The Environment Isn’t Just Some Other Issue

By: Ben Baisinger-Rosen

The 2024 presidential election is rapidly approaching, with all signs pointing to a repeat of the 2020 race between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In many cases, presidential candidacies are defined by a single issue, with Donald Trump’s dogmatic pursuit of a border wall on the southern border acting as a recent example. For President Biden, one option for the cornerstone of his candidacy would seem to be his achievements in environmental policy, where his relatively aggressive pursuit of better climate policy has produced real achievements, most notably the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). However, despite the increasing recognition of the environment as a crucial issue among the general public, the environment is typically not a defining issue for electoral cycles. 

The vast majority of presidential candidates have been hesitant to place issues surrounding “the environment” at the forefront of a presidential campaign, and the few that do are usually candidates from single-issue, third parties. The reason for this is fairly straightforward: relative to other issues, environmental concerns historically fail to significantly motivate voting. Moreover, even as the environment has become more important for individual voters, the minimal overall increases in voting on that basis have created a powerful perception that supporting or passing climate policy is not a good strategy to win votes. These two factors create a really strong incentive against making environmental issues a central feature of an electoral campaign. After all, in a system where political success is typically operationalized in terms of electoral success, it is unlikely that politicians will commit significant resources to an issue they feel is unlikely to generate votes. 

Part of the problem stems from the way that voters view the environment as an issue. In general, we discuss climate change and environmental policy on a candidate’s policy platform the same way we discuss issues like healthcare: as a feature of a larger platform rather than a singular, defining metric of presidential success. A natural contrast is the way the economy impacts voting. For any incumbent president or representative of the incumbent party, the economy is an immediate and understandable shorthand for the success of that president or party. A president who oversees a successful economy has a built-in advantage electorally that is generally difficult to combat. The consequence of viewing the environment as one issue among many is that it affects the way we perceive the necessity for action. For many issues that voters have to consider, there is a natural ebb and flow in the necessity to address any given problem. The American economy is rarely in a downward spiral with no end in sight, nor is the United States always at war. This dynamic cannot be applied to the environment, where decades of scientific consensus have made clear that the problem is only getting worse, and only direct action can reverse the trend. 

The scope and severity of climate change’s impacts (both immediately and going forward) necessitate at least the level of electoral significance that we ascribe to the performance of the economy. The impacts of inaction are too dire and too extensive for us to act in any other manner. Rather than viewing the environment as one of many issues a candidate must be prepared for, we should introduce a new standard in which the environment is viewed as a framework that contextualizes the discussion of all other issues. The advocacy here is not simply to say that voters need to care more about the environment, although that is absolutely true. Rather, voters should treat a candidate’s environmental views as a metric to evaluate the credibility of their entire platform. A candidate that traffics in climate denialism is not only problematic from an environmental standpoint, but also discounts the ways in which environmental harms could affect economic policy. As such, candidates must have both a clear commitment to addressing climate policy directly, as well as a policy that integrates climate change considerations into key elements of policy.

Placing emphasis on candidates and voters this way can have real value. When voters are apprised of the severity of climate change as an issue and informed of the stances of candidates, voters will act based on environmental preferences. For instance, an environmental group called the Environment America Action Fund selected ten races where environmentally-friendly voters could make a difference, and eight of the selected candidates won. Similarly, a number of European "green" parties have evolved from single-issue, environmental parties into legitimate parties with a wide base of support as voters placed increased significance on a candidate’s viewpoint towards the environment.  

It is absolutely worth noting that as a general matter, climate change and environmental concerns have generally become more prominent and significant in American politics, and we are getting better and better at managing our emissions. In addition, the IRA was a genuinely significant policy achievement that will undoubtedly create positive change going forward. However, it is difficult to escape the supposition that this positive momentum stems from the behavior of individual lawmakers rather than the conscious choice of the voting public. The urgency of further climate action demands that voters act with this issue as a guiding framework, rather than viewing it as a relatively unimportant issue. If we are to solve the climate problem in the compressed timeframe we have remaining, we must fundamentally change the way that we view the environment as a voting issue.