For some voters like Maddie Nall, climate change can be a deal breaker, when it comes to filling in the bubble for an ideal candidate or policy amendment.
“If a candidate has a negative opinion on climate change infrastructure, I’m less likely to vote for them,” wrote Nall, a student activist and political science major at the University of California, Irvine, in a statement to Annenberg Media.
“Both candidates in this election have bad climate policy,” she said. “Trump constantly states climate change is a hoax, and the Democratic party has smoked further right on their own climate stance. While I believe the Democratic party has better overall policy, it’s not strong enough for progress that will counter the damage we are causing the planet.”
Nall criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign’s stance on fracking — a method of extracting oil and natural gas from rock formations. Advocates for environmental justice policy warn against the dangers of fracking, saying that reliance on natural gasses that are released during the process of the oil drilling will push climate change tipping points. On September 10, during the presidential debate between Trump and Harris, Harris insisted that she would not ban fracking in the United States to emphasize a diminished reliance on foreign fossil fuels.
For some biologists in the field of environmental research, like Dr. Chase James, a PhD graduate from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, climate change policy is important, and it influences their thoughts on presidential candidates.
James criticized former president Trump for the insistence on climate change denial, but he pointed to a lack of access to information regarding climate science creating a divide between voters. James described early footage of Trump in 2019, claiming that Hurricane Dorian wouldn’t have real detrimental effects.
“He thought he could just draw it with a Sharpie, but he thought he could predict the next step of the hurricane path,” James said. “That was a clear misjudgement… it put a lot of people in danger.”
While Hurricane Dorian did not cause significant damage to the U.S. mainland — it eventually dissipated to a Category 2 storm — the hurricane caused massive destruction in the Bahamas, warranting death toll reports.
“Part of the U.S.’s power is like, trying to use what we have to better the world in some way as well,” said James. “And I think that, when it’s ‘American first’… that’s not a solution, right? This is a global issue, and so you need a party and a candidate that wants to globally address issues like climate change.”
Internationally, the effects of climate change can be felt too. James’ colleague, Dr. Hagan Buck-Wiese, studies ecology and marine bacteria and works in research at the University of Southern California. Originally from Germany, Buck-Wiese witnessed the presidential election from the outside, but he spoke about the gravity of climate change ignorance.
One visual signifier of climate change off the coast of Southern California, he confirms, is the presence of harmful algal blooms — that can coincide with the blue, bioluminescent tides. While the algal blooms produce a James Cameron-”Avatar”-like glow in the dark, the blue tide presence towards the end of October, late in the season, served as a visual indicator of a warming ocean.
Buck-Wiese also pointed to the lack of access to information and monitoring internationally of harmful algal blooms. When these blooms occur, they can produce a diuretic toxin that, if consumed in the seafood that people eat, can prove dangerous to marine mammals and humans.
“It’s easy for people to get affected, but this especially in the community where seafood is something that we regularly consume because these tiny algae make a toxin,” he said. “There’s cases of people dying.”
According to the Center for American Progress, surveys among members of Congress also point to the denial of human-caused climate change, reporting 123 elected officials — about 20% of the total members of Congress — to be skeptics of science.
The skepticism could stem from a lack of exposure to climate change’s detrimental effects, but unsustainable energy can affect some people more than others. For example: people who are too close to oil plants that produce toxic methane emissions, or some may live next to unregulated factory farms that poison drinking water for nearby communities.
Conservation efforts supported by scientists like Buck-Wiese and James may provide some optimism in the efforts for climate change mitigation.
“I had a conversation yesterday with a colleague who works on a project to use the tiny algae to create a renewable energy and material resource,” Buck-Wiese said. He studies the natural processes of the carbon cycle. “Because the ocean is so vast, I actually have no doubt that it could be used for both.”
Despite the bleak nature of climate change policy as it stands today, there are some who remain hopeful. Nall, the UCI political science student, has hope.
“My hope lies with organizations on the ground, while national policy seems discouraging, non-profits and people on the ground work every day for better solutions,” she wrote.