Americans elect a climate change denier (again)

It was Election Day in America. Four people, including two poll workers, died in flash floods in Missouri. The National Weather Service recorded 3.75 inches of rainfall in St. Louis the day before, nearly three times as much as the previous daily record for November 4. “We can’t necessarily attribute one instance, one event, to the effects of climate change, but we are having these extreme rainfall events happening more frequently, and they will continue to increase in frequency,” National Weather Service meteorologist Melissa Delia told the local public radio station.

It was Election Day in America. Residents of the 25 North Carolina counties most impacted by Hurricane Helene, which was made rainier, more powerful, and more likely because of climate change, voted in higher numbers than the rest of the state after the elections board expanded voting options for those areas. Voters in Florida also adjusted to storm-related upheaval after the one-two punch of hurricanes Helene and Milton. Dozens of precincts across the state had to move polling places as a result of hurricane damage, and Gov. Ron DeSantis changed voting procedures to allow greater flexibility for worst-hit areas. Like Helene, Hurricane Milton was both more intense and rainier because of climate change. The two storms combined killed more than 260 people across Florida and the southeastern United States.

It was Election Day in America. Drought conditions across the country were widespread and pervasive. When the numbers are crunched, October 2024 is likely to be one of the driest months ever recorded in the country’s history, impacting 87 percent of the nation. At the end of the month, every state except Alaska and Kentucky was experiencing drought conditions, “the greatest number of states in drought in U.S. Drought Monitor history.” New York City residents were instructed to conserve water as the nation’s most populous city entered the second-longest rainless period since record-keeping began in 1869.

It was Election Day in America. Temperatures in the capital were 13 degrees above average. In Boston it was a balmy 72 degrees Fahrenheit, 16 degrees above average.

It was Election Day in America. Gavin Schmidt, climatologist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has predicted that 2024 will once again set an annual surface temperature record, possibly breaching the 1.5-degree Celsius increase above the pre-industrial average that the Paris climate accord was supposed to help avoid.

It was Election Day in America, and Americans elected to install a climate change denialist, who has repeatedly called global warming a hoax, as president. President-elect Donald Trump is now poised to once again withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, and to begin rolling back President Biden’s climate regulations in favor of his “frack, frack, frack and drill, baby, drill” energy plan. An analysis by Carbon Brief released before the election found that a second Trump term would likely increase US greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide equivalent) by 4 billion metric tons by 2030.

It was Election Day in America, and as author and climate activist Bill McKibben told me, “My guess is that we’ll be able to read last night’s election results in the geological record many millennia hence.”