Super Tuesday Lays Out Election’s Environmental Stakes – GWC Mag

Yesterday was Super Tuesday, when voters in 16 states and one U.S. territory cast ballots in the largest primary election day of the 2024 cycle. President Joe Biden secured victories in 15 of the 16 Democratic Party contests, winning 70%–93% of votes across all contests except in American Samoa (43%).

In the 15 GOP contests, former President Donald Trump won 14 contests with 58%–88% of votes, and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley won the Vermont primary with just under 50% of votes. After Super Tuesday, Biden has 1,497 of the 1,968 delegates (76%) needed to secure his party’s nomination, Trump has 995 (82%) and Haley has 89 (7%) of the 1,215 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination.

Associated Press reported that Haley, the only GOP candidate to acknowledge the reality of climate change, will suspend her campaign later today, 6 March.

The contests’ results all but all but ensure that the presidential election will feature a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump. Scientists agree that stakes for science and the environment are incredibly high.

“The upcoming election will represent a pivotal moment for addressing climate change,” said Jennifer Marlon, a climate and environmental scientist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

Divergent Environmental Futures

As presidents, Biden and Trump enacted widely divergent platforms that affected climate change, environmental protection, education, and science policy. Both have stated that they plan to continue the work they began in their first term if elected to a second one.

On the environment, President Biden’s goals include remaining in the Paris Agreement, continuing climate action built into the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), supporting underserved communities in the Justice40 Initiative, regulating pollution from coal-fired power plants, and investing in the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy.

“The Inflation Reduction Act is starting to do some good work,” said Jonathan Foley, a climate and environmental scientist and executive director of the climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown. The law may not be enough to correct the country’s climate course by itself. “Overall, however, it is likely to be helpful. Reversing it would really hurt some recent progress on scaling renewables, EVs, [and] heat pumps.”

On the other side of the aisle, right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation provided former President Trump with the Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a playbook that includes plans to reverse many of the Biden administration’s climate policies, including the IRA; withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement; reenact many of the environmentally damaging rollbacks enacted in Trump’s first term; grow fossil fuel production; and go further in attacking climate and environmental science and its practitioners.

“The next U.S. president will also shape efforts to mitigate climate change around the world.”

“The outcomes of these two starkly different positions for people’s health, communities, natural resources, as well as the long-term health of the economy, will be radically different depending on who gains power,” Marlon said. “The next U.S. president will also shape efforts to mitigate climate change around the world through their influence on international policies and cooperation on environmental issues.”

Earth Systems Reaching Extremes

According to the most recent international and U.S.-led climate reports, Earth’s climate is quickly approaching a breaking point.

The past several years have seen devastating climate impacts ranging from extreme temperatures to deadly floods to expansive wildfires, leading to a record 28 billion-dollar disasters in the United States last year.

The ocean, too, is nearing a tipping point. Dave Reidmiller, director of the climate center at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, works to prepare local coastal communities for climate change. He said that the effects his team is most concerned about are polar ice sheet collapse accelerating sea level rise and a slowdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). AMOC slowdown or collapse “would likely have profound effects on the ecology, climate, and shorelines of the Gulf of Maine,” he said.

“The best way to ensure we don’t backslide on climate action is to make more resilient, lower-carbon living easier and cheaper than the status quo.”

“The best way to ensure we don’t backslide on climate action is to make more resilient, lower-carbon living easier and cheaper than the status quo,” Reidmiller said. “Local, state, and federal governments can accomplish that through a range of incentives targeted at the household…and sectoral levels,” for example, rebates on heat pumps or tax credits for grid-integrated energy storage. The IRA provides both of these financial incentives, whereas Project 2025 calls for the IRA’s immediate repeal and for the end of electric grids’ transition to renewable energies.

Reidmiller added that the question really boils down to, Do we pay now or later?

“No matter what, we will eventually have to pay for health impacts, electrical grid improvements, coastal resilience, supply chain disruptions, etc.,” he said. “We just have to decide whether we do it on our terms now or wait for Mother Earth to charge us later—with interest.”

Ballot and Beyond

Most scientists strongly agree that a second Trump presidential term would likely be far more detrimental to the environment than a second Biden term. Trump’s proposed renewal of his fossil fuel energy policies, broad regulatory rollbacks, and lack of leadership on climate mitigation could lead the United States to approach environmental tipping points that would be hard or impossible to come back from, they said.

Yet a second Biden term is also no guarantee of a slam dunk on sustainability or conservation. His pause on natural gas exports, lauded by climate scientists, is being challenged in courts and in the U.S. House of Representatives. He has advanced controversial pipeline projects, gifted existing gas-fired power plants several years before they must abide by new greenhouse gas emissions standards, and is slowing down his electric vehicle push.

“The presidential election will have an enormous effect on environmental and energy policies,” Marlon said, adding that policies enacted at the state and local levels can often be more efficient and effective at protecting the environment or holding polluters accountable than those at the federal level. Voters can take action by electing environmentally conservative representatives at all levels of government.

“Policy is only one tool to help address climate change.”

Moreover, elections for congressional representatives, governors, judges, city council members, sheriffs, and other regional and local officials can have a profound impact on science and its practitioners. Policies enacted at the state and local levels can determine whether scientists, educators, and students from all backgrounds have access to necessary health care, feel safe in their communities, and can rely on critical social services. These factors are essential for supporting a diverse and inclusive scientific community, which scientists assert is essential for just environmental and climate action.

But ultimately, Foley cautioned against relying too much on elections to determine how society acts to protect the planet. “It is true that elections matter, and good policy is helpful in addressing climate change,” he said. “On the flip side, bad policy can really hurt.”

“But policy is only one tool to help address climate change,” he added. “We need to see action on other fronts too—especially business, technology, investing, and within local communities.”

—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@AstroKimCartier), Staff Writer

Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2024), Super Tuesday lays out election’s environmental stakes, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240110. Published on 6 March 2024.

Text © 2024. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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