Why This Election Is Different Than The Others
I won’t fearmonger, if environmentalism and climate doesn’t win the day in this election then we will pick ourselves up again and work every day on issues until then and try again to make it felt in the next one. But I will say that this is a turning point that will make every step harder if we do not give it our all in this election!
Why is this?
Historical
While US emissions have in fact decreased over the last two decades the decrease has been slow, and largely in just one sector of our economy — that of electricity production. Commercial, residential, transportation, and industrial have experienced little to no decrease in carbon emissions over time. This also fails to include the off-gassing/leakage of methane prior to the production of electricity as well which has a devastating effect on our climate and on our climate projections for the future.
Physical/Logistic
Climate adaptation takes time, and severity of adaptation needed increases itself as we delay large scale change. The longer we put off a large scale change, the harder we will have to work to mitigate our emissions. This is because of the fact that large scale changes in manufacturing processes for the industrial, commercial, and transportation sectors will necessitate both years and a dramatic increase in scientific funding to reach the point where they can be deployed. Electricity production, which is to some degree the low hanging fruit in terms of carbon emissions reduction, still requires on an individual level often several years to site and build the wind farms and solar fields necessary. It will take years to hire, train, and deploy the high skilled workers that will fill the many jobs in this sector. When both of these are merged with the fact that these industries will need to expand in phases, and you begin to see how the years of meetings needed to decide on these issues need to start happening now.
What Can We Do?
We can elect climate champions, legislators that will start calling for these changes the minute they enter the halls of power, and never stop. And we have the opportunity! This year more than any year we have many legislators in every state to support. To find out more about these candidates visit us at https://www.lcv.org/endorsements/!
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