Post-Election Climate Thoughts

As devastating and infuriating the outcome of the election was and is on many fronts, with the fight to reverse climate change being a huge one, there seems to be a calm stillness in the climate world, or at least from my view of it. I don’t mean a stillness in the mission, but rather a collective, yet unspoken moment of pause for processing and self care. We’ve been through this before. Perhaps many of us have learned that spiraling or dwelling in negativity does not serve us or the mission. It happened. Take some time to rest, reflect, and realign. And then we move forward once again.

This doesn’t stop us. If anything it will re-energize the climate and other movements with a renewed sense of urgency. No time to waste. Starting with ourselves, and then locally, we dig in and get creative. Because just like last time, the cities and states can and will continue their climate work. In terms of how this election will impact overall progress in the US and the world in regards to decarbonizing the global economy, we don’t yet know. We can make informed assumptions, and we must brace for and prepare to battle off the worst. But anything can happen. This week I’ve felt comforted from the strength shown from the environmental nonprofits. They’ve been preparing for this outcome and they are ready to live in the courts over the next four years if they have to, defending environmental laws. That’s what they do – they look out for the health of our planet and its biodiversity, and that work will continue with a vengeance.

Personally, I’ve been thinking about ‘what ifs?’. Positive ‘what ifs’. What if something unpredictable happens? What if this is a catalyst that unlocks global urgency to address the climate crisis? I believe that at some point, there will be a perfect storm of factors that shifts the world into turbo action, different from the ‘trickle, pledge, stop, go, minimize pledge, wait’ that we see now. The impacts of climate change are more present in our lives than they’ve ever been. This year is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded. Again. 2024 will also be the first calendar year of 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels, which is the target limit the world agreed to in the Paris Agreement. There is now a greater quantity of greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere than at any point in the past 3 to 5 million years. It’s becoming the norm to break undesirable weather records. Flooding in Spain, flooding in North Carolina, wildfires still raging, 80 degrees in November in NYC, all but two US states in drought. Do you know that game of spinning the globe and randomly stopping it with your finger to fantasize about traveling there? Now we can play that game by naming the climate-fueled disaster happening at any given place on the map.

Our home planet is comfortably in its Human-Caused Warming Era. It’s becoming very difficult to deny that, even from the deniers. Are we yet at the point where denial and inaction are not accepted in the global arena? What if Trump can get us there? What if (most of) the rest of the world comes together now, in the wake of a lame-climate-denying US President because they know we cannot afford to lose 4 more years of progress mitigating this existential threat? What if they move forward so strongly, and it becomes so clear that if the US sits out on climate, we will lose economically, big time.

Back home, what if Trump can acknowledge the fact that investment from the Inflation Reduction Act has largely benefitted red states, while jumpstarting the rebuild of American manufacturing? What if he decides to take the credit for bringing jobs back home and architecting domestic supply chains for various competitive industries like EVs, batteries, and even possibly solar, therefore not killing unspent funds from the IRA? What if he realizes that a retreat on climate action leaves the door open for China to continue its dominance in clean energy manufacturing and enables them to step into a leadership position? What if he can’t stand for that, stays in the Paris Agreement, and pushes to be the best in climate business? For the money and the power of course.

I’m not naive. I know exactly who we’re dealing with here. And I’m most concerned about the continued expansion of the fossil fuel industry. But two things must happen – fossil fuels need to stop being extracted and burned, AND we need to build the clean, green global economy and world necessary for humans and other life to thrive. For the latter, the momentum is already there. We may be at that inflection point where Trump denying and dismantling our domestic climate action would be far too damaging for the US’s position in the global economy, not to mention our own. So who cares about the reasons or about who takes the credit? What if this were not the end, and instead it’s another new beginning? Now let’s go build the world we want. Nobody can stop us.