Blog Post: What it Means to be a Climate Voter

Blog Post - What It Means To Be A Climate Voter

Greetings,

With this Blog Post on Voting, I am revisiting that topic and updating my thoughts with a few new twists. I also am putting it out now, instead of just before election day for reasons I explain below. Finally, I have once again tried to write it as a non-political piece that is based on policy and not politics, since it is policy that we should all be basing our votes on, right?

Before getting to that, though, I want to thank the several readers who responded to my last post (The Climate Conundrum of Air Conditioning) by sending me some great information and examples that I can use in another A/C Post in the future. That issue is certainly not going away.

Let me next give you a note on three things that caught my eye since that my last Post:

Climate-Conflicted Home Buyers?

Zillow did a survey between April and July of this year of prospective home buyers to which 12,000 people responded. It found that regardless of the region of the country, over 80% were considering climate factors in their buying process. It said most of today’s shoppers were Millennials and Gen-Z’ers, and that these cohorts were more attuned to climate change impacts than previous ones.

But perhaps the most interesting finding was that this awareness of climate risk hasn't risen to the point where it is causing buyers to move to a region they consider less risky. About half plan to remain in areas that have the same climate risk as they presently face. Some even plan to move to more risky areas. Only 23% reported they are looking at moving to areas with less risk.

https://zillow.mediaroom.com/2023-09-05-More-than-80-of-home-shoppers-consider-climate-risks-when-looking-for-a-new-home

New Climate Perspective on Personal Diet and Emissions

Agricultural-related emissions are third in size on the pie chart, behind energy and transportation. Such emissions are also the ones that the average person usually doesn’t think much about compared to the other two.

Regardless, one thing that most of us think is that a meat-free diet will lead to less emissions. A new study from Cornell and several others says that is certainly true, but it concludes by saying that cutting back on meat may not be the most important option for emission reductions in agriculture. In fact, at a time when planting trees is no longer a no-brainer (an issue worthy of a future Post), the researchers found that planting trees on former farmland was the number one option to consider. They found that “negative emissions are not possible through a dietary shift pathway. The research paper is at https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000181. It is a little technical, however, and you can probably find something easier to digest via a Google search.

If you want to dig deeper into cows and emissions, here is a fresh story on VOX about pushback against Tyson’s attempt to have a “Green” brand of meat.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/8/23863100/tyson-climate-friendly-beef-burger-usda?ueid=1a9879292cf708655369e57c2f0d1aec

It’s the Codes, Stupid

Is there a bigger no-brainer than building codes when it comes to options for locking in emissions reduction over a long period of time? While some people have the means to design and build a home that is highly energy efficient, most don’t and most structures are built according to state and local building codes, and what those codes require or don’t require must now be thought of as climate change policy. Yet as I have written about before, the companies that build buildings still are operating based on the idea that buyers want the cheapest total price and thus that is what they should build towards.

Unfortunately, the home builders have made successful attempts across the country to oppose improvements in building codes that would be climate-friendly, as evidence by a recent development in North Carolina. The state’s current building code goes back to 2013. The Legislature in that state recently adopted (via an override of the Governor’s veto) a bill that freezes changes to the State’s energy efficiency codes, including to building codes, until 2031.

But as is often the case, there is a different story in California. That state recently became the first to include embodied carbon in its codes. The codes address carbon contributions from building materials and construction processes, as well as operational aspects. It also provides multiple specific compliance options that may be considered. One source for more on this is here. https://newbuildings.org/news/california-building-standards-commission-approves-landmark-embodied-carbon-requirement/

And ...

I will be bouncing around Manhattan next week dipping in and out of sessions at ClimateWeek. I hope to run into some of you there. If you see me, give a shout!

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What it Means to be a Climate Voter

I don’t know about you, but I was very much surprised that one of the first questions asked of the candidates in the recent Republican debate was about climate change. I did not see that coming. Did you?

It also made me realize that I should do something now that I normally do in late October, just before an election. That would be putting out an updated version of my Post on being a Climate Voter. I am doing this now because the climate situation has evolved into something so serious that one can’t just wait until November to be a Climate Voter. That needs to start now, and not only at the National level.

I am a registered independent. In writing this Post, I am trying my hardest to focus on policy, not politics. Because when it comes down to it, it is not really politics but policy that excites me because of the way it can transfer ideas into practical applications that (usually) make things better.

Unfortunately, many of the votes cast in elections are not done based on the policies of the candidates being voted for. There is plenty of research to show that people often vote against their own interests, presumably because they don’t know what the policies are behind the candidate. Then again some are said to cast their vote simply based on who they would like to have a beer with.

