A Livable Future Is on the Ballot

According to NASA “the vast majority (97 percent) of publishing climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.” Yet the Republican Party refuses to acknowledge this reality. The head of the party, Donald Trump, calls climate change a hoax and “one of the great scams of all times.” His running mate, J.D. Vance says the “idea” that heat-trapping pollution heats the atmosphere is “weird science.” Vance said that both he and Trump want “the environment to be cleaner and safer.” Yet during his term in office, Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protections, including rules governing clean air and water. In Congress, 123 members — all Republicans — are climate science deniers. Meanwhile the disease, death and destruction caused by burning coal, oil, and gas is becoming catastrophic and irreversible.

Until Republicans get serious about climate change, join bipartisan efforts with Democrats, and support global actions with other nations for a swift, just, and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels and transition to clean energy, their candidates don’t deserve our votes. At the ballot box in November voters can deliver a reckoning on this party’s irresponsibility by defeating them soundly.

Many Republican policy positions — on health care, women’s right to choose, foreign affairs, immigration, even the future of democracy — are extremely concerning. But the failure to act against the human suffering and planetary disruption caused by fossil fuel pollution cannot be supported.

Last year the world’s leading climate scientists delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis. The report says only swift and drastic action can avert irrevocable damage to the world. Author and climate activist Bill McKibben put it this way:

“We’re on the edge of breaking the planet’s climate system — we can see it cracking in the poles (the Thwaites glacier now undermined by warm sea water), in the Atlantic (the great currents are starting to slow) and in the Amazon (where savannafication seems to be gathering speed).”

The UK-based NGO Carbon Brief calculated that a victory for Republicans in November could mean an additional 4 billion tons of U.S. carbon pollution by 2030 compared to Democratic plans. These additional emissions would cause global climate damages worth more than $900 billion, based on the latest U.S. government valuations. It would also negate — twice over — all of the savings from deploying wind, solar, and other clean energy technologies around the world over the past five years. Building and protecting a livable future for our children and future generations is on the ballot November 5.

It’s ironic that political campaigns and the mainstream media have been focused on inflation and the economy driving a reluctance to talk about reducing carbon emissions. Paul Bledsoe, a lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy says, “They’re missing the costs of climate impacts.” A study published in Nature earlier this year estimated that climate change-fueled weather disasters will cost the global economy $38 trillion per year by 2049. The devastation from Hurricane Helene alone is estimated to cost more than $200 billion.

Democrats are committed to reducing carbon emissions. The Biden administration has set a goal to reduce them 50 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels, and to net zero by 2050. Without a single Republican vote, Democrats in Congress passed the most significant climate legislation ever which is spurring billions of dollars of investments, both government and private, in clean energy. Vice President Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote.

This year’s presidential election is the last one that matters for the goal of holding global warming to +1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels. Limits determined by physics will be breached if the U.S. and the world fail to make significant policy changes before the next U.S. president takes office in 2029. The leaders we elect in November need to act quickly and effectively. Our planet’s surface has warmed +1.24˚C since 1900 (bit.ly/2024-is-15-still-possible), and the pace of warming is now +0.1˚C every three or four years (Hansen et al. 2023: Global warming in the pipeline). It takes decades for the effects of CO2 emissions to be reflected in global temperatures, so some future warming is already locked in (IPCC AR6 WG1 Figure 2.10).

If there is a breach in our climate efforts, it cannot be undone later. Every 0.1˚C more warming brings significantly more damages and losses, some of which are irreversible at any price. The amount of warming so far has produced deadly heat waves, more frequent and intense wildfires, chronic droughts, more destructive storms and hurricanes, and catastrophic flooding from atmospheric rivers of rain and sea level rise. Imagine how much more suffering and destruction we’ll have to endure if we elect Republicans to lead us for the next four years.

The two leading presidential candidates promise very different climate futures: Donald Trump plans to ignore climate pollution; Kamala Harris plans to reduce it and lead us in the transition to a clean energy future.

Climate change should not be a partisan issue. Republicans and Democrats suffer equally from pollution and extreme weather. Surely all Republicans and Democrats want to live in a clean, safe environment. But, until Republicans take climate action seriously, let’s give Democrats our votes so they can secure a safe and healthy future for us all.