“Game Over” – US Election Outcome Portends Catastrophic Climate Consequences
Yes, we are pretty much screwed. But that doesn’t mean we give up the fight.
Well, that just happened. The US re-elected an openly vile, racist, misogynistic, demagogic and now convicted felon to the highest office in the country, gravely imperiling American democracy and the fight against the existential threat of climate change. There is no sugarcoating this. To answer Geoff Dembicki’s book title Are We Screwed? Essentially, yes. The climate breakdown situation was already dire enough, with multiple expert reports coming out in recent weeks and months warning of the bleak reality of a dangerously and rapidly heating planet. Climate and Earth system scientists who study the physical health of our planet for a living are terrified by what is in store, and young people around the world including in the US are suffering significant psychological distress over the burden of inheriting an increasingly uninhabitable world.
As I write this, the sky is literally darkening with clouds and it is 70+ degrees Fahrenheit with red flag (fire conditions) warnings – in New England, in November. The unseasonable warmth may seem welcome for many folks, but for those of us who understand the climate emergency and what the science tells us, it is undeniably eerie and unsettling. And make no mistake – this is a climate emergency.
Unfortunately, when it comes to climate, things are going to get a hell of a lot worse with Trump ascending to a second term. Carbon Brief estimates it could result in an additional 4 billion tons of US climate pollution by 2030 and almost $1 trillion in global climate damages. As I reported earlier this year for Sierra, one environmental advocate said “the cost of [a Trump second term] would be in human lives.” That Sierra article discusses Project 2025, the right-wing policy agenda for the next Republican administration, explaining how it spells disaster for the climate and environment. (I discussed this further in this radio segment that aired in August).
Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist and Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, warned months ago that implementing the Project 2025 agenda would be “game over” for climate progress in the US. He assessment in the wake of the election remains grim.
“As I stated before the election, a second Trump term, which includes implementation of ‘Project 2025’, is the end of climate action as we know it, this decade,” Mann told me via email. “And if Trump dismantles our Democracy, as many fear will be the case, and the world’s greatest power, the U.S. becomes—in essence—a petrostate, it’s game over for climate action full stop for the foreseeable future, unless the rest of the world unites and takes bold action, including potentially the most punitive possible sanctions against the United States.”
Other climate scientists have issued similarly bleak outlooks in response to the US election outcome.
“We can say goodbye to the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Increasingly deadly climate impacts will escalate. It is as simple as that. The floods and the droughts and the heatwaves, the devastated lives and destroyed crops, these will not stop for a climate denier,” said Simon Lewis, chair of global change science at University College London.
William J. Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University and director of the Alliance of World Scientists, said Trump’s election victory is a “catastrophic setback” for global climate action. “[Trump’s] stance abandons the science, disregards international obligations, and sends a disastrous message to the world,” Ripple told me. “This election outcome could contribute to an era of escalating climate disasters that we may no longer be able to control, potentially leaving a portion of the planet unlivable for future generations.”
As I have tried to explain in previous One Earth Now articles and in my August segment on WPKN radio, what is perhaps most alarming and terrifying about climate breakdown is the very real risks of crossing so-called “tipping points” or thresholds in the climate system that trigger irreversible alterations or collapses and, in some cases, positive feedback loops that further amplify warming already underway. I’m talking about physical systems and features on our planet that are nearing a breaking point, like melting ice sheets and thawing permafrost and collapse of an ocean current system called AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), that once they tip into this destabilized state, it becomes self-amplifying and leads to even more warming and more destabilization. As I said a few months ago in that radio segment, the health and stability of the planet is at stake in the US election. Rejecting Trump and Project 2025 would of course not solve climate change, but it’s about whether the problem will be somewhat manageable and society will have a shot at trying to adapt, or whether we’re basically screwed and the climate problem spirals out of control. And as Ripple alluded to in his statement, the latter option is what now may be in store. Sure, the clean energy transition may be unstoppable (though a Trump administration promises to slow it down in the US), but time is not on our side. Scientists have been very clear that this is the critical decade to make meaningful progress in cutting emissions, and now that time will be largely squandered.
That doesn’t mean the fight for climate action and accountability and some degree of a livable Earth is over. Far from it. We cannot give into despair and doom. We must be bold and courageous and speak truth to power, always. On that last part about speaking truth, it is more essential than ever to support truly independent media, and I am grateful to you for reading and supporting my work with my endeavor here at One Earth Now. It’s also important that we take care of ourselves during these trying times. Whatever your self-care routine may be, I hope you take time for that over these next few days, weeks, and months.