When I am asked by people what they can do in the way of climate action beyond recycling, I first tell them that recycling ranks way down the list in terms of emissions reducing activities compared to others. Then I further surprise them by not talking about their carbon footprint, given that even if everyone had a perfect carbon footprint, we still wouldn’t reduce emissions enough to make the national and international reduction targets. I instead tell them to do two things: One is to talk about climate change with friends, neighbors, etc. (even risking it at the Thanksgiving table where there might be push back from someone). The other is to be a climate voter. These two things should really go hand-in-hand over the next year.

[I also tell people to not just focus on the national level, and to look at what they can do at the state level and local level. As I have said before, local governments have an awful lot of say on all sorts of policy with climate consequences. I will talk about that in a future Post].

From a national standpoint I would argue there are no bigger consequences than the climate consequences of the next election.

In the Presidential Election in 2016, there were climate consequences of one type. In the 2000 Election there were climate consequences of the other type. There will certainly be consequences of the next one. Just look at that document I noted in one of my recent posts that the non-incumbent Party released laying out what policies and actions they would pursue via the Executive Branch if they formed the next administration. The policies are the opposite of those that would address climate change.

In the two-party system we have in the U.S., we as voters sometimes find ourselves in the same situation as when we last looked at our cable TV options - it was all about the package. To get some things we had to accept getting other things. Same with voting. We accept the Democratic package or the Republican package. That makes the choice harder for some people.

Ah… but for the Climate Voter, it all depends on which package acknowledges, plans for, and mitigates emissions and support resiliency.

I am such a voter. I have firm positions on all the things that normally show up on the “top 10” priority lists of issues. But I cannot think of any other issue that has the point-of-no-return implications as climate change does. I believe that if a policy mistake is made in other issue areas, it is not likely to be permanent and if things didn't work out as intended it can be changed to take things in a different direction.

What compares to climate change when you think of issues in those terms?

Climate change is for all practical purposes permanent. That’s right. There is no do-over. There is no rewriting of policies to allow a do-over.

Stop and think about it - have you ever heard anyone talk about reversing climate change? I haven't. The talk is about trying to slow it down, and deal with the impacts that are already occurring as well as those that will happen in the coming years. While few if any people talk about it this way, the best we can hope for is stabilization of the new normal.

Had we started to tackle climate change earlier, it would have been a different story. (Many of us tried to tackle it going back to the Clinton Administration but that is a story for another day). But today concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are at around 417 ppm – the highest level in millions of years. And half of the CO2 in the atmosphere has been emitted since 1990, when we supposedly knew what we needed to know to take action.

If one understands nothing else about climate change, it must be that real data (not predictions) on concentrations shows a constant incline. The curve only goes one-way – up. The data depicts not pledges, announcements or commitments but the amount of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere that will be there for hundreds of years or more. This means that by beginning only now to get serious, we have given greenhouse gases so much of a head start that we should not even be thinking about winning. The question is what place we will come in.

The policy years from 2017 to 2021 were not just any four years. In a climate change context, they represent four of the most important years that the history books will talk about when they record how we came to the brink of losing the climate fight.

During those years, we didn’t just hold our place, we fell backwards. Regulations and policies to address climate change were rolled back and no new ones were initiated.

Today, not only is there a climate record for those 4 years to judge, but there are specific anti-climate proposals which that Party has said it wants to put in place if given another four years. As I noted in a past post, a blueprint-type document called Project 2025 https://www.project2025.org/policy/ was released filled with anti-climate proposals that they would pursue in the Executive Branch. The leading candidate for that Party recently released his own Energy Plan which prioritizes fossil fuel production and usage, and restrains the use of renewable energy.

As I am sure is obvious, I am a climate voter. I vote based on science, data and policies and I vote while thinking about my kids and my descendants that I will never know.

You may not have thought of yourself as a climate voter. But it makes things simple. If you are concerned/worried/alarmed about where we are on climate and where we are going and if you can’t find any other issue that has the permanence of climate change if we mishandle it, then you are a Climate Voter, even if you didn’t recognize it yet.

So cast your ballot next year accordingly, for President and in any other race where there is a difference between the candidates on climate change. But don’t just think of being a climate voter in that sense. Get involved now in support of candidates and slates which propose good climate policies if elected. Get involved now in talking with other people about being a Climate Voter. And be prepared to be engaged after the election. Whoever wins, the fight to address climate will need all-hands on deck, whether we are all pulling in the same direction or whether we must waste precious time in a further tug-of-war. Don’t wait to get prepared for that latter scenario.

Be a Climate Voter, as if everything depended on it.

It does.

Links to Past Posts:

The Climate Conundrum of Air Conditioning

Predictions Made About Utilities Made 10 Years Ago - How Did They Hold up?

My Vote For The Most Under-Appreciated Impact of Climate Change

10 Things I Should Have Written About

So I Went to the COP - Here Are My Top 10 Takeaways.

Efficiency and Clean Energy - Faster vs More

Efficiency & Clean Energy - More vs. Faster

It's Time For A Climate Vote - On the Record

Good COP, Bad COP .....Thoughts Before Glasgow