What Happens Next

“Voting isn’t important just because you can elect the right people,” Nathaniel Stinnett , executive director of the Environmental Voter Project , told The Revelator in 2022. “It’s also important because in between elections is when policy is made.”

And no matter who wins the White House, much of the work battling climate change will be carried out by state and local officials further down the ballot.

Gaming out how a Harris or Trump win will affect down-ballot races is a job better left to the political scientists. (Just as it will be left to the pollsters to tell us how much climate factored into voters’ decisions at the polls.) But the work on climate change — fighting regulations, initiatives, and funding will need to carry on unabated.

During the Trump administration, local leaders banded together to create coalitions of US governors in the Climate Alliance, mayors at Climate Mayors and C40 Cities, and local and regional officials at ICLEI, united in action to confront the climate crisis. The Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative grassroots community leaders have received support and already begun the work for climate justice on the front lines. These kinds of efforts will carry on regardless of who wins the presidency — an important reminder for journalists inclined to think the world grinds to a halt around Election Day.

“America is not the world,” Peter Prengaman , the global climate and environment news director for The Associated Press , pointed out on LinkedIn last week. “The green energy transition is well underway… and that isn’t going to change regardless of who wins.”

So whatever happens tomorrow, the work will go on.

Reporting Ideas

Climate Voters: How did climate figure into voters’ decisions on Election Day? Did voters who prioritized climate in your state or community turn out? Exit polls will provide important clues. Look at Environmental Voter Project data to see how climate voters may have impacted outcomes.

Climate Initiatives: Report on the two ballot initiatives related to climate. What are the local and national implications of the outcomes?

• Proposition 4 (California): “The Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness, and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024 would have the state borrow $10 billion to pay for climate and environmental projects — including some that were axed from the budget because of an unprecedented deficit,” reports the Los Angeles Times .
• Initiative 2117 (Washington): Voters in the Evergreen State will decide whether or not to repeal the “Climate Commitment Act, one of the most progressive climate policies ever passed by a state Legislature,” reports The Associated Press . The law, signed by Governor Jay Inslee less than two years ago, “forces companies… to reduce their carbon emissions while raising billions of dollars for climate programs.” The outcome will have national implications as local officials will likely have to consider similar policies in order to meet emissions goals in their cities and states by 2030, 2040, and 2050.

Governors and Mayors: Look up whether members of the Climate Alliance, Climate Mayors, and C40 Cities were voted out of office. Will they drop out of the coalition? What will that mean for climate action in your state, city or town?

Justice 40: Climate justice initiatives are already in progress across the country. What will these election outcomes mean for them? Talk to officials and groups making the shift to renewable energy locally by contacting state green banks, Justice40 grant recipients, and WE ACT Justice40 community groups.

Take Inspiration

Laying out the stakes for climate on Tuesday?

• Lisa Friedman writes in 纽约时报 about “A Pivotal Choice: Trump vs. Harris on Climate Change.”
• “The 2024 Presidential Election Will Make or Break U.S. Climate Action,” writes Andrea Thompson at Scientific American .
• In Rolling Stone , Jeff Goodell writes in a blistering op-ed, “The Case for Kamala Harris in a Burning World,” that the future of the planet is not at stake in this election, but the future of a liveable planet is.
• NBC News ’ Chase Cain explores how Project 2025 aims to ‘eradicate’ climate change research and slash disaster aid in a new report.

Spotlight Pieces

Over at The Washington Post , staffers Niko Kommenda , Shannon Osaka , and John Muyskens published this excellent analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act, offering readers the chance to “see how the Inflation Reduction Act is affecting your community,” with a searchable database of districts and IRA funding.

Plus, Grist ’s L.V. A. wrote about the “link between climate disasters and authoritarian regimes,” featured in last week’s edition of the State of Emergency special election newsletter. “There’s never any single factor behind a political trend,” Anderson notes, “but economists and social scientists have found evidence that global warming — which increases people’s physical, social, and economic vulnerability — can push individuals, and nations, in an authoritarian direction.”

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