The Democratic Party should try discussing climate change at a volume audible outside a grant application. A problem does not become politically sophisticated because you have learned to avoid saying its name. Sometimes you are simply being quiet while the problem gets louder.

The Guardian reports that climate has largely disappeared from competitive Senate campaigns, including those of Democrats who previously emphasized it. Its review of candidates’ websites in eight battleground states found the word on only two.

This is an impressive communications strategy if your objective is to conceal the existence of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the atmosphere has retained outside counsel in the form of everyone’s insurance bill.

I want Democrats to argue for cleaner energy and a livable planet without looking as though they have accidentally brought pornography to a school-board meeting. There is nothing indecent about wind power. The turbines do not require parental controls.

The reporting points to a survey by the Environmental Voter Project in which far more battleground voters wanted politicians to discuss climate more, not less. That organization advocates environmental voting; its polling is not an election result or a promise that one message wins every race. It is nevertheless an awkward thing to encounter while explaining that nobody wants to hear about the subject.

Even Texas did not supply the reassuringly hostile answer a timid campaign might expect. In that survey, 54% said a candidate prioritizing the clean-energy transition would make them more likely to support that candidate, against 19% less likely.

Somewhere, the conventional wisdom should be experiencing a small but productive sweat.

Of course people are worried about inflation and war. So am I. Energy costs are not unrelated to energy policy, a connection sufficiently obvious that perhaps we should stop entrusting it to political strategists. Treating climate and affordability as separate planets is a strange approach when the voter lives on the one getting expensive.

I am not asking candidates to greet every constituent with a lecture on atmospheric chemistry. If a person asks about a power bill, talk about the power bill. Explain how cleaner generation, efficiency and a better grid can help, and be honest about costs and construction. You can make a practical argument without first performing an exorcism on the word “climate.”

Nor should Democrats let Republican ridicule determine the entire conversation. The Guardian recounts Trump mocking James Talarico as a vegan—he isn’t one. Apparently the energy debate can be interrupted by an imaginary dietary restriction, but discussing actual energy policy would be dangerously distracting.

You cannot win every argument by agreeing that the argument should not happen.

There are Democrats discussing climate openly. They should not be treated as people who forgot to put their convictions on silent. The point of having a political party is partly to persuade people, not merely to reproduce yesterday’s anxieties in a nicer font.

Say what you want to build. Say who should pay. Defend it.

The planet is not waiting for a less awkward moment in the campaign.