Where's the Climate in the 2024 Election?
Why we're hearing so little about climate action this year, why that may be okay for now, and why we need to ready ourselves for what comes next.
Are you a climate voter watching the Harris-Walz campaign and asking WHERE'S THE DAMN CLIMATE?
In the 2020 election, hundreds of thousands of Americans pushed for climate action, picking up Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s call to make that election a referendum on climate action. Newsletters, civic forums, rallies, yard signs, white papers, social media memes, GOTV campaigns: it seemed like we climate hawks were everywhere, and ready to get as loud as it took.
There’s far less of an outcry for climate action this year. In fact, since Joe Biden stepped aside, politicians have gone nearly silent on climate. I want to explain a few reasons why that is, why it’s probably okay — and why American politics is totally unready for what comes next.
The most obvious reason is that in the last three years Democrats have delivered a ton of climate action, far more than many observers believed possible. Biden led a massive, still-ongoing surge in climate action at the Federal level — the largest shift forward in US climate policy, ever. This was all a very big win.
Enough? No. Yet an amazing accomplishment, considering the opposition.
In the wake of that push, much of the energy policy work that remains to be done now is pretty wonky stuff, its politics driven at this point primarily by engaged elites and interest groups — and less by political mass-mobilization — and it's unfolding in a much different world than the IRA did. This isn't 2020.
There’s a lot more climate and sustainability implementation work awaiting us, of course. We must accelerate the pace of clean energy deployment, electrify everything, reduce demand with better design and technologies, slash methane, etc. We need a giant building boom, physically deploying sustainable systems at scale, from coast to coast.
Building more IS on the agenda, though, as witnessed by the openly YIMBY tilt of this Democratic convention. Without directly identifying new investments in housing, infrastructure and energy as climate action, the Dems have set up a mandate to “build, build, build.” There’s real progress to be had here.
It’s more important that we win the power to keep moving forward than that we see all our talking points at the top of the agenda. Indeed, the biggest political necessity in climate action today is preventing the forces of predatory delay from rolling back our recent gains. To be blunt, DEFEATING TRUMP is the highest climate priority — even if that requires downplaying calls for climate action over the next two months.
What about the other three parts of what most informed people consider the climate agenda: science, equity and response? Why the silence there?
The science— expanding research, building better models, working to reduce uncertainties, etc— is critical, but it’s also the stuff average voters care the least about. “More evidence-based inquiry!” is not a rallying cry that will successfully bring many undecideds to the polls.
Climate equity would seem to be a better fit for a time of intense, persistent economic worry, but it carries its own liabilities. 2024 is a compressed election with the highest stakes possible. I perceive little appetite for any messaging that *could* worsen Dems' odds in swing states. My sense is Dems think have little to gain by using the worn-out frame of a Green New Deal. (On top of that, a lot of mainstream climate-focused Dems seem to feel that Climate Left groups have proven to be unreliable allies.) There are more direct ways of pitching social progress to voters than tying it to climate.
That brings us to climate response. Here’s where it gets dark.
The unacknowledged realities of climate and ecological discontinuity are the largest looming crisis to face the American Republic since at least the Civil War. We're unprepared as a nation to even admit the existence of this crisis.
Effectively all US climate politics is premised on achieving an orderly transition: using collective climate action to limit the planetary crisis to an extent that future, modest adaptation steps can then preserve societal continuity.
We're not getting an orderly transition.
We are now certain to see a worsening planetary crisis for the rest of our lives, and if we act only slowly, the scale of that crisis will dwarf any problem humanity has ever faced.
This crisis is not an issue, it's an era. It's the context for every decision we make, now.
Even in the best plausible scenarios, we'll see massive economic losses in risk-exposed places; the need to spend trillions to even partially defend our communities from harm; mass displacement, migration and trauma. This crisis is redefining our lives and our nation already.
As a people, though, we're not ready to hear that. We're not yet ready for what's already happened.
We will be forced to reckon with this discontinuity. Indeed, the future of this nation, I believe, will be primarily determined by our response to this widespread upheaval.
A rushed presidential campaign, though, is not the time to start this conversation. Demanding Americans suddenly confront the truth about the disconnect between the lives we've had and the planet we live on now would be a catastrophic political approach.
So, climate folks, this is one election where it's probably okay if the talking points don't focus on fossil fuels, crazy weather and melting ice caps.
Do everything you can, anyway, to see to it that Democrats win. The speed of further progress (at home and abroad) likely depends on that victory.
And while we wait for reality to come crashing into our homes and nation, ready yourself. Keep learning, ruggedize your own life, build effective networks for action, imagine success.
This country's going to need us, far more than most of our fellow Americans yet understand.
More about me:
- I teach classes on developing your own personal climate strategy. I will next offer my Ruggedize Your Life, the Basics class on September 12th, and my six-week Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization beginning October 17th. More details in my next letter.
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