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Tthere are many clear choices here that are at stake in tomorrow’s presidential elections. One of the most notable is climate, and that comes at a time when the planet is heading toward catastrophic levels of warming.
Vice President Kamala Harris has called climate change an “existential threat.” While she has not outlined a climate plan, she is widely expected to continue federal support for clean energy and electric vehicles in an ongoing effort to shift the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels. In 2022, she cast the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act and pledged to fully implement it.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has done just that called climate change “one of the biggest scams of all time.” and pledged to end federal support for the clean energy transition while increasing drilling for oil and gas, including in the Arctic. He withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement during his first term and – after President Joe Biden quickly rejoined the accord – has said he would do so again.
This is evident from data published by the United Nations last week Greenhouse gases will reach record highs in 2023, with CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever before in human existence. That’s an important reminder: If that was necessary at a time of worsening hurricanes and extreme heat, now is a critical time to enact policies to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. As Peter Maysmith, senior vice president of campaigns for the League of Conservation Voters, told the New York Times last week about the choice this election: “The stakes when it comes to climate change literally could not be higher.”
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Elon Musk’s relentless trolling of Democrats is tarnishing Tesla
Elon Musk took a break from his efforts to ask Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to join Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call. The electric car maker’s better-than-expected earnings news sent shares soaring, erasing a slump that lasted for much of the year. When fielding softball questions from Tesla fans and analysts, the billionaire CEO was noticeably more impassive than in his frenetic campaign appearances. Not once during the 72-minute phone call was Tesla’s volatile leader asked the most obvious question: Should he take sharp public positions on political and social issues that run counter to Tesla’s core buyers, who largely identify as Democrats?
“Teslas are the best cars, so it still has this advantage. But over time, it will become more difficult for Tesla to acquire new customers because of its politics,” said longtime investor and former Musk fan Ross Gerber, CEO of Los Angeles-based asset manager Gerber Kawasaki, which still owns a stake of has $52 million in the company. “Most CEOs intelligently stay out of politics for good reasons. Elon doesn’t care how his right-wing (ironically anti-environmental) support hurts Tesla.”
Multiple consumer surveys support this. About 46% of people shopping for an electric or plug-in hybrid car identify as Democrats, while only 21% and 25% of buyers of those vehicles say they are Republicans, according to data from Strategic Vision, a research firm from San Diego. based research company that surveys tens of thousands of consumers every week. Auto researcher Edmunds found in its latest survey data that 31% of car buyers say they are now less likely to consider purchasing a Tesla as their next car, specifically because of Musk.
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Michael Mann, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and head of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media, on what’s at stake in the US elections
How important is the outcome of the presidential election for the climate?
I’ll be blunt. This upcoming election is a pivotal moment when Americans will choose one of two paths, and the difference between those two paths couldn’t be more stark. One of those paths, represented by Donald Trump and the Republican Party, essentially involves abandoning the efforts we have already made here in the United States to address the climate crisis. That includes dismantling the EPA, abolishing the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which of course runs the National Hurricane Center, and the hurricane hunters who are flying the readings, taking their lives, risking their lives by getting caught in hurricanes critical measurements fed into our models so we can better predict the intensification and progression of these dangerous storms. It would leave all that out.
But fundamentally it would give up our commitment to the rest of the world to lead the way in this area, to reduce our carbon emissions, to drive a shift away from fossil fuels; for example, it would seek to deactivate the Inflation Reduction Act, which is landmark legislation passed by the Biden administration, or signed by Joe Biden and passed by Congress, whose provisions have the potential to reduce our carbon emissions here in the United States by 40% by 2030. It’s not enough. We still have to do more. We have to build on that, but it puts us on the right track.
What are the international implications?
On the one hand, you have a Republican Party and their presidential candidate Donald Trump, who would essentially end any American leadership on climate. And in the absence of American leadership, we are the largest carbon polluter in the world. We have to show moral leadership if we can expect the rest of the world to come to the table, other industrialized countries, China, India, and so on. And what we know is that when we do indeed take leadership, as we did during the Obama administration and again during the Biden administration, those other countries come to the table and we begin to forge a path forward to really implement the actions necessary actions to prevent these types of conflicts. catastrophic warming.
We are now at a warming of 1.2 degrees Celsius. At 1.5 degrees Celsius we will see much worse consequences than the consequences we are already seeing, and we are already seeing dangerous climate change. Especially in the past month, with Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, these are storms that have strengthened. They were more intense. They caused greater amounts of flooding rains, in one case killing hundreds of people. We are witnessing the devastating effects of human-induced climate change. And if we do not act now and prevent a warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, we will already be at 1.2. There isn’t much room to move. What it actually means is that we need to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions over the next decade, and get them to zero by mid-century. The only hope to do that would be to build on the policies put in place by the Biden administration.
So that’s where we stand. We have a monumental choice before us. In my opinion, it doesn’t get as much attention in the American media as it should because wow, there are so many crises. We face public health crises, international security crises, wars, and so on. If we don’t act now about the climate crisis, there will be no way back. We are anticipating truly dangerous and deadly consequences for decades to come. And so that’s where we are at this very critical moment.
What else we read
A crucial choice: Harris vs. Trump about climate change
EPA, just recovering from Trump years, faces an uncertain future
Current Climate promises still fall far short about the Paris goals, the UN body says
Army of bots promotes the petrostate as a host for global climate talks
China is tightening its grip about minerals needed to make computer chips
Russia is withholding crucial climate data in the Arctic, NATO warns
Carbon-free ammonia for shipping faces cost and security challenges
AI will add to the electronic waste problem
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