‘The world is watching’: why US election results could determine global progress on climate action

SUPER CHARGED STORMS

Powerful Hurricanes Helene and Milton made landfall in Florida within days of each other, killing more than 256 people and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage across multiple states.

Scientists confirmed in the aftermath that climate change had given these storms a boost.

“All aspects of this event were amplified to varying degrees by climate change. We will see more of the same as the world continues to warm,” said Dr Ben Clarke, researcher at Imperial College London.

Dr. Clarke co-authored a report that found Helene’s winds were 11 percent stronger and rainfall 10 percent heavier, due to the warming climate.

Despite these findings, Trump continued to express his continued skepticism about climate change during a speech in Manhattan after the disaster, calling it “one of the greatest frauds in history.”

“The storms are getting stronger and stronger,” President Joe Biden said at a briefing in North Carolina as he assessed the damage from Helene.

‘No one can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore. If they do, they must be brain dead,” he said.

Yet Ms. Harris has failed to recapture the image among observers as a strong advocate on climate issues during her presidential campaign.

She made only passing reference to her party’s green agenda when she was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate in August.

In fact, even as part of the IRA, the debate or discourse on climate change has hardly featured in either candidate’s election campaign.

The IRA is spending around $400 billion on clean energy initiatives as part of the country’s goal to achieve a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. This includes tax breaks, infrastructure funding and community support and projects to create up to 1 million new jobs by 2030.

But despite the vast sums of public funding already allocated to industries installing wind turbines and solar panels, building electric vehicles and assembling batteries, Ms Harris appears reluctant to take a pro-planet position on the hustings.

That’s partly due to fears of a public backlash against an overly green agenda that is perceived to threaten certain communities dependent on the fossil fuel industry in key battleground states, and to the powerful lobbyists behind the industries themselves , said Dr. Carolyn Kissane, the founding director of the SPS Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab and associate dean at the NYU Center for Global Affairs.

“It’s a very fine line for a politician in the United States when it comes to energy and climate,” she said.

“Harris has a more climate-oriented view and has historically been tougher on big oil. However, as a nominee, it would be a mistake for her to come out as a staunch opponent of the big oil and gas companies, because first, they are a very large lobby, and second, it is very frightening for most Americans to imagine argue that their energy prices will be higher.

“I think her campaign needs to balance her role as an advocate for addressing climate change while not seeming very anti-hydrocarbon and hydrocarbon production in the United States,” Dr. Kissane said.

The oil and gas industry spent about $124.4 million on federal lobbying in 2022, according to an analysis by Open Secrets, an independent group that tracks money in U.S. politics.

The industry’s combined lobbying, political contributions and advertising efforts to oppose climate change legislation have gone 27 to 1 to climate advocacy groups between 2008 and 2018, the news site Pennsylvania Capital-Star has found.