The Most Important Climate Election in History

Five Reasons Why the 2024 Elections Will be a Climate and Environmental Justice Tipping Point

By Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. and Jeremy Symons

The millions of people throughout the nation who are alarmed by climate change and environmental injustice are a powerful political force, but only when motivated and mobilized. That is why Donald Trump wants climate voters to sit this election out. Here are five reasons why this election will have far reaching consequences for communities that stand in harms way from polluters, and why climate voters need to be “ALL IN” for Kamala Harris.

1.   Trump Would Put Oil Kingpins in Charge of the Government

Oil and gas billionaires know the stakes. This is “the most important election in our lifetime,” according to Harold Hamm, America’s richest oil man and a driving force behind fracking. Hamm is a top fundraiser for Trump, who likes to call Hamm “my original oil guy.”

Trump is a climate arsonist ready to throw more fuel on the planetary fire. He sees the climate crisis is a money-making opportunity, selling the keys to the government to oil and gas billionaires.

At an April dinner at his Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump told oil and gas executives that they needed to give $1 billion to his campaign and legal defense. In return, Trump promised the oil barons he would give them new tax breaks and roll back environmental regulations and safeguards. He also promised to approve a wave of new permits to export fracked gas, reversing the decision that Biden and Harris made to halt new projects as they scrutinize the climate and environmental justice impacts.

Since the Mar-a-Lago dinner, “the money has been flowing in,” according to the Washington Post. Dark money contributions to Super PACs hide the full amount.

As leaked industry documents reveal, oil and gas interests have put together an extensive list of specific and far-reaching plans they want Trump to implement. They have learned from Trump’s first term, when his political appointees at EPA and other agencies bumbled their way through the first years of his first presidency. This time, their axes are sharper and they have set their sights higher, emboldened by a candidate who is intent on wielding power without guardrails.

2.   Harris Would Hold Polluters Accountable and Fight for Environmental Justice

As a former prosecutor and state Attorney General, Harris has the experience needed to go toe-to-toe with oil and gas kingpins and hold them to account for their lies, toxic emissions, and climate-altering pollution in a way that no president has ever challenged them before.

Throughout her career, Harris has fought for justice based on the principle that a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us, and that no one should be made to fight injustice alone.

As San Francisco’s District Attorney, Kamala Harris created the first environmental justice unit in the nation to prosecute environmental crimes. In the Senate, Harris led the fight for the groundbreaking Environmental Justice for All Act.

Harris led the administration’s efforts to deliver billions of dollars of funding under the Inflation Reduction Act to ensure that, in Harris’ words, “communities have the resources they need to advance environmental justice and to make sure all people can breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live in a healthy community.”

In contrast, Trump’s Project 2025 agenda would not only rescind this community funding, but also make it easier for polluters to dump toxins in communities and eliminate EPA’s environmental justice and civil rights office.

Trump would also roll back EPA regulations that protect public health from the petrochemical industry and other polluters. Clean Air Act rules issued under Biden and Harris will prevent more than 100 million asthma attacks in the coming years and save more than 200,000 lives, but only if they are not undone by Trump.

3.      Harris Would Create Good Jobs by Building’s America’s Clean Energy Economy

Donald Trump says windmills cause cancer. If oil companies give him enough money, he has promised to do away with their competition by rolling back federal investments in electric vehicles. We’ve seen this act before. During the four years under Donald Trump, America LOST 88,000 clean energy jobs, according to annual jobs reports from the Department of Energy.

In contrast, America has gained 350,000 good-paying clean energy jobs in the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration. And that’s just the start. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump wants to repeal, includes the strongest clean energy manufacturing incentives in history.

According to the analysts at Energy Innovation, America will gain 2.2 million additional clean energy jobs by 2030 if we continue on the leadership path started by Biden-Harris. White House leadership is pivotal: 1.7 million of these jobs will be lost if Trump pulls the rug out from under America’s clean energy boom.

4.   Trump Would Complete Corporate Polluters’ Takeover of Federal Courts

Trump’s judicial appointees have been a disaster for the climate crisis and environmental justice. Donald Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices and more than 200 other federal judges in his first term, amounting to one-third of the judges on the highest courts in the land. A second term would give Trump four years to further mold the courts with judges hand-picked by the oil and gas industry and the Federalist Society, including potentially replacing 76-year-old Clarence Thomas with a younger justice to extend Trump’s grip on the courts for generations.

America has enacted powerful laws to protect public health and the environment, such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, as well as laws that protect workers and civil rights. However, as a result of Trump’s first term, the Supreme Court today hovers over the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies like a hungry cat at a mousehole, swatting at any attempt to reign in corporate polluters. Trump’s appointees have flipped SCOTUS, favoring any case brought by the oil and gas industry and their allies against EPA. The Trump-packed courts have taken unprecedented steps to strike down EPA regulations to reduce harmful air pollution even before those cases cleared lower courts.

Judge James Cain in Louisiana, a Trump appointee, has become the oil and gas industry’s favorite go-to judge to protect their interests. Judge Cain issued a permanent injunction against EPA and the Department of Justice that stopped them from enforcing the Civil Rights Act to protect Black and Brown communities from toxic pollution and discrimination. He also issued an injunction against the Biden-Harris administration when they halted new permits for gas export facilities.

5.   Harris Would Lead the World to Climate Action; Trump Would Peddle Fossil Fuels

No country in the world plays as pivotal role in setting global climate ambition as the United States. After President Obama revived global hope and ambition at the Paris climate talks, President Trump pulled the plug. Instead, America doubled the amount of oil and gas we exported under Trump, suppressing global investments needed for cleaner, alternative energy sources.

Last year, Vice President Harris travelled to the climate talks and roused the world to a new level of ambition. Nations agreed for the first time to phase down global fossil fuels. The Biden-Harris administration shocked the world by following through on this commitment and taking the unexpected leadership step of hitting the brakes on new permits for gas export facilities, including CP2, which would be the largest LNG project ever built.  If built, these projects will require more fracked gas, harming the health of communities that are trying to keep toxic chemicals out of the water they drink and the air they breathe.  

In 2025, world leaders will once again turn their eyes to America’s president as they decide whether to stiffen global resolve to phase out fossil fuels or throw in the towel. Who will be representing America to lead the world at this juncture?

Donald Trump, who most recently said that climate change isn’t a problem because “you'll have more ocean front property,” would urge the world to double down on fossil fuel pollution.

We can’t let that happen. Imagine, instead, a world where Kamala Harris inspires the world, as she did when she addressed world leaders at last year’s climate summit, saying:

This is a pivotal moment.  Our action collectively or, worse, our inaction will impact billions of people for decades to come. For as much as we have accomplished, there is still so much more work to do.  And continued progress will not be possible without a fight.

Around the world, there are those who seek to slow or stop our progress.  Leaders who deny climate science, delay climate action, and spread misinformation.  Corporations that greenwash climate inaction and lobby for billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies.

In the face of their resistance and in the context of this moment, we must do more. In order to keep our critical 1.5 degree-Celsius goal within reach, we must have the ambition to meet this moment, to accelerate our ongoing work, increase our investments, and lead with courage and conviction.

This is the leadership the world needs to turn the corner on the climate crisis.  

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. is one of the 50 global changemakers selected for the 2024 Forbes Sustainability Leaders Award and has been recognized by the Obama White House for his climate and sustainability leadership as a Champion of Change. Jeremy Symons publishes Climate Insider on Substack. The views expressed here are their own.