, infrastructure, and economy from the impacts. “That costs money,” he said. “Anyone who suggests that doing nothing [about the climate crisis] is the cheaper bet? Nonsense … The cost of inaction is incalculable. It’s not just the cost of emergency preparedness, but also the economic impacts of not being able to get insurance and not being able to build housing because you can’t insure the construction.”

“Here’s the thing that keeps me optimistic: the markets are moving in our direction,” he said. “Wind, solar and large-scale batteries [are] abundant and cheap,” while the war in Iran has pushed the price of gasoline, diesel, and fertilizer to record highs … And that’s not only happening in the United States, but globally people are realizing [that clean energy] is the better option.”

Thanks to large-scale batteries, which Newsom called “a game changer”, California ran on 100% clean electricity nine out of every 10 days so far in 2026, he said. “For the fourth largest economy in the world, that’s incredible,” he exclaimed, and it shows that planet-warming emissions can be cut without harming economic growth.

Newsom “totally rejected” criticisms by Bill McKibben and other climate activists that his administration has slowed expansion of rooftop solar in California by lowering net metering payments to homeowners with rooftop solar. Those payments, Newsom argued, “were subsidizing Wall Street hedge funds” and boosting electricity costs for Californians who “can least afford it”. The solar industry, he added, is now “a mature industry that needs to start to stand on its own”, without subsidies.

Meanwhile, Republicans are vulnerable on the climate issue because “they‘ve sold their souls to the fossil fuel industry … which lied” about the immense damage their products would do, Newsom said. “That’s why California is suing them, and other jurisdictions are suing them, on behalf of our kids and grandkids, and [industry executives’] kids and grandkids, who I love, even if they don’t.”

“The [2028] nominee of the Democratic party is going to be the next president of the United States,” Newsom said, and Ocasio-Cortez “absolutely could be the nominee”. He rejected the assertion that a woman, or someone who is Jewish, or young, or from California can’t be elected president. “It’s insulting … Our politics is completely scrambled post-Trump, the old rules do not apply.” Ocasio-Cortez is a “generational talent”, as well as “an outstanding communicator” and “outstanding motivator”, he said. “She’s the real damn deal.”

He wouldn’t run against Harris, he explained, not only because he has “a relationship with her that goes back to before we both were in politics”, but because his and her voting bases “overlay in ways that I don’t think people have absorbed or fully appreciate”. But that is not the case with AOC, he said, who he fully expects will run for president. She would be one of dozens of Democrats seeking the nomination, he predicted, “and each one of them would be better [as president] than the one we have now, and I would enthusiastically support them.”

Newsom is not ready to say whether he himself will run in 2028. He will only do so, he said, if he decides that “I have something unique that [other candidates] don’t, a voice, experience, perspective, capacity that is distinctive and adds value.” He would need to “be able to look you in the eye and say, ‘I’ll tell you exactly why I’m running for president of the United States,’ and do it authentically, not just give you a talking point. I think that’s what’s needed in our politics today: authenticity, purpose, passion, meaning, and mission. And if you don’t have all those things, then you don’t belong on the stage.”

This article is part of the 89 Percent Project of the international media collaboration Covering Climate Now.