The Climate Danger Hiding Behind the 2024 Election Cannot Be Overstated

Climate is at number nine among the top issues that voters care about in this election. So it was no surprise that the candidates hardly mentioned climate change as two ferocious hurricanes—both fueled by elevated sea surface temperatures—pummeled parts of the Southeast in the closing months before the election. In the Western states, we are getting to the end of another big fire season after losing 8 million acres to wildfires this year alone. Climate-driven disasters like these are clearly not enough to make climate a top election issue in the current political environment.

The challenge for political leaders who want to address the climate crisis is to campaign as if it was not an existential threat and then somehow mobilize action across government and the private sector once they are elected to office. This is the needle that Joe Biden has tried to thread, with remarkable success. With the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the U.S. is now on a legitimate path to net zero emissions by 2050, which is a prerequisite for staying within the critical 2 degrees Celsius temperature increase.

Donald Trump has made it exceedingly clear that he does not believe climate change is even a problem.

But the IRA loses steam after 2030 and additional climate policies will need to be incorporated into the net zero plan on a regular basis to keep us on track for the net zero target. The Biden administration has already lined up several key regulations that should help, including new fuel economy standards and limits on tailpipe emissions starting in 2027, a cap on power plant emissions by 2039, and faster federal permits for major transmission lines to get renewable power into the grid with more ease.

The next president will either accelerate this progress or bring it to a screeching halt.

Given Kamala Harris’s support for climate action, the clean tech industry, and climate activists have given her plenty of space to campaign on other issues while staying largely silent on climate. If elected, it is reasonable to expect that Harris will build on the Biden administration’s work and keep the U.S. on the net zero path. A clean energy economy—built on electrification and emissions-free energy—should be a relatively easy sell as a job creator, cost reducer (yes, electrification saves consumers money in the long run), and a competitive advantage against countries like China.

We are going to be voting for the world’s climate future even if we are reluctant to admit it.

Donald Trump has made it exceedingly clear that he does not believe climate change is even a problem. Between Project 2025 pushing for a “whole-of-government unwinding” of U.S. climate policy and the fossil fuel industry drafting detailed plans to dismantle the Biden administration’s climate rules, it is a safe bet that we will no longer be on a trajectory to net zero emissions if Trump is back in the White House. If the official climate policy of the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter is no policy at all, then it is anyone’s guess what it will take to get the world on track to prevent the worst impacts of a rapidly warming planet.

But the danger does not end there. Given the previous Trump administration’s record of sidelining climate scientists and deleting mentions of climate change in scientific reports, we should also be concerned about not having access to timely and accurate climate-related data and analysis from key government agencies and national labs in a second Trump administration. Without reliable data from entities such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), effective climate research and action will be that much harder even outside the government.

The enormity of the danger hiding behind the climate silence in this election can not be overstated. We are going to be voting for the world’s climate future even if we are reluctant to admit it.